Re-Framing Adversity

Hudson's Bay Company trail and the divide 

There’s a hiking trail north of Hope, British Columbia.  It is an original Hudson’s Bay Company trading route and before that it was an aboriginal trail through the North Cascade Mountains of North America.  In the 1850s, traders would bring furs west and supplies east. 

There’s a divide, and everything west drains into the mighty Fraser River, and everything east drains into the Columbia.  The trail is not steep at the divide. It’s almost flat, actually.  Just a difference of a step or two makes a watershed difference.

Adversity is a watershed.  It’s not what happens to you, it’s which side you come down.  It's what you do with it.  How you respond to adversity makes a watershed difference in your resilience, and maybe, just maybe, how you understand the character of God.

“The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.

Your suffering, re-framed as discipline, is a sign you’re acting like a child of God.

Most of us have experienced a (or been that) well-meaning friend projecting overly simple “meaning” and “reasons” onto someone’s suffering, in a lame attempt to help them feel better.  “She’s in a better place now,” they say.  Thanks a lot. I feel so much better.  Not. 

And we all know people who have rejected God because of suffering and evil.  They blame God.  Go through enough heartache and God becomes hard to see, and often, ironically, a hard-to-see target. 

It isn’t that God is responsible for the evil in the world, and it’s convenient for us to say, “If God exists he would not have allowed X.” 

The first people who received the New Testament book of Hebrews probably lived in Rome.   Roman nobles were players.  They got around.  They often had illegitimate children.  They usually supported the kids financially but they rarely disciplined them. 

For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?  If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

But they were so strict with their legitimate children that it was almost like slavery. So you can see that the author is using a familiar analogy for his audience. 

Parents who care discipline their kids. 

Whatever you believe about God, you’re going to suffer.  The real question is, what are you going to do with it?  Suffering re-framed as discipline is a sign you’re a child of God.  It’s what you do with it that counts.   

How do we do that?
Keep an open heart.  Rather than to curl up into a self pitying ball, stay open. Stay open to God, stay open to creation.  Stay open to others.  Good will come.
Trust the goodness of God.  Some will say, "Trust the goodness of the universe."  Go ahead, if that works for you.  It helps nothing to become bitter or to despair.  Believe the best and the best will come.
Take positive action.  Keep your eyes open for opportunities to do good.  And step into them. 

Making Sense of Suffering

Last Friday, terrorists attacked innocents in a coordinated attack throughout Paris, killing more than a hundred and injuring hundreds more.  ISIS claimed responsibility.  The international community has united in support of France and against the violent actions of Islamic extremists. 

My wife I immigrated to Canada with our young family eleven years ago.  Sue and I have been married nearly 30 years.  We’ve been tested and challenged in just about every way a family can be.   You don’t go through thirty years without encountering pain and heartache along the way. 

Whether the scale makes headlines or is private and personal, each one of us has known suffering.   A passage in the biblical book of Hebrews, chapter twelve offers perspective on the suffering we will know in this life, and more importantly, how to process it.   

No one knows for sure who wrote the book of Hebrews.  What we do know is that the author knows the roots of the Old Testament in the story of Jesus, and he (probably a male) cares personally about his audience.  Like many across the world even today, he writes to Christians who are experiencing opposition for their faith, even persecution.  They are thinking about giving up. 

The author goes through the first several chapters demonstrating from the Old Testament that Jesus is superior to Moses, and superior even to the angels.  He implores us to persevere.  A greater covenant means greater responsibility. 

He uses Olympic imagery. We’re surrounded by a throng of witnesses, an audience of believers, now dead, who have gone before, cheering us in the arena as we who remain battle by little more than faith and our wits. 

The passage is one exhorting God’s people to hang in there.  Recalling the early Olympic Games, he challenges God’s children to run with endurance; to look to Jesus; to lift up our tired hands; to choose straight paths; and not to give up.

Hebrews12:1-17, and more specifically 3-11, talks about framing the suffering we experience as getting the tender – and often tough – discipline of a loving God, a loving Father.   When we suffer, we often ask why.  We look for answers.  We grope for meaning.  Why did God allow this?

If you’re not a Christian, this passage might help you put suffering into context.  It can help you re-frame the bad into something that makes a little sense.  If you’re Christian, hopefully you can find strength and maybe even some healing.

The passage gives us three clues:

1.      .   Suffering can have a purpose, and properly understood, it’s a sign you’re a child of God.
2.      .   There are two ways you can go off the rails when suffering.  We’ll look at both and see how to avoid them.
3.      .   Two signs of a well-loved (and by that I mean, well-disciplined) child of God. 

      Suffering is necessary, but it doesn’t have the last word. So in the next few posts, let’s think about how we think about suffering.