There were times when I was in such a state of anguish that I often questioned God, or even questioned my faith in God. Objectively, I had so many things to be thankful for, so many things to be hopeful about, but it seemed my heart wasn’t cooperating with my head. Looking back, it boiled down to wrong expectations – of what my life would be as a Christian, expecting to be blessed by God all throughout my life.
I thought I was destined for a life of material comfort and financial stability, with a good career path, a graduate education, a family, a house, and an increasing financial nest egg. In other words, I thought that, because I was a “good Christian”, God had blessed me. But it was not to be so simple. God had completely different plans for me.
Those years saw my life crashing down, marked by prolonged periods of unemployment, failed businesses, and real and imagined rejection by friends and loved ones, resulting in emotional bouts of insecurity and depression, and physical bouts of illness.
But looking back, I saw how my attitudes had evolved over time. Initially, it was one of shock, as I had echoed what Job in the Old Testament essentially thought when he was beset with affliction. “What’s going on here? What did I do wrong?” But as troubles piled on top of another, my mental state had spiraled down from shock, to anxiety, to bitterness, to depression. Like Job, my cries then rang out to the Lord – “Life is unfair!” I had come close to the point of losing all faith in God and abandoning my relationship with Him.
But looking back, as I imagined sinking in a pit of quicksand, I felt God’s hand grab hold of mine. I felt Him say, “I’m not through with you yet.” And with that little thought, I clawed my way back to solid ground, albeit with only a mustard seed of faith.
I admit that my reasons for continuing to believe in God and his faithfulness were initially for purely selfish and practical reasons. I related to Peter’s response when Jesus asked the apostles if they were going to abandon him, just as his other disciples did. Peter replied, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (Matthew 6:68). That was exactly how I felt. If I abandoned God, where else would I go? Where else could I pin my hope on? In my abilities? It was a foregone fact that my abilities were not enough to resolve my situation. In other people? I also learned that people were not perfect, and no matter how good their intentions were, I could not rely on them. God was my only hope. I now realize that it was God Himself, through his grace, who gave me that hope. While my reasons for clinging to God seemed selfish, God used it to keep me in his grasp. As I was ready to let go of God’s hand, I forgot the fact that God was also holding on to my hand, and that HE would not let me go.
I indeed struggled with God – questioning and arguing with him, sometimes bitterly bombarding him with verbal assaults. But I guess I never doubted God. I never doubted his presence, his existence, and even in the deepest recesses of my heart, his love and goodness. I realize that Job was like this also. He likewise reacted with hostility and much of what he said was nasty and almost blasphemous. He also seemed dangerously self-righteous. But he never turned his back on God. He never renounced God, just as his wife had advised.
Philip Yancey, in his book, Disappointment with God said: “One bold message in the book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment – he can absorb them all. God can deal with every human response save one. He cannot abide the response I fall back on instinctively: an attempt to ignore him or treat him as though he does not exist. That response never once occurred to Job.”
Looking back, while I had wrestled and struggled with God like Jacob in the book of Genesis, no matter how anguished and angry though I might have been, I never denied his existence. I knew He was there watching me, in all my human weakness. In my mind, he may have been sad, as a Father agonizes over a rebellious son; or he may have been amused but sympathetic, just as I would be when my baby daughter would cry over a broken toy or dropped piece of candy.
I agreed with what psychologist Dr. M. Scott Peck said in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled: “The path to holiness lies through questioning everything . . . To be vital, to be the best of which we are capable, our religion must be a wholly personal one, forged entirely through the fire of our questioning and doubting in the crucible of our own experience of reality . . . There has to be a personal word, a unique confrontation, if I am to come alive.”
He started his book with the simple but truthful statement: “Life is difficult.” He said that once we truly understand and accept it, then life is no longer difficult. We begin to transcend the difficulty. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. I can add from my experience, and maybe Job would have cried out too, “life is unfair!” But the sooner I accepted this fact, the better I coped with life.
All I needed to do was to consider Jesus, the most perfect human, who never deserved any punishment, who took our punishment and died a horrible death for us willingly. Was that fair? Did not Jesus, God’s own son, shout at his moment of agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Did he feel, in a moment of humanness, that that was fair? I learned that the key lies in knowing and believing that, while life is unfair (life as we know it in this world), God is fair. And whatever difficulties we experience and overcome with glory to His name, he will reward many times over, whether in this life or in our eternal life to come. The story of Job shows that what God looks at is our response to this “unfair”, difficult life.
I also learned that we should look at suffering - especially the seeming absence of God in difficult times - as part and parcel of a saint’s life. My despair was not so much caused by the presence of trials, but with a seemingly invisible God, who did not hear my prayers. At least Job, I reasoned, got to talk to God. I felt I did not have that benefit of a personal, supernatural encounter. As the author lamented in Psalm 130:1, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice.” At that time, I felt that God did not hear my cries.
But over time, comforted by His Spirit, I learned that if we are to be used by God, we do have to come to the point where our faith is tested, just like Job’s, even when God does not seem to answer. All saints have to go through the “dark night of the soul”, as St. John of the Cross had described this feeling of abandonment by God. Yancey described this paradox of faith: if God answered all our prayers, if we felt his presence every time we needed help, then there would be no need for faith. Faith, as Yancey mentioned, demands uncertainty, confusion. Faith is tested and is strengthened when, at our wit’s end, with no solution and with God nowhere in sight, we continue to believe. “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15).
Dr. Peck said that one measure – and perhaps the best measure – of a person’s greatness is his capacity for suffering. I admit I do envy, at my weakest moments, those people whose lives seemed to be easier, more blessed. But then I am reminded that God put me where I am with a purpose. It is then I take pleasure when I remember the saints he used most were the most persecuted and insecure people on earth, going through the most painful of trials. I have accepted God’s plan for me with all its heartaches, neither with a passive sigh of resignation nor with an unaffected, stoic attitude, but with an eager expectation of how God will use me.
It sometimes scares me to think that, even as I may “pass” my current trials with flying colours, life will only get harder. It is true that the more trials I go through, the stronger I get in faith. But God will not be content unless I achieve no less than the perfection of Christ. So I sometimes dread those days of ever increasing pain, of further refining by fire. But I move on, with the thought that God will finish the good work he has started in me. Even Dr. Peck said that one cannot achieve higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution without suffering, and, insofar as one does achieve them, he is likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to him, or at least demanding of him, than he can now imagine. But one thing Dr. Peck said was that these people, ironically, were also the most joyful. I admittedly have not come to that point of extreme joyfulness in times of severe testing. I am woefully an unfinished work. But I do believe there does exist a joy one can experience in the light of hope in Christ. This is perhaps what Paul was talking about when he said, “in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds” (2 Corinthians 7:4c).
Life truly is difficult; it truly is “unfair”. But while I have come to terms with God over this, I am not immune to doubt, to fear, to struggling with God. L.B. Cowman in his classic devotional book, Streams in the Desert, gives insight into why trials and sorrow is essential to growth: “The soul that is always lighthearted and cheerful misses the deeper things of life. Certainly that life has its reward and is fully satisfied, but the depth of its satisfaction is very shallow. Its heart is dwarfed, and its nature, which has the potential of experiencing the highest heights and deepest depths, remains undeveloped. And the wick of its life burns quickly to the bottom without ever knowing the richness of profound joy.”
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4). Christ should know this. He himself was called “the man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). I can expect no less as a follower of Christ. I have accepted that I have to carry His cross, not just wear His crown.
A.G. Astudillo, 2004
I thought I was destined for a life of material comfort and financial stability, with a good career path, a graduate education, a family, a house, and an increasing financial nest egg. In other words, I thought that, because I was a “good Christian”, God had blessed me. But it was not to be so simple. God had completely different plans for me.
Those years saw my life crashing down, marked by prolonged periods of unemployment, failed businesses, and real and imagined rejection by friends and loved ones, resulting in emotional bouts of insecurity and depression, and physical bouts of illness.
But looking back, I saw how my attitudes had evolved over time. Initially, it was one of shock, as I had echoed what Job in the Old Testament essentially thought when he was beset with affliction. “What’s going on here? What did I do wrong?” But as troubles piled on top of another, my mental state had spiraled down from shock, to anxiety, to bitterness, to depression. Like Job, my cries then rang out to the Lord – “Life is unfair!” I had come close to the point of losing all faith in God and abandoning my relationship with Him.
But looking back, as I imagined sinking in a pit of quicksand, I felt God’s hand grab hold of mine. I felt Him say, “I’m not through with you yet.” And with that little thought, I clawed my way back to solid ground, albeit with only a mustard seed of faith.
I admit that my reasons for continuing to believe in God and his faithfulness were initially for purely selfish and practical reasons. I related to Peter’s response when Jesus asked the apostles if they were going to abandon him, just as his other disciples did. Peter replied, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (Matthew 6:68). That was exactly how I felt. If I abandoned God, where else would I go? Where else could I pin my hope on? In my abilities? It was a foregone fact that my abilities were not enough to resolve my situation. In other people? I also learned that people were not perfect, and no matter how good their intentions were, I could not rely on them. God was my only hope. I now realize that it was God Himself, through his grace, who gave me that hope. While my reasons for clinging to God seemed selfish, God used it to keep me in his grasp. As I was ready to let go of God’s hand, I forgot the fact that God was also holding on to my hand, and that HE would not let me go.
I indeed struggled with God – questioning and arguing with him, sometimes bitterly bombarding him with verbal assaults. But I guess I never doubted God. I never doubted his presence, his existence, and even in the deepest recesses of my heart, his love and goodness. I realize that Job was like this also. He likewise reacted with hostility and much of what he said was nasty and almost blasphemous. He also seemed dangerously self-righteous. But he never turned his back on God. He never renounced God, just as his wife had advised.
Philip Yancey, in his book, Disappointment with God said: “One bold message in the book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment – he can absorb them all. God can deal with every human response save one. He cannot abide the response I fall back on instinctively: an attempt to ignore him or treat him as though he does not exist. That response never once occurred to Job.”
Looking back, while I had wrestled and struggled with God like Jacob in the book of Genesis, no matter how anguished and angry though I might have been, I never denied his existence. I knew He was there watching me, in all my human weakness. In my mind, he may have been sad, as a Father agonizes over a rebellious son; or he may have been amused but sympathetic, just as I would be when my baby daughter would cry over a broken toy or dropped piece of candy.
I agreed with what psychologist Dr. M. Scott Peck said in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled: “The path to holiness lies through questioning everything . . . To be vital, to be the best of which we are capable, our religion must be a wholly personal one, forged entirely through the fire of our questioning and doubting in the crucible of our own experience of reality . . . There has to be a personal word, a unique confrontation, if I am to come alive.”
He started his book with the simple but truthful statement: “Life is difficult.” He said that once we truly understand and accept it, then life is no longer difficult. We begin to transcend the difficulty. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. I can add from my experience, and maybe Job would have cried out too, “life is unfair!” But the sooner I accepted this fact, the better I coped with life.
All I needed to do was to consider Jesus, the most perfect human, who never deserved any punishment, who took our punishment and died a horrible death for us willingly. Was that fair? Did not Jesus, God’s own son, shout at his moment of agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Did he feel, in a moment of humanness, that that was fair? I learned that the key lies in knowing and believing that, while life is unfair (life as we know it in this world), God is fair. And whatever difficulties we experience and overcome with glory to His name, he will reward many times over, whether in this life or in our eternal life to come. The story of Job shows that what God looks at is our response to this “unfair”, difficult life.
I also learned that we should look at suffering - especially the seeming absence of God in difficult times - as part and parcel of a saint’s life. My despair was not so much caused by the presence of trials, but with a seemingly invisible God, who did not hear my prayers. At least Job, I reasoned, got to talk to God. I felt I did not have that benefit of a personal, supernatural encounter. As the author lamented in Psalm 130:1, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice.” At that time, I felt that God did not hear my cries.
But over time, comforted by His Spirit, I learned that if we are to be used by God, we do have to come to the point where our faith is tested, just like Job’s, even when God does not seem to answer. All saints have to go through the “dark night of the soul”, as St. John of the Cross had described this feeling of abandonment by God. Yancey described this paradox of faith: if God answered all our prayers, if we felt his presence every time we needed help, then there would be no need for faith. Faith, as Yancey mentioned, demands uncertainty, confusion. Faith is tested and is strengthened when, at our wit’s end, with no solution and with God nowhere in sight, we continue to believe. “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15).
Dr. Peck said that one measure – and perhaps the best measure – of a person’s greatness is his capacity for suffering. I admit I do envy, at my weakest moments, those people whose lives seemed to be easier, more blessed. But then I am reminded that God put me where I am with a purpose. It is then I take pleasure when I remember the saints he used most were the most persecuted and insecure people on earth, going through the most painful of trials. I have accepted God’s plan for me with all its heartaches, neither with a passive sigh of resignation nor with an unaffected, stoic attitude, but with an eager expectation of how God will use me.
It sometimes scares me to think that, even as I may “pass” my current trials with flying colours, life will only get harder. It is true that the more trials I go through, the stronger I get in faith. But God will not be content unless I achieve no less than the perfection of Christ. So I sometimes dread those days of ever increasing pain, of further refining by fire. But I move on, with the thought that God will finish the good work he has started in me. Even Dr. Peck said that one cannot achieve higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution without suffering, and, insofar as one does achieve them, he is likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to him, or at least demanding of him, than he can now imagine. But one thing Dr. Peck said was that these people, ironically, were also the most joyful. I admittedly have not come to that point of extreme joyfulness in times of severe testing. I am woefully an unfinished work. But I do believe there does exist a joy one can experience in the light of hope in Christ. This is perhaps what Paul was talking about when he said, “in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds” (2 Corinthians 7:4c).
Life truly is difficult; it truly is “unfair”. But while I have come to terms with God over this, I am not immune to doubt, to fear, to struggling with God. L.B. Cowman in his classic devotional book, Streams in the Desert, gives insight into why trials and sorrow is essential to growth: “The soul that is always lighthearted and cheerful misses the deeper things of life. Certainly that life has its reward and is fully satisfied, but the depth of its satisfaction is very shallow. Its heart is dwarfed, and its nature, which has the potential of experiencing the highest heights and deepest depths, remains undeveloped. And the wick of its life burns quickly to the bottom without ever knowing the richness of profound joy.”
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4). Christ should know this. He himself was called “the man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). I can expect no less as a follower of Christ. I have accepted that I have to carry His cross, not just wear His crown.
A.G. Astudillo, 2004