#5 Spiritual Blog:
When God Doesn’t Make Sense
God makes abundant sense when out lives abound in blessings as our requests and prayers receive a resounding “Yes!” Then we really love God and feel loved by God, right?
It’s a whole different experience when the blessings stop for seemingly no reason. When hardships or trauma – especially the loss of our Beloved – instead replace God’s blessings, then God truly doesn’t make sense to us! Oftentimes we begin to doubt God’s love and caring nature towards us. We may grow despondent, confused, doubting God’s love, His Promises. If you’ve been a Christian long enough, you have wandered down this road in your walk with God!
In Dr. James Dobson’s book, When God Doesn’t Make Sense, Dobson help us better understand God at such times of human struggle [pgs. 60-63].
We are initially reminded that the Scriptures describe God as our loving Father. Selecting two of many, Psalm 103:13 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him,” or revere, respect God. Isaiah 66:13 likens God to a loving mother: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” Continuing the narrative, Dr. Dobson next shares a true story to illustrate that God can actually love his earthly family similarly [or even more] than we human parents love our own children.
James’ three year old toddler, Ryan, had a terrible ear infection that had kept him and the whole family awake for most of the night. At the pediatrician’s the next day, the doctor confirmed a serious eardrum infection, caused by an errant scab, that required the painful use of a pick-like instrument inserted into the eardrum to remove the scab. Mom & dad readied themselves to assist the doctor, but the toddler had other plans.
After several unsuccessful attempts by mom to hold a screaming, squirming toddler, James takes over. Wrapping his 200 pd, 6’2” frame firmly around Ryan, Dad secures him, listening in agony to his son’s terrified and pain-filled screams. James describes this moment as believing that “…I was in greater agony…than my terrified little boy.” With tears rolling down Ryan’s tiny face, his eyes begging his daddy to free him from his suffering, James concludes that “It was one of the toughest moments in my career as a parent.“ Dads & Moms everywhere can relate to James’ own agony when they too suffer in similar situations, along with their child!
Later, James reflected on the event and what was most hurtful as he looked at Ryan’s face: “Though he was screaming and couldn’t speak, he was ‘talking’ to me with those big blue eyes….saying, ‘Daddy! Why are you doing this to me? I thought you loved me….How could you? Please, please! STOP hurting me!’” [pg. 62, italics added].
James continues his reflections, reminding himself how impossible it was to explain to his distraught toddler that his suffering was necessary, for his own good, that it was love that required he be held down on the table. ““…. but in his immature mind, I was a traitor who had callously abandoned him“ [pg. 62, bold added].
Dr. Dobson’s reason for sharing this experience is to help us know that God too feels our intense pain and suffers just as James had similarly suffered sharing Ryan’s ordeal. Dobson reminds us of the broad range of human emotions Jesus experienced. Citing two examples of many, Jesus was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled” when Mary wept over Lazarus [John 11:33]. Romans 8:26 tells how God’s Spirit intercedes for us with “groans that words cannot express.”
Dobson continues that a logical conclusion of Christ’s words to Phillip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” in John 14:9, is that the Father “…is passionately concerned about His human ‘family’ and shares our grief in those unspeakable moments“ [pg.63]. A far cry from us feeling abandoned and forgotten by God in our hour of need!
James’ inability to make sense of Ryan’s suffering to his young toddler, similarly parallels our Father wanting to explain to us, His children – with our ‘human limitations’ that our agony is necessary, does have a purpose. That indeed there are answers to the tragedies of life….and He so anticipates the day when we will understand what was occurring in our time of trial!
I too believe we will “get” the bigger picture, the “Why’s” that are hidden from us now because of our human limitations. Just as adult Ryan will similarly “get” his dad’s own actions when someday, he too is a father of a three year old toddler! So remember this true story of Dr. Dobson when ‘God doesn’t make sense’ causing your faith in Him to waver.