17. God’s measure is not our measure

Goodness was in God’s creation plan before sin, so in the struggle for a righteous life it is a matter of reaching back to the prime state of Creation. God had given the instruction to the man and woman, “Do not eat …”.and when they disobeyed, sin entered in. That state is rightly called “The Fall”. When sin entered into the life of men and women, God introduced a pathway back to His righteousness, and this encouraged those men and women to make a struggle against evil. However even His own people, the Israelites, saw no connection between their suffering at the hands of their enemies and their disobedience of God’s commands. We may be no different! God did make it attractive for those seeking Him to choose goodness. Rather than walk with no commitment, without hope and no expectation, culminating in oblivion at the end of our lives, those who seek God would rather walk in this world, supported by God, by participating in a baptismal commitment to Him, with the hope of better things to come.

To us, life often seems unfair and difficult. Job, without his children or his wealth, sitting naked on a pile of ashes, in so much tragedy, argues with his friends that he has done nothing unforgivable, and that God is not fair. Even Job’s wife encourages Job to “curse God and die”.

But if we acknowledge that it is His measure, then He decides how we arrive at our despair place. We cannot expect Him to use our standard or measure of fairness. However, we are reassured that He will comfort us in our confusion, when He uses His measure.

We do not imagine that God can do nothing about unfairness, or about those who beset us, or that He finds difficulty in keeping the chaos in check. We do not believe that He requires us to live our lives precisely, where we react with measured mathematical like precision, before justice can prevail. We cannot guarantee that if we pray hard enough God will yield to our desire. God did not ever promise that good people will thrive with health and prosperity, and that evil people will fail.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

The answer to all those discussion questions is that God is trying to teach us something, other than what we think might be on His agenda. To begin with we can always help the man with no feet, when we at least can cover ours. That need in itself creates an opportunity which we should not forfeit, as we demonstrate our beliefs to the unbeliever. And, yes, God will not test us beyond what we can stand, and justice is in God’s hand. But they are all answers only partly right.

The answer also is that God is frustrated and grieved that when He leaves unbelieving men to their own devices, often bad things happen to good people. And He is disappointed with the vicissitudes of life when His children are in trouble and pain of their own doing. God declined to answer Gideon’s “why” questions, Judges 6:13, nor did He answer Job’s questions. That is because goodness does not preclude suffering, trouble and pain for good people?

So God promises to be in the hurting with us, when it hurts. If we have that good relationship with God through all our life, then when it hurts we can fall back on that. He understands our howling in the night and wallowing in the mud, He understands our deep dark pit, for He is there also. He encourages us that physical realities in our lives are nothing to do with our spiritual journey. Terrible physical realities, like the crucifixion, might present God as the enemy. If we agree we will find it difficult to deny an alienation from God. Others view the life and death of the Son of God as an essential to teach the sacrificial element of suffering for us to copy so others can see, and also suffer willingly for His sake. True accepted Biblical saints did not think of God as the enemy, criticizing Him, for they knew His measure. So when we are not relieved of our ongoing suffering, for His sake, we ourselves would not criticize Him.