Why does God allow PAIN?

The issue of God allowing pain and suffering is a common one from both Christians and non-Christians having doubts about whether there is a God that cares.

Sheldon and Kirk discuss.

Creators and Guests

Host

Kirk Durston

Scientist, philosopher, clergyman, outdoorsman, husband to the Queen of Hearts and father to six young adults.

Host

Sheldon Kotyk 🇨🇦

Father and Husband. “Fantastic and terrible in equal measure.” Probably not being serious.

What is Quest with Kirk Durston?

Kirk is a philosopher, scientist, husband, and a legit Christian. His podcast is mostly about exploring assumptions and questions pertaining to God, philosophy, science and life that he ponders about, hence the name Quest with Kirk Durston.

Kirk wants you to join him on that Quest or perhaps you're on your own quest about such matters and you can explore together.

Hello, Kirk.

How are you doing?

I'm doing well, Sheldon.

And how about yourself?

Are you thawing out yet from

that freeze out there in Manitoba?

It's still not freezing space.

We've got another day or day

and a bit of minus.

It feels like a hundred.

But when you got a lab, Labrador retriever,

you got to walk them.

They cannot stay inside for days.

Otherwise,

they start eating furniture and

walls and garbage and everything.

So still going out.

Still going out.

There is a huge, I'm hearing you twice,

with about a five-second lag between.

You got.

You're still talking on the other leg.

Okay.

I'm wondering if I've got a

YouTube stream in one of my.

Hold it.

Hold it.

Hold it.

I think that's me.

Hold it.

Okay, I think we're good.

Yeah, it's you.

Finally, it's not my fault.

Oh, sorry.

Bye.

Yes.

Yes, well, welcome, everyone.

That's online.

Yeah,

we're going to be talking about pain

and suffering and why does

God allow that.

But before we get into that, yeah,

so you were away for a little bit.

You had...

Nice little trip.

And now you've been back for

a week and a bit?

Yeah, just over a week.

I got back just in time for a massive,

massive snow dump here in

southern Ontario that

lasted for several days,

followed by winds gusting

fifty to sixty kilometers per hour,

which caused all that loose

snow to drift.

So I was I don't know how

many hours I spent last

week or this past week

blowing and shoveling.

It might be more than four yards long.

Yeah,

so you've got a football field of

driveway to get rid of.

And, like, I know for me,

halfway through doing my driveway,

and mine is only, like, I don't know,

twenty-some, thirty feet long.

By the time you're done,

you look at the first part, and it's like,

oh, I have to do that again.

yeah we had a window so if I

heard patty patty would

text me before she's coming

home that's my wife and I

say give me a heads up

about one hour and then I'd

get the text and then I

would go out there and work

for about an hour get it

cleared and I'd say you got

forty five minutes max

window before that sucked

in again so make sure

you're home within the next

you know half hour to forty five

now do you guys get lake

effect snow there is just

yeah a lot yeah nasty nasty

see we just we just have

just straight dry stuff and

so it's it's usually

relatively easy but it just

means that the wind can

blow it easier yeah powdery

dry like what you are out

there yeah like I grew up

Manitoba I know what that

drifting snow is like

It gets hard.

You can make igloos out of that.

Oh, yeah.

That's what we used to do.

Yeah.

And it gets hard enough to

cut and solid stuff.

Yeah,

the moisture just gets pulled right

out of it, and it's like ice.

Yeah.

But, yeah, we only have another, what,

six months of this,

and then it's summer or something.

For three days.

Yeah.

You get three days of summer

and just long enough for

the mosquitoes to come out in full force.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's part of what we have

to put up with in this

world is the mosquitoes.

Yeah.

Pain and suffering.

Those little suckers are

pain and suffering built in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

what I want us to look at would be

specifically hints that God gives us,

like not just me imagining stuff,

but are coming up with things,

which you can do, and it's legit,

but it's actual hints God gives.

And so I think that's what

we're going to try and work through.

All right, well, let's dig into it.

I do have a slideshow.

I don't know if I'll show

everything on it from a

current Challenges to Faith

series that you're doing at a church.

So I don't know if you want

to talk about that a little bit,

or do you want to just jump right in?

Well, it's...

It's a series of eight seminars I'm giving,

and I've looked at what are

the current challenges to Christian faith,

specifically from the

perspective of those who have tossed it,

who've abandoned it.

And so I put together eight

seminars there.

Actually, I got more than that.

So in Hawaii, I did twelve seminars,

and even then there wasn't

enough time to cover them all.

But, yeah.

Well, YouTube is pretty empty.

There's not much going on on YouTube,

so we can do a lot of these.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there are similar I've done, uh,

fifty, uh,

fifty YouTube videos on these same things,

uh,

which you could see if you go to the

playlist called the deconversion,

I think the deconversion playlist,

there'll be about fifty of them.

Uh,

they weren't go into the same depth as

say you and I do Sheldon

because we got more than

twelve minutes or whatever.

Um,

but if you really want to go into

serious depth,

even more than our live stream here,

then check out my website

at kirkdurston.com.

Fewer articles there.

I don't know what I got,

maybe fifty articles on a

wide variety of things,

but if I need references,

they'll be in the article.

So those of you who like to

dive into this even deeper.

All right.

Um, I am going to show this, uh,

intro slide because I think

I'm just going to guess that

these girls on this intro

slide are people you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're my granddaughters,

and they're around the

grave of my youngest granddaughter.

Her name was Anastasia,

a perfectly healthy little girl,

just died two days before delivery,

and they think it was a cord problem.

So this is just, I mean,

I would take mosquitoes any

day over something like this.

And it's kind of stuff like

this that really hits you hard,

and this is why I think so

many people see it as a huge issue,

whether which side of the fence you're on,

it's a huge issue.

So getting into that a little bit,

like I know we talked about

it a few months ago or so,

but would you say that this –

It brought doubt to your faith,

or it strengthened your faith?

Oh, it definitely strengthened my faith.

I guess I have lived long

enough and gone through

enough that sooner or later

you've got to make a decision.

Where are you going to stake

your eternity?

Where are you going to put all your chips?

And I have long since put

all my chips on God in eternity.

And what I've experienced as

a result has been so fulfilling.

There's no doubt in my mind.

So after she died, Anastasia,

several days later,

there was a funeral and I was there.

And then a few days after that,

we stayed there because we

just needed to be with my daughter.

and her husband and the

girls and just be there, you know,

to help comfort them.

And so I went to church that

Sunday to the church that

he he's the pastor at.

He's just a young pastor.

I think he's about twenty nine years old.

Just do his first church ever.

And a man in the church got talked to me,

gave me his condolences.

And then he started talking about anger.

And I was just at a loss for a few seconds,

like, how did we get, I mean, just random,

total new subject here.

And then as he continued,

I realized he assumed I was angry at God.

That was his assumption.

And that was the first time

it even crossed my mind

that one was people being, well,

first time since Anastasia

passed on into eternity that people

wow like I never even yeah

that's true some people are

angry at god many people

probably are but not me I

was just totally confident

that god knows when it's

time for anastasia and

little children to go and

actually we'll get into

that here there's an

interesting passage uh that

talks a little bit about

this so no anger no shaking

of the faith in fact I'm

stronger now every one of

my loved ones that dies and

passes in to be with god

I feel more at home there

than I do here in this world,

just one step at a time.

All right.

So the first slide you have on here,

and I'm not going to show them all,

but the title is God Sees

People Differently From Us.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's kind of like what I was like,

say, for example, Anastasia,

a little baby or a toddler.

There's nothing cuter than toddlers.

uh I see some person

depending on depending on

the situation that's true

that's true little caveat

there um and so when a

toddler dies uh wow like

they had so much potential

what a loss uh we just see

it all from our perspective

and I know I see it from my

perspective like I I agree

I would have liked to see

anastasia grow up and teach

her things and watch her

learn new stuff and I would

like to do that

But I'm thinking it all from

my own perspective here.

But God sees people differently.

Actually,

it appears that he transcends time.

That is, he exists in the past, present,

and the future relative to us.

But for God, those are all the same time,

simultaneous.

He's at all points in time.

And so he doesn't just see a toddler.

He sees that person before

they were conceived.

and there's no before relative to God,

but relative to us.

He sees them when they're a toddler,

when they're a teenager,

the decisions they make

when they're in their twenties,

in their thirties, forties, fifties,

he sees the end of life,

what they do in their,

he sees everything that

they ever think and decide

and do and say.

And so that's the gigantic picture.

And it's with that

information that God

determines when is it time, for example,

and there's a lot of factors

that come into play there

that we just don't have

access to so he sees the

sum total of a person he

doesn't see we see just the

toddler what a tragedy god sees the whole

Uh, life.

And so I see the mission in

life is to prepare to meet

God and help others do the same.

And when our mission is accomplished,

it's irrelevant how old you are or what,

how much of your so-called

earthly potential you

fulfilled from a human perspective.

So it's just,

are you ready to meet God and

have you carried out what

your mission is in helping

others to be ready to meet God too.

And then you might wonder, well, like.

What about the toddler who died?

Or what about Anastasia who

died two days before her birth?

How is she helping people?

How does she help people get

ready to know God?

Well,

just think about this for a half a

second and then you'll see

that her impact was

enormous on the immediate family,

on the relatives, friends of the family,

that impact.

Who knows how far it spread,

but it also has a way of

making us think more of eternity.

It helps me better prepare to meet God.

And it helps other people

maybe who haven't yet put

their faith in Christ.

It helps them maybe more

seriously think about the

afterlife and when am I

going to die and maybe I

should be thinking about this.

And I think on this,

it's easy as humans to say, okay,

there's so much potential here.

This is all the things that

could have happened.

This is all the dreams that

we had for the person,

and they weren't able to

accomplish anything that we wanted.

But we don't see the butterfly effect.

That's right.

And so it's,

we don't know what could have

actually been.

And it could have been a way

worse situation.

Yeah.

We don't know.

Yeah.

In fact,

we're going to see one of the

examples where he takes a

boy to spare them the pain in this world.

The other thing is,

is that we tend to think

potential in this life.

I can tell you that our

potential and whatever we

could accomplish and

however amazing we might be

in this life is absolutely phenomenal.

pathetically nothing in

comparison to our true

eternal potential when God

raises us up in a immortal, eternal,

unbelievably powerful...

There's just words.

He says it has not even

entered the heart of humanity.

C.S.

Lewis says,

if you ever saw in this life a

human at what they will be

like in eternity, you'd just...

fall down and worship that

creature like that even

though you're not supposed

to but there would be a

strong wall like what is

this and so it's kind of

like a caterpillar and a

butterfly uh the

caterpillar has a lot of

potential you know could

eat some more leaves I

guess maybe poop over the

side of a leaf you know

it's not and we think wow

you know that caterpillar

got eaten too soon it had

so much potential of eating more leaves

Uh,

but the butterfly is the real potential

in that scenario.

And it's the same with humanity.

Our potential is in the resurrected state,

a mortal eternal.

That's where our true potential lies.

But what we do in this life

is preparation for one of

two eternal destinies,

either with God or not with

God and everything away

from everything that God is.

All right.

So, um,

Let's get into some Bible here.

So Isaiah twenty six, nine and ten.

Yeah,

it says when the earth experiences

your judgments,

the inhabitants of the

world learn righteousness,

though the wicked is shown favor.

He does not learn righteousness.

And, uh, you know, we don't,

we don't need to merely

just take God's word for it here.

Um, uh, studies said that, well,

here's an interesting one.

It was the best one.

It was, it was very true and realistic.

So it was done in Canada in about, oh,

close to years ago now.

And, uh,

they were talking about it on TV

and what the, and the question was,

do adults grow closer and

they're stronger in their

faith to god as time goes

on or further away and in

either case what is what

are the main factors and

what they found is that the

number one reason why some

adults grew grew further

away from god and abandoned

maybe abandoned their faith

altogether was suffering

and disasters and that sort

of thing evil and suffering

and disasters that was the

number one reason

why those who drifted away

from God did so.

But they also found that

that was also the number

one reason why people were

drawn closer to God and

strengthened in their faith

was suffering and natural

disasters and that sort of thing.

But here's the difference.

Approximately twice as many people,

when a disaster and

suffering that occurred,

approximately twice as many

people grew closer to God

as those who grew further away.

In other words,

you could say for every

person who drifted further

from God or abandoned God

because of evil and

suffering and natural disasters,

two people actually grew closer to God.

So basically you can see

everybody's kind of sitting on the fence,

living their lives.

And from God's perspective,

sitting on the fence and

living your life is not a

good situation that will

not wind up in eternity with God.

It has to be something intentional.

an intentional putting one's

faith and trust in Christ

for forgiveness of sin and

for eternal life.

So if that's not done, that's not good.

And so these things happen in the world.

To as a catalyst there are

people who are don't want

anything to do with God and

it might not be because of

hostility They just feel self-sufficient.

I don't need God and that is

a fatal mistake I don't need God.

Well,

yeah a fungus can make it through

life without relying on God,

but Is that all there is to

life is you know so Yeah the

It's a catalyst often, is it suffering?

And that's what he's talking

about here is that affluent

societies tend to be more self-absorbed,

working about personal

rights and pleasures,

climbing the corporate ladder,

living for the here and now,

having a good time.

That's the affluent cultures

and the poor in this world.

And I have seen this

firsthand in working in

other developing countries.

they tend to be much more in

touch with death,

with the importance of relationships,

the afterlife, and God, much more so than,

let's say,

the average person here in

Canada or in the United States or the UK,

places where I've spent a

fair amount of time.

Now,

a lot of that is when everything's

going good,

You don't need to depend on

something outside of your control, right?

Yeah.

And that also has to do with

what people think the purpose of life is.

Right.

So a big study was done in the U.S.

for university students,

the bulk of whom were not Christians.

Almost none of them were Christian.

And the question was, if God existed,

and most of them didn't believe he was,

it was largely done amongst

atheists and agnostic

university students.

If God existed,

what would be the purpose of God?

Their number one answer was

to make us happy.

So if that's your view of God,

when things are going wonderful and good,

and you're not even religious,

but why would you need God?

You're already happy.

And you got all this stuff,

good stuff happening,

but it's when things are

not going good that, uh,

then you say maybe I need God,

but at that point, it still might be,

I need God to be happy.

But I think it's much more than that.

Then God becomes more of a

genie in a bottle.

Yeah, exactly.

A genie, you rub the bottle,

it pops a genie, gives you what you want.

And then when you don't want the genie,

genie heads back in there again.

So you can have, you know,

sell your wild oats, so to speak.

All right.

So James two five says,

Pull it up here.

Yeah Yeah,

and that's very closely related

to the other one.

We just discussed or God But

the Holy Spirit speaking

through the Apostle James

says listen my beloved

brother Didn't God choose

the poor of this world to

be rich in faith and heirs

of the kingdom which he

promised to those who love

him So that's really

interesting first of all

It suggests here that the

poor people in this world,

the people who are not rich

and affluent and flourishing and enjoying,

let's say,

sexual freedom with everybody

and all that sort of thing,

wealth and fame, power,

social media followers,

the people who are enjoying

all of that are actually at

a disadvantage from an

eternal perspective.

The people who are really at

an advantage in this world

are those who are poor and

they're not having a good

time in this world.

And that's one of the

reasons they start thinking

there's gotta be something

better than this in the afterlife.

This is not good.

And it seems to suggest that

God has chosen the poor of

this world to be rich in

faith and trust in him.

And that doesn't mean that

wealthy people can't also

become children of God.

And if they do,

he makes it really clear

that we need to be helping the poor.

That's a moral obligation.

It just continues on its stated.

In fact, pure and undefiled religion,

and this is in James as well,

is to visit the poor and

the widows in their time of need.

Now,

the word visit doesn't mean you just

stop by and break a coffee.

No,

that word implies that you are meeting

their needs.

So you might be tempted to say, oh,

the more poor people,

the more people will be

with God in eternity.

But that's also our

obligation to help them.

So there's other than another thing though,

as we live in a complex

world of cause and effect.

So every event leads to an

exponentially increasing

number of consequences,

influencing other causal

chains and so on and so forth.

And most of our suffering

that we occur in this world

might not be because we did

something bad.

Uh, that's what people often think.

Oh, what did he do that?

He, you know, he's this is happening.

No,

most of the suffering might be for

other reasons.

And some of them that we're

looking at here is that's

quite simply to remove the

distractions of life.

Uh, uh,

many people will suddenly start

valuing God in the

afterlife and preparing to

meet God and helping others

do the same much more than

they would have otherwise.

All right, so Isaiah, Isaiah, Isaiah, Yeah,

yeah, and this is hard, you know,

when a good man,

if you've lived long enough,

you will have known good people,

really good people who died young,

and you say, wow, like,

Why are the wicked live to?

And the good die young.

No, that's of course not true.

It's there's lots of wicked

people who die young.

There's lots of good people who live old,

but in this passage here, it says,

and I quote the righteous

man perishes and no man

takes it to heart and

devout men are taken away.

Well,

no one understands for the righteous

man is taken away from evil.

He enters into peace.

So he's talking about two

different ways to die.

If you're a good person,

one is you die and nobody,

nobody could care.

They could care less that you're gone.

You weren't really.

They were living their own lives,

they were affluent, they were prospering,

they were famous and powerful,

and they couldn't care less

if this good person over

here died because they just thought, well,

he's going nowhere,

he's not climbing the

corporate ladder or whatever.

But the other one is that,

and so when that person dies, God says,

you're taken away from evil.

From that world that never cared for you,

you're taken out of that

into a world where God

cares for you beyond your

ability to conceive.

and then other people will

die and he was loved and

cherished by a lot of

people and greatly

respected and it says in

that case nobody

understands what in the

world why why that guy dying

And so, again, God will do peace.

Remember,

the mission in life is to prepare

to meet God and help others do the same.

That's our mission.

That doesn't mean, it's not why you exist,

because that mission is

only valid for as long as

we're in this mortal world.

Why we exist,

Jesus made that very crystal

clear when he says,

the great and foremost

command to love God with all your heart,

soul, strength, and mind.

But in the meantime,

here we are in this world, and sometimes,

God will take a good person

out of this world.

And the impact, again, when they leave,

I've known some really good people.

I know one girl, she was, I think,

fifteen when she died,

a really good person,

greatly respected and liked

in her high school.

But when she died,

it caused an impact in her high school.

And many more young people

began to think about God

and eternity as a result,

because they all knew she

was a young woman with a

very strong faith.

So, yeah, the problem is,

is we're left grieving their parting.

But, you know,

God doesn't make a person

stay in this world just

because somebody is going

to miss them when they're gone.

Rather, we all have to deal with that.

And actually,

I would have to say all the

losses and the grief and

the pain and suffering I've

experienced in this world,

as much as I really did not

like it at all,

they've all made me a better person.

I can't think of a single

example in my life where I

suffered and where I turned

out to be worse as a result.

But that can happen.

It really depends whether

you're aimed in the

direction of God or away from him.

And I know a lot of people would be saying,

but it's not fair.

And so why do good people

endure suffering or why are

they taken away early or whatever?

That's not fair because

these people that are bad get to stay.

And it's like, okay, but not fair for who?

Yeah.

Because if Anastasia is in

heaven with Jesus,

she's in a much better place.

Oh, way, way, yeah.

I mean, I think when we say it's not fair,

and like you said, Sheldon,

we got to say fair for who?

I mean, yeah, we're left behind.

We're here in this world.

There's a huge empty hole.

Is it fair that we face this empty hole?

Well,

if it's going to make me a better person,

a more thoughtful person, a deeper person,

as much as I would like to say,

I don't want that.

I actually might need it.

But for Anastasia, for example,

or for that good person

that he's talking about here.

I think we just get

desensitized to what's

going on in this world.

We get desensitized to all

the pain and the suffering

that goes on all around us all the time.

And what's going on in

politics and between nations.

And we just get desensitized.

And we get used to it.

We can live in it.

We can live in it.

And we have no idea what

it's like not to...

be taken out of this world

into a place where there's

it's over that pain and

suffering is gone you will

never experience it again

if you put your if you have

eternal life and now you're

going to enter a world

where that'll never happen

again and the whole point

of this world is to make

sure that whatever needs to

be in place such that it

will never happen again is

does transpire the god's

plan is fulfilled and um

Yeah, so not fair.

I mean,

it would not be fair to keep me in

this world longer than what I need to be.

It would not be fair to me.

Now, there's my loved ones, and I actually,

you know,

I'd hope that my wife passes

before me so she wouldn't

have to endure that empty

hole that I would leave behind.

But God knows.

So we're going to first Kings,

let me know if we're like,

we're going pretty slow here.

So we got a few of these if we need to,

but I can just speed her up too.

I don't have to spend as much time,

but here's the case where a

little boy got sick.

Now her,

his dad happened to be the King of

the Northern kingdom of

Israel around roughly.

About nine hundred years

before the time of Christ.

So,

nine hundred years before the time of

Christ,

Israel was divided into two sections.

The southern kingdom was

Judea and the northern

kingdom was called Israel.

And he was a very wicked man

and just horrible.

And all his children, except for one,

were horribly wicked,

except for this little boy.

So the boy gets sick and the king sends,

go see this prophet,

find out he's going to get better.

The woman goes to see the

prophet and the prophet says, well,

let me tell you.

And then he talks about all

the horrible things that

basically that king is

going to be destroyed and

all of his offspring are

going to be destroyed and

it's not going to be pleasant.

and then he says to the

woman the when your feet

enter the city your little

boy will die and you're

sitting here just saying

wow that is just brutal but

he doesn't stop there he

says all israel will mourn

for him and bury him and

then the punch line for he

alone part of jeroboam's

family jeroboam is the

wicked king will come to

the grave because in him

something good was found

toward the lord god of israel

So this little boy,

his mission in life is over.

God has decided it's time to

take him out of this horrible situation.

And from the perspective of a mother,

of course, it's agony.

But from the perspective of the little boy,

no,

it's the best thing that could

possibly happen to him.

And I know it's hard for us

to understand that because

we always look at it from

our perspective.

And I would have to say that

when it comes to the death of a child,

it would be,

I don't want to stand in the

way of what's best for that

child from God's perspective.

So this is one example,

a little hint God gives us.

All right, Galatians six, seven to nine.

Yeah.

Well, you know,

we all tend to think that

something bad happens to somebody.

They must have messed up or

did something wrong.

And most of the time that

might not be the case,

but sometimes it is.

And this is an example of where it is.

It says this.

God says through the Apostle Paul, he says,

do not be deceived.

God is not mocked.

For whatever a man sows,

this he will also reap.

For the one who sows to his

own flesh will from the

flesh reap corruption.

But the one who sows to the

Spirit will from the Spirit

reap eternal life.

Let us not lose heart in doing good,

for in due time we will

reap if we do not go weary.

So there's two things to note here.

One is that...

Uh, yes, there are.

In fact,

the moral law I've heard people say,

why should we obey these

moral laws about.

Uh, you know,

stealing and murdering and

having sex with animals or

your neighbor's away for whatever.

Why should we obey that?

They were made up by a bunch

of sheep and goat herders

thousands of years ago.

And that of course is a huge

assumption on their part,

because when you actually

look at these and look at

the data rising into the social sciences,

you will find that these

laws are actually, if followed,

actually are designed to prevent,

to minimize human suffering

and maximize human flourishing.

But if you break the law,

the very law that's

supposed to protect you

from suffering undue or

extra suffering and pain, well,

then there are the

consequences that that law

was set up to protect you from.

And for example,

I attended a seminar at a

public school by a

healthcare worker who

serviced the university

students at the University

of Waterloo and over Laurier.

And during her presentation,

she just constantly talked about

sexually transmitted diseases.

And it just seemed like, wow,

how many like this must be

a huge problem at the university.

So during the Q&A, I says, you know,

you just mentioned this so much,

like what percentage of

university students at this

university are infected

with sexually transmitted diseases?

And she said without batting an eye,

she said very, very conservatively,

at least fifty percent, at least.

And that is a very conservative figure.

And these sexually

transmitted diseases have

their own brands of pain and suffering.

And some of them lead to

cervical cancer and so forth that

a premature death and so the

moral law let's say for

example with regard to

sexual restraints on our

sexuality we're designed to

minimize human suffering

and actually maximize

flourishing let's say the

the love that can exist

between a a wife and a

husband and the family

there so that's one thing

to note there's natural

consequences it's not just

it's not necessarily punishment

Godden says, okay, you did this,

therefore I'm going to do this to you.

No, it's God put the things to protect us.

We went outside the barrier,

and now we're on our own.

But the other thing to note is it says,

note the phrase, lose heart, grow weary.

So he's talking about to the

good person who decides, no,

I'm going to live within

these moral values here.

He says there's an

implication that the reward

isn't immediate.

It's down the road somewhere.

um later on in life let's

say the quality of your

relationship with your

spouse after fifty years of

marriage and how well and

strong your family's doing

after fifty years of

marriage or but most of it

lies in eternity as well so

there's two aspects here

all right uh number six hebrews twelve

yeah this is interesting

because it implies that

those people who love god

and want to live true and

right lives may actually

suffer more in some

respects than the person

who's just having a good

time doing all sorts of

nasty things so it says

this my son do not regard

lightly the discipline of

the lord nor faint when you

are approved by him for

those whom the lord loves

he disciplines and he

scourges every son whom he receives

It is for discipline that you endure.

God deals with you as with sons.

For what son is there whom

his father does not discipline?

But if you are without discipline,

of which all have become partakers,

then you are illegitimate

children and not sons.

Now, you've got to realize here in Greek,

the word son here has been

used generically,

both for sons and daughters.

But if you had a mixed group,

you would use the masculine pronoun here.

So you can't infer that he's

just talking to guys here.

No, he's talking to,

he's using it generically.

But what's interesting here

is that some suffering is unavoidable.

We just looked at the

natural consequences for

being bad in the last point.

But in this point here,

no matter how good you are,

there may be some suffering.

And for example, gold,

if you want to refine gold,

you have to melt it and

skim the impurities off.

But if you want to refine it even more,

then you melt it again,

or you put it through a series of melts.

And each time,

remove more of the

impurities until eventually

you got extremely pure gold

and this is kind of the

picture that god uses

sometimes he uses the term

refiner's fire and in this

life uh even good people

may have to have periods of

the refiner's fire just to

make them uh a better

person maybe spiritually

more mature more thoughtful

more compassionate as I

said earlier that the

suffering that I have

incurred in this life

Um,

it seems that in every case I became

more compassionate, more thoughtful,

more caring.

And as much as I don't want

these refiners fires,

I have to grant that they

have been a positive

influence in my life.

And, uh, so people would say, oh,

look at that guy over there.

He's a real man of faith or

that woman over there just loves God.

And look,

she had to suffer over here and do well.

Um,

That may be the case.

God's suggesting here that

in some respects you may

suffer as a way of refining

you to become a more pure

of heart person.

The thief on the cross.

Yeah, yeah.

So now this is something

where the thief on the cross,

in the final minutes of hours,

hours of life,

they both started off

cursing Christ or mocking him,

we're told in one of the Gospels.

But sometime during those

hours they hung there,

one of the thieves was touched.

He could see this Jesus here,

this man should not be

hanging on a cross.

And he came to faith right

there in the final hours of his life.

And he asked Jesus to remember him.

And Jesus says,

today you'll be with me in paradise.

And the point here is that

sometimes you ask,

why this suffering as you approach death?

Now, in Canada,

we have the option of MAID.

It's called Medical Assistance in Dying.

It's really the doctor will

help euthanize you or help

you end your life.

And, um, I know people who have done that,

but in doing that,

that one woman I'm thinking

of right off hand,

she had maybe two years of life left,

but she just made the

quality of life will really

start going downhill.

She doesn't want that.

She wants to have control

over when she ends and have

a good quality of life right up.

So she chose that method,

and that was it for her.

But there's other people that I've known.

I remember one of my wife's relatives.

He suffered a long,

slow decline from cancer,

and I went to see him.

Patty and I went to see him

in his final day of life, it turned out.

And I wanted to talk to him

about spiritual things,

but there were a lot of his

friends in the room and

they were laughing and

joking and trying to cheer him up about,

you know, all the good times we had.

And one guy says,

I found your stash of booze in the house.

And then, you know, they all left,

excuse me.

But then,

and I wanted to talk about

important stuff,

but so I sat to one side

for about an hour.

Finally, they all left.

And he didn't know we were

still in the room because

we were kind of back

sitting in an easy chair.

And as soon as they all

walked out of the room,

there was silence.

And I just prayed silently, God,

help me know what to say.

But even as I prayed,

this poor man who was just

laying in his bed, staring at the ceiling,

he started crying.

And he says,

why were they talking about these things?

I wanted to talk about God.

He just said out loud.

Well, as soon as I heard that,

both my wife and I went

over and I read him the

One of us read him the twenty third Psalm.

I explained about the good

shepherd and that Jesus

will carry you through the

valley of the shadow of

death if you put your complete trust.

Oh, he was.

Yes.

You wanted that so bad.

It wasn't even funny.

And so I says, well, let's pray.

And I started praying and I

only got fifteen seconds

into my prayer and he just interrupted.

And he started praying.

And if you want to hear

somebody praying very sincerely,

it's somebody praying

that's on the final hours of life.

In fact, when he finished,

there was a total look of

absolute peace on his face.

And it looked like he fell asleep.

So he tiptoed out of the

room and he died the next day.

But that prayer that he

prayed was his last moments of lucidity.

He lapsed into

unconsciousness sometime after that,

never regained lucidity and passed away.

So here's my point.

sometimes there is a process

that goes on between you

and god even if your brain

doesn't even work anymore

the the brain the physical

brain is maybe you've got

dementia but between the

mind and and god the soul

and god um who knows what

goes on there but sometimes

it's exactly what is needed

to bring a person to find

do the final preparations

to meet god is at that

point so sometimes that's why god

know will allow this and you

say wow that's brutal but I

have to say that if that's

what it took for me and I

realized I could go down

that same road could be and

I've decided well if that's

what god's going to permit

it must be for some good

purpose and uh therefore

I'm committed to come what

may to do that and then you I'm sure yes

Comfort and encouragement.

This is something like when

someone passes on and the

friends and relatives come,

often it's best not to

really be saying a whole lot,

just be with the person.

But if that person who's

suffered the loss knows

that some of the family and

friends have also suffered

the same kind of loss,

that they can identify,

they know what it's like.

then or even if they haven't identified,

but they come because they deeply care,

that can help.

And so what I'm suggesting

is that there is someone

who can be with you

day and night through those

times of suffering and

that's the good shepherd

the one who will pick you

up and carry you through

the darkest hours of your

life and there's been times

in my life where I just say

god help me make it through

this day because I am so

torn up with a grief and

sorrow that I just need god

help me like um pick me up

carry me help me breathe

because it's even hard to

breathe sometimes if you're

grieving absolutely a powerful grief

And so Jesus said,

even though in the twenty third Psalm,

it says,

even though I walk through the

valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil for you are with me,

your rod and your staff.

They comfort me.

And so that's one aspect of

things that he will be with

you when you suffer.

But there's another aspect

in while the next slide

shows my daughter in the

family and it shows it

shows her holding her child and

I just gotta regain my

composure here slightly but

um there's something I

learned and it has to do

with that passage the

shortest verse in the bible

when it says jesus wept so

when it says jesus saw

lazarus's sister weeping

and the jews would come

with her also weeping and

it says he was deeply moved

in his spirit and greatly

troubled and he said where

have you laid him they said

to him lord come and see

And these guys were just torn up, just,

you know, the sister and Jesus.

And then it says Jesus wept.

And I never, I just thought, well,

he's going to raise him

back to life in a few minutes.

So he can't be weeping

because of Lazarus is gone now.

So he must be weeping

because he was torn with

compassion for those who

were deeply grieving and suffering.

And I never really

understood that until my, at the funeral,

uh,

what tore me up the most was

not the loss of my

granddaughter but

witnessing the agony of

grief in my daughter and

there was nothing I could

do to make it go away

because your father father

wants to protect the

daughter that wants to make

it good you know help her out but

she's got to walk this road

she's got a grief and she

did it well mind you her

faith grew stronger but

that doesn't mean there

wasn't just agony that she

was suffering and that was

harder for me than the loss

of my granddaughter was

watching someone I deeply

love and I wanted to

comfort her but she was

torn up and I think when I

saw that when I experienced that

There were times at a

funeral I couldn't even

look at my daughter.

I would just lose it.

So as a result of that,

I began to understand why Jesus wept.

And it showed the depth of

his heart and his

compassion and his love for people.

It tears his heart for when we grieve too.

He's not just a God out there who's never,

you know,

he was kind of immune from all of that.

No, he was here.

He walked among us as a human being.

He knows what it's like.

And that can help you, each one of us,

when we're walking through

that horrible grief,

to know that he's probably

grieving as much, if not more so.

And he's not just grieving.

He's not so much grieving the loss.

It's time for that person to go,

but he's grieving for what

we have to go through.

And I find that helps.

C.S.

Lewis.

Yeah, well, C.S.

Lewis lost his wife.

And if you read his book and

I highly recommend it,

it's called it's called

what's called Grief.

Yes, a grief observed.

You start reading that book,

it's kind of like a journal.

It's kind of like he's just journaling.

And as you read this, you can see, wow,

this guy is just trying to

make it through the day.

Just trying to make it

through the day and then the week.

It's real.

It's raw.

But as he begins to recover

or he begins to climb out of that grief,

He writes this.

He says,

when I lay these questions before God,

I get no answer,

but a rather special sort of no answer.

It is not the locked door.

It is more like a silent,

certainly not uncompassionate gaze,

as though he shook his head,

not in refusal,

but waving the question like peace.

Child, you don't understand.

Heaven will solve our problems, but not,

I think,

by showing us subtle

reconciliations between all

our apparently contradictory notions.

The notions will all be

knocked from under our feet.

We shall see that there

never was any problem.

And so I think he's on to something here.

I just had a distant taste

of what it's like in eternity,

just in a world where that...

Then we have a very different perspective.

We see, well, this all had to be.

It actually wasn't a problem after all.

And we'll see,

instead of seeing through a mirror darkly,

a glass darkly as he puts

it in First Corinthians,

we will see the real,

we'll see how it all ends.

So.

So, uh, yeah.

So what I'm suggesting

through all of this is we

could not possibly have a

better shepherd who will

take care of us because,

because he transcends time.

He knew you before the

creation of the world relative to us.

And he loves you beyond your

ability to even wrap your mind around.

And he will pick you up and

carry you in his arms

during those times in your life.

you are so devastated that

it's hard to even take the

next breath but you must be

willing to make that big

step of faith put your

faith in him no terms no

conditions nothing held

back and uh just told us

like marriage all in hundred percent

A hundred percent.

And if you do that,

then it's not going to be

necessarily easy.

There will be the discipline,

the refiners fire.

There'll be the grief we

have to go through, but in the end, uh,

we won't even, in fact,

one of my favorite passages here.

Um, yes, it's the very next slide.

It was, our life would be like a dream.

We can no longer remember.

It's kind of like when you

had a dream last night and

you can't remember a thing about it.

And then.

You're not even sure you had the dream.

And that's kind of like what

it'll be like.

And I get that from a

description of eternity

that he gives in Isaiah

chapter sixty five.

And this is just quoting part of it.

The part that I didn't put in here,

he talks, he says, look,

I'm going to create a new

heaven and a new earth.

And then the former things

will not be remembered or come to mind.

You might think, oh,

I want to remember a lot of

the good times we had here.

Let me tell you.

The best time you could have here,

except for maybe one exception,

and that exception is where

true love is involved.

Because true love, I think, is divine.

It's a divine gift.

Say,

my love for my spouse will continue

through into eternity

because it's a divine thing.

But everything else that happened here,

even maybe what we did,

what this world was like,

I don't want anything to do with it.

Cause I remember those few

seconds of what it was like

to not remember a thing about this life.

And it was the most wonderful feelings.

Like you've been tortured while you,

something horrible happened

and you don't remember what it was,

but it's over.

And there's just this huge, huge feeling.

Now.

I don't think that happens

from my reading of the

scriptures until the new

heaven and new earth is created.

So there is a period of time

after you die.

until that new heaven and

earth is created even after

the resurrection where

there's some sort of a

final judgment day for

every living soul that ever

existed but when that's all

done a new heaven and earth

is created and it's this

world he talks about an

Isaiah where you won't

remember a thing about this

world except the loved ones

that have also come with

you into eternity that love

which began here will

continue I think that's my

and then um revelation last

book of the bible he says

they shall be his people

and god himself will be among them

That idea of being among

them is like when Jesus was

here on earth in a human form,

he actually could sit there and eat fish,

drink coffee, well, probably not coffee,

but tea at least, and have good times.

And he says, if you open the door,

I'm knocking.

If you open the door,

I will come in and dine

with you and you with me.

And there's this idea of

good fellowship times that

we all have experienced, hopefully,

where your friends come over,

and it's just a great time.

But in eternity,

he will be in the full divine glory.

But he says we will be like

him in glory as well.

So again, we'll be able to be with him,

but this time without the

obstacles of human frailty

and immortality.

And he says, I'll wipe away every tear.

There will no longer be any death,

no longer any mourning or crying or pain.

You know,

even a lot of my memories of what

I've seen in this world,

what I've endured,

those memories themselves,

they don't exactly make me

feel wonderful.

And he says, those will be gone.

There'll be nothing to cause you pain.

The things in this world

will no longer be

remembered or come to mind.

Well, Serpa, thanks for commenting.

June first will be nine

years since my husband

passed away suddenly.

I was never angry with God,

but thankful for his

presence and comfort through my grief.

Grief visits me, but I don't live there.

I choose joy.

Thank you, Serpa.

That's so encouraging to me.

I just love to see other

people who belong to God,

who've walked that road and

say what you've just said.

That's encouraging.

And I, I find the, what she says here,

grief visits me, but I don't live there.

I like that.

That's excellent.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, uh, thank you all for, uh,

watching and, uh,

don't forget you can still comment and,

uh,

And chat after as we finish off here.

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I think we're on for next week.

Yeah, I think so.

Then I'm off for two.

Okay.

Well,

we better have a good one next week then.

So, yeah,

so maybe we'll get into some

science or talk about

asteroids or something again.

We'll see.

There's one scheduled to maybe hit Earth.

I think they downgraded it a

little bit again.

Oh,

they upgraded it yesterday to one

chance and three.

So did they downgrade it again?

Maybe it's a different asteroid.

There's a few out there that

are causing issues.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll have to find those

actors with the nuclear…

bomb that can go and move it

or something like that.

Yeah.

Use them for something useful.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, we will see you later.

Bye for now.

See you later.