57 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
57 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
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Out of Context?
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. John 3:16 -- "For God so loved the world that he gave his only
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begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
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have everlasting life."
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. Over the years of my life (I'm close to 37 now, which I HATE to
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realize) I have had quite a few friends and relatives die, some after
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much pain and suffering. In times of suffering and death, especially
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when seemingly good, innocent people are involved, some of us may
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wonder (I know I often have) how God's love can be seen in the
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situation. "If God is love, why did he allow my child to die?" "If
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God loves me, why must I suffer this constant pain?" Some also wonder
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about God's love when they think of the starving multitudes in Third
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World nations. Why does he allow such suffering? How can he claim to
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love someone and then sit by and watch them in excruciating life-long
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pain, especially when he has the ability to stop that pain?
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. To be honest, I am myself puzzled concerning the reasons behind
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much of the apparent evil and suffering that I see or hear of in this
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world. And some of the proposed solutions to the puzzle that I have
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heard sound pretty shallow, and I imagine especially so to the one
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faced with an actual situation of suffering.
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. But I think that sometimes what aggravates the problem, making it
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seem even worse than it already is, might be called an attempt to
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"read" God's love out of context. Living in a culture that's
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completely wrapped up in the concerns of this life, legitimate as
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those concerns are, we can easily lose the "eternal perspective." We
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tend to see things only within the context of this life, forgetting
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that God's love in Christ is an eternal love, something that will find
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its greatest fulfillment on the other side of this life, in the "life
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to come."
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. The Apostle Paul is aware of the eternal perspective when, in I
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Corinthians 15, he speaks of the importance of faith in Christ's
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resurrection. In verse 18 he says that if there is no resurrection,
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then those who are dead in Christ have perished, which is the tragic
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view of death and suffering from the perspective of this life alone.
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He continues, "If it's only in this life that we have hope in Christ,
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then we are the most miserable of all men." If this life is our only
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evidence of God's love, then we ARE in pretty bad shape. "But now
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Christ has risen from the dead, and he's only the first, for ... in
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Christ all shall be made alive" (vv. 20,22). Thus, we are helped to
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refrain from drawing hasty conclusions out of context, for when all of
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this world's words have been spoken, we know that God has yet another
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word. On that word we wait, trusting that it will put everything into
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context. The atoning death of Christ on the cross ("For God so loved
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the world that...") has given us this larger context.
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. Surely, the eternal perspective should not be used as a cop-out
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from our responsibility to be concerned with removing or reducing
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suffering whenever and wherever we can, and of making the world a
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better place for all to live in. But it can help us to understand,
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when this life is unavoidably difficult, that suffering is never the
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last word for those who live in the context of God's love.
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Charles Shelton
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Computers for Christ - Chicago
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