When Philip Yancey asked a friend of his, who had dealt with some serious tragedies in his life, if he had ever experienced disappointment with God. Douglas replied:
“I have learned to see beyond the physical reality in this world to the spiritual reality. We tend to think, ‘Life should be fair because God is fair.’ But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life… then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment” (Yancey 213).
Life is unfair. God is fair. God is NOT life? I have only been learning this recently. Over the past year, I have experienced extreme disillusionment and depression, intense chest pains, fear/uncertainty and confusion, feeling as if God was millions of miles away. I cried bucketfuls of tears and almost threw in the towel, wondering what the point was.
There was something inside me, however, that stubbornly refused to give up. Things eventually started turning around as I prayed and clung to God, even though life was unbearable and I did not understand why everything was happening.
A few months later when I read Disappointment with God, what jumped out at me was that Jesus suffered so much. He had to die on the cross because of the way MY sins had disappointed God! He was not taken seriously by His family, friends and people in general, was betrayed by a friend, had enemies plot to end His life and experienced hunger and temptation.
Yancey nails it right on the head:
“Would it be too much to say that, because of Jesus, God understands our feelings of disappointment with him? How else can we interpret Jesus’ tears, or his cry from the cross? One could almost pour the three questions (i.e. Is God unfair? Is God silent? Is God hidden?) into that dreadful cry, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (143).Talk about the epitome of disappointment!
Yet “[…] Because of Jesus.... Hebrews reports that God can now sympathize with our weaknesses. The very word expresses how it was done: ‘sympathy’ comes from two Greek words, sym pathos, meaning ‘suffer with’” (Yancey 143). Thanks to Jesus, God understands! However, since His plan is perfect, much of what He does and/or happens will never make sense to us.
So often, it is easier to focus on Job’s suffering than his response to it. After all, the poor man not only lost his livestock and 10 children (Job 1), but also suffered from painful sores (Job 2). Yet not once did he curse God. In fact, “the more important battle, as shown in Job, takes place inside us. Will we trust God? Job teaches that at the moment when faith is hardest and least likely, then faith is most needed” (Yancey 200).
Being a Christian is not easy, and I have experienced things I never did even as a non-Christian! Pain and insecurities God has revealed have not been pleasant to deal with, as the song, “You Were There” goes: “You are the God who understands. You are the strength when we have none.” God’s strength (Phil. 4:13) supernaturally helped me through when all I could do was crawl through each day.
Life is still not a bed of roses for me: there is a lot of healing left to undergo and what “joy” truly is will continue to remain a mystery unless God reveals its meaning to me. Yet I choose to cling to God because I know nothing else satisfies. Yancey writes, “The alternative to disappointment with God seems to be disappointment without God” (311). Personally, I choose the former kind of “disappointment”!
Written by: Dahlia Liwsze; copyright virtuousreality.com
