Why do Christians experience unwarranted hardship?
It’s a question that could hush a church hall, because it directly threatens the root assumptions of Christian belief. There are only two answers: either God can’t prevent it, or he won’t. The first answer would mean that God would not be in control of the universe and, hence, not be God at all. The second answer would mean that God had better explain himself!
Faced with this dilemma, some simply question the question and say that Christians don’t experience unwarranted hardship. Because God is all-powerful and all-loving, they reason, he never would allow anything to trouble the lives of those whom he loves. The logic seems impeccable, but this is scant comfort to the ever-growing ranks of us who nevertheless do experience a difficulty or two during our lifetimes.
Others concede the existence of unwarranted hardship and conclude that it must be good for us, so we ought to simply accept it without asking why. We need not understand to have faith, they say. They say this even though the Bible consistently presents faith as the ability to perceive God’s work beyond the visible. If anything, the leap of faith is by understanding rather than by lack of it. Not to mention that exempting God from the need to front an explanation does nothing to exempt us from the need to receive one. Or is God just plain mean?
Funny I should mention faith… My contention in this book is that God has already explained himself at length regarding unwarranted hardship, and his purposes for it all start with one’s faith. We’ll see how testing has been embedded deeply in the Christian religion and its history, never mind believers’ personal lives, for a variety of good reasons. But the Good News about testing starts with faith…
What’s a Test for?
Now, faith is trusting that God is willing and able to save you. The question is, if you are never in a situation where you need to be saved, what can you say about your faith? Not much, really, for faith comes out in the pudding. It may very well be there, but only testing gives you or God the evidence to prove it.
I suppose we could imagine how we would react in a challenging situation. Personally, I love to daydream this way! I ask myself things like, “Suppose the Gestapo had pounded on my door looking for the Jews next door.”
“Nope, sorry,” I like to think I would have replied. “I haven’t seen them since I rescued them, you <epithet deleted> murderers!” In the light of my own speculation, my faith looks positively heroic, but what if what I imagine were actually to happen? Would I really respond that way?
I remember once, I was working on an urgent project and had to come into the office on a Sunday. I emerged from the subway and turned right, straight into an advancing ring of Nazis in full regalia. I guess they had decided that the best time for a public demonstration was when downtown was almost empty! In any case, I was instantly filled with a sort of instinctual panic/hatred/fury in spite of myself. I fought down simultaneous urges to attack and flee, but then I noticed that the ring of Nazis was itself surrounded by a much thicker ring of “Chicago’s Finest” (the city police!). Somewhat flustered, I proceeded to walk right through the once-menacing circle!
I was reminded that day that one never knows how one will perform until the test is actually administered. “Talk is cheap,” they say. Even more so imagination!
Who’s Requesting All These Tests?
Is your faith more than an idle boast or empty fantasy? I suppose a person may hope to sort of stay under the radar and avoid being tested, but the problem is that the question is bound to come up. Some people publicly wonder about others’ faith (including yours), others privately worry about their own. The Accuser for sure makes the most of any evidence to claim that no one has any, and God, if he doesn’t wonder (being all-knowing and all), is still pleased to see it show. So when you claim faith in Christ, you in a sense invite the whole universe to try to prove you wrong. And you may be sure your kind offer will eventually be taken up. You don’t need a prophet to tell you this much: there’s a test in your future!
On the other hand, there’s little point in a test if it is pretty clear that the test subject is not ready. A schoolteacher normally wouldn’t spring an algebra pop quiz in French class, for example. Similarly, God may withhold a test of faith until it is applicable and appropriate to the level of one’s faith. Sometimes it seems to me as if the tests are preset and waiting for us to grow to the point of taking them. It’s not all that unusual for a test to be initiated by one’s own dawning consideration that the choice one has routinely made for one’s own care need not be made. One’s growing trust, in other words, in God’s ability and character to sustain one through trying circumstances one has heretofore avoided.
Now at least you know why you seem to get clobbered every time you advance a little bit spiritually. Lucky you!
Joy in Testing?
But my Bible, ever the useful book, has a word even for sadistic French teachers, and it’s not the first one that springs to mind. That word is joy, as in “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”[1]
For most of my Christian life, I understood this counsel to be of the “put on a happy face” variety—perhaps because that’s how it was explained to me—and disregarded it accordingly. I could not bring myself to be untrue to myself that way, nor to those whom I respected as acquaintances. Moreover, most of the Christians whom I saw attempt to put on a happy face were not only manifestly fraudulent but made more unpleasant in the aftermath. Resentment denied, apparently, produces bitter bullets of rationalization that are then all-too-often sprayed indiscriminately into innocent passersby.
But are the apostles really saying what people say they’re saying? When Peter says, “But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed,”[2] he’s not speaking of one’s feelings but of one’s actual (dare we say “existential?”) state. He doesn’t say here, “You ought to look happy.” He says you are blessed, rich, given a rare and valuable favor. He says you are the kid who just unwrapped what you’ve always wanted for Christmas, whether you recognize it or not.
OK, if this is what the apostles were really saying, then they were just plain hallucinating, probably from the pain and hunger that they were so eager to endure. Or maybe, just maybe, they really did experience something that so inspired them that they not only welcomed testing but excitedly bid us follow suit. Could it be that the way to your happiness lies along that thorn-choked path? Hey, if it’s happiness that’s being promised, it’s worth at least a (potentially prickly) peek!
Attitude to Testing
Perhaps our attitude toward the Test should be more like, say, that of young soccer players on Game Day. From what I remember, practice may be grueling, but it’s always kind of a gas. You go out there, run about with your friends, burn a little energy, run Coach’s little drills… But on Game Day, it’s all business, there in the chill of the morning, watching the opposing team assemble nonchalantly on the other side. Everyone is primed and ready to go, eager to put to the test the stuff Coach has been working hard to develop in us. No one is giggling or goofing off now, but on the other hand no one says, “Hey! I thought soccer was supposed to be just fun. I’m going home!” The truth is that we have found another, superior kind of joy—the thrill of having our developing excellence manifested the only way it can be: by real opposition. Like every solid sports team at the beginning of the first half, we imagine we are an unbeatable athletic powerhouse and are eager to prove it!
But isn’t this how our faith should be? Aren’t our times of ease under God’s solicitous care supposed to be times of growth, for running drills of discipline and worship as we look forward to the contest we are being prepared for? Or do we expect to experience heaven here on earth? And on that inevitable day when we realize, “Hey, this is for real! The opposing team is not just a friendly setup!” shivers of anticipation should shoot from our spines as we look forward eagerly and soberly to glorifying the Name under which we play. But in our case, we have a better hope than any athletic powerhouse, for we know that, whatever may happen and whatever we may suffer, it is impossible for us to be disappointed in the second half (whatever that may be). It’s sort of like being one of those eternally optimistic beings called “Chicago Cubs’ fans,” except in our case the team takes the pennant and goes on to win the World Series every year.
Personal Value
“Well, that’s great for the Team,” you might say, “but what if you are the class clown, or klutz, or doofus, or otherwise the sort of person that, when picking teams, is always crossing his fingers and desperately wishing that he will be picked next-to-last this time around (yo!)? What if you are the one most likely to drop the ball? What is in it for a believer like me?”
I have one word for you. Midterms.
I was the sort of student in college who didn’t have a clue as to why I was there. Midterms therefore were a source of great dread for me, perhaps even more than finals. After all, one isn’t given more material to learn after the final! But regarding midterms, the only purpose I could see in them was to evaluate me as a person and post the sad results on the lecture hall wall outside for all to view.
When I returned after some years to obtain graduate training, in contrast, I had a purpose. I desired to equip myself with certain skills and perspectives, and midterms were a great way to assess how well I was proceeding toward my goal. It was almost as if I were happier with a lower grade, because that showed me what weaknesses I needed to address. I noticed that many of my classmates who had continued on directly from college had not graduated to this (much healthier) perspective.
Similarly, trials and tribulations have personal growth value to you. This is certainly true if you are the last person you would pick to be on a championship team and is still true if you are the first person you would pick.
Properly understood in its contexts of God’s general Kingdom purposes and his specific intent to bless you personally, testing turns out to produce a multitude of good results. In this light, it is immature and biblically naïve to desire blessing in general without also welcoming the blessing of testing. Trials and tribulation are God’s greater gifts. They are fish in the guise of snakes and eggs in the semblance of scorpions[3]. Why content yourself with bread and water? Come and accept the apostles’ invitation to richer feasts!
[1] James 1:2–3, NASB
[2] 1 Peter 3:14a, NASB
[3] Luke 11:11–12.