Reason

Wow...it is Tuesday and it has already been one roller coaster of a week. My wife's sister has a little girl who will turn three next month. She had been having seizures for the last couple of weeks. These weren't your typical epileptic seizures which are characterized by convulsions. These manifested themselves as a little girl spacing out for a short time and then coming to not knowing that anything strange had just happened. These are called "Absence Seizures". I know for us Americans that absence is absence, but this is pronounced with a bit of a French accent, so you actually say it "Ab-saunt". I know....the French are weird.

Well, after meeting with a pediatrician, it was determined that an electroencephalograph (EEG) was needed to monitor her brain wave activity. This was scheduled for yesterday at 1 pm. The way an EEG works (at least how I understand it) is that you get the patient really tired and stressed so the brain can try to figure things out while its being monitored. The plan was to keep my niece awake until 2AM with various fun activities and then wake her at 6AM for more fun in the cold winter Upstate SC sun. Late Sunday afternoon, she began to complain about her head hurting and being very tired. The headache was associated with the tiredness, but her parents realized something was slightly different about this when she was asking to go to bed before 8PM, something that NEVER happens.

Sometime late that night they were at a friend's house for a late night play date and she fell asleep in my brother in law's lap. She awoke in this seizure state trance and then began vomiting, which was followed by convulsions which lasted for 25 minutes. Even when the paramedics arrived, they could not control the seizure that had taken our niece captive. My brother in law, holding her through all of this, was traumatized, stating later that he really did not think his little girl was going to make it. A Cat Scan revealed a mass on her brain, which an MRI confirmed to be a brain tumor. The treatment will be brain surgery on Friday by a doctor who, we have come to find out, is very highly regarded in SC for pediatric neurology.

But this raises a question of reason: If there is a God who is supposed to be good, why do sweet three year old girls get brain tumors? What is the reason for the suffering around us? This seems to be a question of why does evil exist and it is not a question that 21st century America pioneered. At its very root, the question seeks to dethrone the God who created man in His image. It is believed that if there is not a God, then this suffering would make sense. On one hand, I can see the logical line here and I understand it. Life would be much easier if there was not a God to answer to at the end of the day. If you shoot me, then you have no fault because there is no great and moral guide for our lives. That is the Word of God, is merely a word of a god, and not the breath of life from the God who creates.

The Apostle Paul answers this question for us quite easily. Why is there death and suffering? Why do children get terminal illnesses? It is a fair question that Paul treats with theological integrity and provides hope for the hopeless through his answer. In Romans chapter 5, Paul is transitioning from the sinful and depraved state of man to the appeal of grace through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He presents the death of Jesus Christ as our means of righteousness, but why do we need that righteousness? He writes in 5.12: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man (Adam, Gen. 3), and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (ESV).

It is because of sin. You and I were born into sin. We were born at enmity with God because Adam sinned. Not because Eve ate the apple, but because Adam sinned. Sorry guys, we can't blame the woman for the sin. It's on us. Before sin, there was no death and suffering, but sin enacted a system of deterioration. Death and decay entered through the door that sin opened. Suffering abounded because God takes sin seriously. My knees ache because we live in a sinful fallen world. One of my grandfathers died of cancer and the other of a stroke because we live in a sinful and fallen world. My sweet nearly three year old niece has a brain tumor because of sin. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5.45 that "He [God] makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (ESV).

Belief in God and being Christian does not mean that everything will be hunky dory all of the time. It means that we have a greater hope than what this world can understand. God takes sin seriously, so the deterioration that is the outcome of sin entering the world through Adam will affect us all. Using the death or sickness of a child as a means to say that there is no God or that God is not good is a logical fallacy that promotes selfish pride above reason. To think that God cannot be good because of these circumstances is to demote God to a genie in a bottle that is only there for our good pleasure and not to be the moral guide of the universe, who seeks to save us from our sin through our faith in Jesus Christ and the blood which he shed for us.

See, this is where Paul goes next. In verse 15-16 he says, "But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's [Adam's] trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the gift is not like the result of that one man's [Adam's] sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification" (ESV). We are given hope for something better through the death of Christ. We are born into sin because of Adam, but it is the blood of Christ that rights the wrongs of the world and justifies us in the sight of God so that we can give Him honor and glory. "Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's [Adam's] disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's [Jesus'] obedience the man will be made righteous" (Rom 5.18-19, ESV).

We have a GREAT hope in the face of death and suffering. There is nothing that we can do to correct the wrongs of the past. Sin existed long before you and I were ever thought of and because of sin, the world has been set against God. Wars happen, babies die, people lose their jobs, our bodies break down. There is nothing we can do about this because sin is in the world. But, we have the hope of something better in Jesus Christ. That something better is standing right before God, being justified through our faith in Jesus. His obedience opens us up to life.

I have been encouraged this week in the face of everything in my family by the fact that God remains on his throne. God was not surprised by my niece's tumor. See, the neurosurgeon who will be attending the operation on Friday said that he enjoys cases like this one because the prognosis is so positive. He is confident that she will be back to normal in just a couple of weeks. It is not because he is a good doctor or because he works at a good hospital. It is because we serve a good God. A God who uses sickness and death to draw glory unto His name. A God who can heal and cause many to have faith in Him. I know of people in at least 30 states and 12 countries around the world who are praying for my niece. I know of at least 8 church congregations that have dedicated themselves to praying for our family this week. And you tell me that God is not good? He has drawn us to Him by faith. He is at work in the world today. Please don't let little incidents in this life such as sickness and death be what causes you to hold God at arms length. He loves you and He loves me. He is good and He sent His Son to die to prove it.

Comments