Camus, in his classic novel, The Plague, describes the agony of a priest trying to come to terms with the horrible death of a child. In such circumstances one of the key questions that Christians seek to answer is: where is God in all of this? The answers fly out from the keyboards and on the airwaves. ‘It’s a judgement.’ ‘It’s a sign.’ ‘It’s neither a judgement or a sign. ”God is not involved – he’s just weeping and asking us to remember his Son and do good.’
How are you feeling? Sometimes Christians struggle both at a personal and a corporate level when faced with the challenges to faith that a crisis like Covid-19 brings.
Camus, in his classic novel, The Plague, describes the agony of a priest trying to come to terms with the horrible death of a child. In such circumstances one of the key questions that Christians seek to answer is: where is God in all of this? The answers fly out from the keyboards and on the airwaves. ‘It’s a judgement.’ ‘It’s a sign.’ ‘It’s neither a judgement or a sign. ”God is not involved – he’s just weeping and asking us to remember his Son and do good.’
My question is the one that Jeremiah asked: “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wounds of my people” (Jeremiah 8:22).
The book of Revelation ends by telling us that the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. Where are those leaves? This week, although I didn’t discover the vaccine for Covid-19, I did discover a medicine far more precious – something to heal ‘the sin sick soul’.
For me, the Covid crisis is not the only, nor even the major reason for what the 17th century Cambridge pastor, Richard Sibbes, calls ‘The Soul’s Conflict’. In his book of the same name, he gives some deep, beautiful and very helpful guidelines as we wrestle within ourselves when faced with difficult circumstances and daunting questions.
We often start with the wrong end of the stick. We start with ourselves and our circumstances. Then we seek to, in the words of one of Sibbes’ contemporaries, the poet John Milton, ‘justify the ways of God to men’. Sibbes goes completely the opposite route. He begins with God. Here are five principles that I have found, expressed so well by Sibbes, that help me when Satan tempts me to despair.
1) Begin with God
God is the first truth. The truth which faith relies on. He is the chief good which hope rests on. We so often look at ourselves or our standards as the foundational good or truth. But it is only God who is a fit foundation for us to build on. We need a firm foundation so we need to know God better. The firmer the foundation, the stronger the building. The higher the tree, the deeper the roots. Is our foundation built on the solid rock of Christ – or the shifting sands of culture or our own opinions?
We cannot know God without Christ. In Christ, God’s nature becomes lovely to us and ours to God, because Christ has made up the vast gap between us and God: “There is nothing more terrible to think on, than an absolute God out of Christ.”
We must meditate upon and grasp the deep truth of God as our Father. Are we missing the doctrine of the Goodness of God? The devil and the world will always suggest to us that God is not good. Sometimes our ‘apologetics’ sounds as though we are apologizing for God and indeed trying to convince ourselves. But we must start with the goodness of God as given to us in the Scriptures: “What is good in the creature is first in God as a fountain.”
When we think of the goodness of God we strengthen our faith because not only does he have attributes that we can share – ‘gracious, loving, powerful and wise’ – but he has them mixed with attributes we do not have. He is infinite, eternal and unchangeable. So he is infinitely, eternally and unchangeably gracious, loving, powerful and wise.
2) Remember that our God Reigns
There is a temptation for some Christians – in order to ‘defend’ God and preserve their own image of him – to downplay his power and sovereignty – sometimes even to the extent that he becomes only one power amongst many. Sibbes will have none of this: “If God did not rule the great family of the world, all would break and fall to pieces, but the wise providence of God keeps everything on its right hinges.”
