Someone recently asked me, "Why does God do this to me?" He was inquiring into God's design in a current state of suffering in his life. He followed it up quickly with, "I can't worship a God who does this."
My first thought was, "You don't have any choice ... He is the only God there is except for you, and you haven't done so well for yourself." But I trusted my pastoral instinct and refrained.
Instead I challenged him to give it some thought biblically as to what God is up to. I told him I could not give him any easy answers. He needed to struggle through this with the goal of seeing God.
Today I was reminded of this conversation by seeing John Piper's little article about "How God Teaches the Deep Things of His Word."
In it, he is discussing Psalm 119:65-72, and his comments on v. 71 are instructive. The verse says:
It is good for me that I was afflicted,
so that I might learn your statutes.
Piper says,
How can he call affliction good? It’s because in his value-scheme, penetrating insight into God’s word is more valuable that thousands of gold and silver pieces.
Suffering should drive us to learn the Word. It too often drives us elsewhere.
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