I wrote a post about my depression, and received some great feedback. Thanks to everyone who posted on my various pages, you are all awesome. Thanks so much for the prayers, I need them. During the comments and conversation (and a few after) I have been asked and/or told that God can heal, does heal and even that He always heals. Some have told me that it's always God's will to heal us and if we are not healed, it's because we haven't asked in sufficient faith. The question is asked by many who are not healed or have loved ones that are not healed, why weren't they healed? Why does God let His children suffer?
It's a hard question and one we have probably all wrestled with, after all if I saw one of my children suffering, I would make sure it stopped and they were healed, wouldn't it? Maybe not. WAIT, before you called Child Protective Services, let's discuss it. Why would any parents who loves their kids allow them to suffer. If I love my kids, then I will never let them suffer, right? If they are suffering and I do nothing, then I either lack the ability to stop it, or I don't really love them. That is the assumption, but it's wrong. Any of you who have been a parent know this is wrong. Sometimes our kids need to suffer, because it's what is best for them.
The risk of starting a conversation that has nothing to do with my point, vaccines are given to kids to help them. Needles suck and sometimes it makes their arms or legs sore for a while. I don't for a single second think it gives kids autism, please save those comments for another page. Getting a shot it not enjoyable for my kids, but they all get them. Partially because it's required to go to school, but partially because I know what polio, smallpoxs and measles does to people. Growing up, my next door neighbor had issues with his legs and hips because of polio as a child. People die from diseases that we prevent. A small child doesn't understand the risk, they just know that shots are bad and they don't want them.
I admit that immunizations are an incomplete example, since they are intended to prevent illness and ultimately death, and we are talking about God allowing those things. I understand, I watched my parents get cancer, suffer greatly and die. I have asked the questions about healing. My own physical issues have been a problem, but not life threatening, but I still ask why I'm not healed. Why do my legs and back and knee hurt every day? Why hasn't God just fixed it, people are praying for me. My depression isn't healed, and there are lots of people praying. Why doesn't He just heal me?
He might. He could and He may choose to do so. I may write these posts and people pray and God moves in a mighty way, I'm healed and I give Him the glory and people glorify God and believe. We see that in the Bible, people God healed and people praised God and believed in Jesus. We also see people get healed and the leaders decide to put Jesus to death because He healed on the Sabbath. We see Jesus do miracles and people either want Him to do more, or they hate Him for it. Maybe the reason that God doesn't do all the things we ask Him is because we begin to think of Him as just the providers of Miracles. We begin to think about the Disney version of Jesus, who sings a song, birds fly around and all our dreams come true. That is a problem, and it's a reality, but I don't think it's the primary reason we aren't healed. I don't think it's our attitude or lack of faith, I don't think it's because God is punishing us or because He doesn't care. I think it's because He loves us enough to do what is best.
To really explain this, we need to take a trip back to my childhood. When I was a kid, there was these books that I loved. They were called "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Remember those? In the books, you made a choice and based on your choice, you got to choose which page to turn too. Depending on what you choose, it changed the outcome of the book. Some of the choices ended in glorious victory, and some in painful and agonizing defeat. If you were like me, you read the book through once, then checked out all the outcomes and then made the choice that led to the glorious victory. Yes, that's cheating, but no one likes to fail. The tricky part about these books is often the choice that seems best will lead to disaster. I'm not sure what they were trying to teach us, but the risky moves often paid off. They always kept us guessing.
What if you could live your life like a choose your own adventure book. The reality is that God sort of does that. God sees all your life, beginning, middle and end so He can make the choice that is best. The choice that is going to be what is the best for your life. The problem comes when we assume that we know what is best for our lives. For example, I could say it would be much better for me if my parents lived, grew old and died at an old age, getting to see my graduate college and seminary, get married and they could meet my kids. That makes sense, that seems like the best plan. God saw the outcome of that plan, He knew what I would be like and the choices I would make if that were my future. It was a better outcome for everyone for them to have cancer and die. The road that I took because of that event shaped my life in a way that it was best for everyone.
That is a hard pill to swallow when faced with despair and tragedy, I understand. I have lost family members and friends, I have seen horrible suffering and pain. How can it benefit a family when they lose a child, when a baby dies, when pain won't stop and when people lose everything? I don't know, but God does. In this sinful, evil, and dark world, sometimes the path that gets us where we need to be is dark and horrible. It can be painful. We also self inflict a lot of pain on ourselves. If you smoke for 30 years, you probably shouldn't shake your fists at the heavens when you get lung cancer. If you get into relationships with people who make bad choices, you can't blame God when those bad choices come back to cause you pain. Sometimes bad things happen because we make bad choices. The glorious part is God still uses those to bring us to a good place. Even our bad choices can be used by God to bring blessing.
To bring it back full circle, God hasn't healed my depression yet because I need it to get where it's best for me to be. The best thing for me right now is to suffer and trust that God has a purpose for my suffering. I don't know what it is, and I don't know what He is doing, and I may never know. I will never know what lies down the other road, but it doesn't matter, because this is the road I'm on. I have to trust the destination, knowing the end will be the best of all available ends.
By the way, this is a theological doctrine called the Best of All Possible Worlds, and I like it. Props to John Piper.
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