The key to knowing God as good in a broken world: Long-suffering

BY BROOKLYN MCKINNEY

Feature Editor

When I was five years old, I had a simple understanding of God. I would talk to Him like a friend every night and sing old hymns, worshipping Him when my parents took me to church on Sunday. 

I knew that He was good because I felt a sense of peace and joy come over me as I sang in the back pew with the choir. And I knew that He was listening because every year that I prayed for snow in Texas for Christmas, the dry, brittle grass would be covered in a bright white blanket. 

Looking out the window brought me more excitement than peeling back the wrapping paper from my presents. For so many years, I was amazed by the way the sun reflected off the snowflakes because it was a sign that we spoke.

As I grew up, I stopped praying as much because life no longer felt so simple. I was no longer happy with God because I knew that in His sovereignty, He had allowed bad things to happen. Not just things I didn’t want, but that I also thought were going to break me.

I used to lie awake at night wondering why He would watch humans go through struggles like grief, disability and abuse if He truly loved them. 

Many of the youth that Chloe Moriarty teaches at Timber Ridge Church in Stephenville find themselves asking the same question.

“We kind of just have to be patient and trust Him, and I let them know that it’s okay to have those questions and go to God with those questions, because He wants us to be honest and vulnerable with Him and not to fake it,” Moriarty said.

Some spiritual leaders or churches can make enduring everyday struggles feel like a sin. But the truth is that even Job, a prosperous man who was described in the Bible as “righteous” and “blameless” in the eyes of God, temporarily found himself dealing with extreme loss and asking why.

In 2009, Douglas K. Blount, a philosophy professor at Tarleton State University and ordained minister who formerly taught at Billy Graham’s School of Missions, found himself in a chapel service at Dallas Theological Seminary using Job’s life as an example on how to handle suffering.

"Obviously, righteousness is no hedge against suffering... If you were right with God, you would be healthy, you would be wealthy, all would be well with you—I never understand how these people can make sense of the cross. This is simply not true," Blount said.

Long before I approached Blount after class, I found myself asking the same question again. 

As I was writing my World Civilizations final on Night by Ellie Weisel, I began to think about what role faith played in not only his story, but the whole of the Holocaust.

The best I could come up with before I turned the paper in with dark lead and eraser marks was this: “Real faith is choosing to keep the humanity God created within us, even in the midst of our struggles.”

By “humanity,” what I really meant was empathy; the love and compassion that unite us. 

While one of Weisel’s fellow prisoners believed that his faith was being tested by God Himself before it crumbled, what I believe is that God chose to give everyone free will, including bad people.

It seems extremely unfair, through our limited understanding, that our world is so broken that this was granted to Hitler, a dictator who wiped out millions of the Jewish population during World War II. But despite this, believers of His word know his character to be good and just.

This is the basis on which Blount tells the same congregation of seminary students at Dallas Theological Seminary from over 13 years ago a story about a driver who passes him while speeding on the highway.

He explains that even though he saw the car weaving in and out of traffic and had to take the exit ramp to dodge it, he knew that there must have been a good reason for the recklessness, because he recognised the car as his father’s.

Strangers may have gotten the impression of a dangerous driver, but Blount knew his dad to be a good man who cared for others.

"I don't have to know what my dad's reason is to know that he's got one, because I know my dad... We don't have to know what God's reason is to know that He's got one, because we know our God," Blount said.

God gave us free will to live in a broken world, just as His only son, Jesus, died on a cross for our sins, because for real sacrificial love to exist, a choice must be made.

Just as Jesus chose to die for our sins, we have to choose to love Him even while living in imperfect circumstances before we get to spend eternity with God.

In fact, one of the nine fruits of the spirit described in Galatians, along with love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, is long-suffering.

Most people associate it with patience, because the Greek word for long-suffering, Makrothumia, literally means “long-tempered”.

But it’s more than that. We have to be able to endure the brokenness around us without lashing out or giving up on God, just as Jesus died for the sins of men who spat in His face, mocked Him and nailed His hands to a cross with a crown of thorns piercing his head.

In fact, when Peter cuts off the ear of Malchus, who arrests Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, He rebukes Peter. Not only does He tell His disciple to put away his sword, but He goes out of His way to heal Malchus, touching his head to re-attach it.

Job in the Old Testament loses his 10 children, all of his wealth, goes through a life-threatening illness and is shunned by his entire community in the process. Even his wife and friends turn on him, but he still never curses God.

Aubrey Cantu, a student at Tarleton State University, made this choice even while grieving the loss of her mother.

“I don’t think I would have gotten through that without the community I had and my faith in Him. And I don’t think I would have found that much joy in life without Him,” she said. “I wasn’t happy, of course, I was struggling and grieving, but in my heart, I was so joyful knowing that I’m going to see her again one day.”

While sceptics or nonbelievers like to mislabel God’s character as cruel, I know that to have lived is to laugh just as hard as you have cried. 

Happiness wouldn’t be a distinct feeling if it were our default setting, and selfless love couldn’t exist without the possibility of sacrifice.

No one is promised an easy life. We aren’t even promised tomorrow. The Gospel tells us that Jesus came down to Earth and carried the weight of our sins through His crucifixion so that we might accept a relationship with Him as our father and savior.

I chose to follow Jesus because I would rather suffer with Him than without Him.