I met a delightful man recently, a doctor, who was raised in a church denomination not known for its power or sense of the presence of the Lord, at least not since the 1500’s. He goes to church occasionally but boasted that “I don’t make a habit of it.” The only thing he makes a habit of, he said, was “being good.” He had enough church-going in him from his childhood that his idea of being a Christian was that of “being good.”
As our conversation continued I spoke about knowing God while he talked of church and how his family is active in church. “But what about you?” I asked. He then voiced some very real questions about God as to why suffering exists in the world. He is a doctor, after all, in order to help alleviate suffering. “When I meet God,” he stated emphatically, seemingly assured that he would and that he’d have opportunity to speak his mind to Him about why He allows suffering, “I’ve got some things I intend to say to Him,” he said meaning he’d like to tell God that he doesn’t like the way He is running the world.
Many years ago a friend of mine was involved in what she identified as a “philosophically based prison program.” The premise was based upon an eclectic blend of “isms,” of different Eastern philosophies and ideas of god (small ‘g’) which provided prisoners with a new sense of self-identity and of reality that would sensitize them to goodness. Again, the concept of “being good” was presumably the solution, in this case to the criminal mind. She was, with genuine altruistic intent, going into prisons to teach and impart this philosophy.
I had recently become a Believer in Jesus having had my own sense of reality greatly altered when I “met God.” He was nothing of what I thought He might be. As a Jew for one thing, I never expected Jesus to be God! But I also knew I met with a power for “goodness” that was emphatically beyond any ability of my own to “be good.” Upon sharing my new-found faith with this friend, she told me, “If I ever meet Jesus Christ there are some serious things I have to say to Him, eye to eye, on equal footing.” I knew she meant the suffering the Jews have endured in His name, but also of why evil exists at all. But I also knew there would be no “eye to eye” encounter where she would “mouth off” to Him, nor opportunity to let Him know how she felt about Him. She assumed He was no more than a person, albeit one of great influence, than she or anyone else. Where or how she would meet Him wasn’t addressed.
I took her to see the movie called “The Hiding Place” which is the story of Corrie Ten Boom’s life in which she and her sister Betsy are arrested by the Nazis for hiding Jews during WWII. They are sent to a concentration camp where Betsy becomes very ill and eventually dies. Before she dies she affirms her love for Jesus and with His love she forgives the Nazis who have tortured her and so many around her, and for all the evil they were perpetrating, and encourages Corrie to forgive them as well. She forgave them! My friend, who is also Jewish, could not get past that. Knowing that six million of our Jewish people and millions of others suffered unimaginably horrible tortures, and died equally cruel deaths at the hands of the Nazis, how could she possibly forgive them? This was where her “philosophically based program” fell apart for it provided no escape from the impotent rage against such injustice.
We returned to my home after the movie as she and her daughter would be spending the night at our house. I took the babysitter home and then found my friend sitting on the back fence of my house overlooking a pasture. It was quiet, peaceful and safe out there in the early summer evening, quite unlike what we had just witnessed in the movie. In the moonlight I could see she was pensive and deeply moved. All she could say to me was, “I know that in order for Betsy to forgive the Nazis there had to be a power beyond anything I have ever known.” I had shared with her before this evening of theforgiveness and pardon Yeshua offers to us through allowing Himself to be sentenced to death in order to satisfy the penalty for our sins. Those are prison terms she would understand. Until this night it was all meaningless to her because her idea of herself was that of “being good.” What was there to forgive? The next morning she told me she had turned her life over to the Lord. That was thirty-four years ago. She has remained a faithful follower of Yeshua since.
Several assumptions present themselves through these two scenarios of wanting to meet the Lord “face to face” to challenge Him. The first is that God “is,” that He exists, and then that He is approachable, and that we will be able to have an audience with Him. It also assumes that we would have the freedom to speak our minds and to demand of Him an explanation, a defense, if you will, for why He allows evil to exist, or is possibly even the cause of it, considering how much suffering is done in His name, though let it be known that such suffering is far from anything He would do or ever sanction. It is a tragedy that the only picture of Yeshua that some people have is of how others have misrepresented Him.
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Yeshua seemed to think we will love each other and be one in Him. I’ve found that it doesn’t take much getting to know each other before we who love the Lord love each other as brothers and sisters if the situation allows for at least some interaction with each other. We were just discussing this in my Kosher Bible class, about how we can just walk by a perfect stranger and your eyes connect for just a moment and you recognize each other as fellow Believers. I love when that happens.
I usually experience a genuine love for them at that moment. Like if someone hurt them right then I’d have to jump in and say, “Hey, that’s my sister you’re messing with. Back off, in the name of Jesus!!!” Okay, a little dramatic, but there’s this sense of belonging when I know they’re Believers too. There’s a connectedness.
It’s not really our love though, especially if we don’t even know the person or know them well. We’re really feeling Yeshua’s (Jesus') love for that person; He puts His love in our hearts. How supernatural is that? If you haven’t had that experience, ask the Lord to open up your life to that kind of sensitivity to other believers. Then look for it. It'll happen.
My then 88 year old mom (she’s 90 now) told the Exterminator, “You’re a believer in Jesus, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes.” He was. A little time of fellowship between Mom and the bug guy!
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