When bad things happen to good people
Do you remember Rabbi Kushner’s bestselling “When Bad Things Happen To Good People?” His thesis was that we must forgive God for losing control.
How different from the dialogue at the close of the book of Job.
So if God knows what He is doing, if He has not lost control, why do bad things happen to good people? Why does a godly man like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had the courage to take a stand against Hitler, die naked by hanging when victory is just about to be announced? He was but thirty-nine. Why are there martyrs at all?
Here are the questions for your next quiet times.
1. According to Job 38, what are some of the reasons we should respect that God knows what He is doing?
2. Sometimes God does deliver — and sometimes He does not. What do you learn from Hebrews 11:30-40?
3. What are the flaws in Rabbi Kushner’s argument?
4. What do you learn from other materials about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer? If any of you have read his books, watched documentaries on his life, or have something encouraging about him to share — please do!
5. Bonhoeffer certainly left a legacy. His book, The Cost of Discipleship, has transformed so many lives. Certainly his model as well. His book on the Psalms is amazing, and has impacted me. Here is a quote from Bonhoeffer that I’d like you to meditate and comment on, because the next things we are going to do, in three days, in learn how to start praying the psalms.
It is a dangerous error, certainly very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. …Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty.
…If we wish to pray with confidence and gladness, then the words of Holy Scripture will have to be the solid basis of our prayer. For here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words which come from God become, then, the steps on which we find our way to God.
Now there is in the Holy Scriptures a book which is distinguished from all books of the Bible by the fact that is contains only prayers. The book is the Psalms.
[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1970), pp. 9-13.
WHEN SORROWS LIKE SEA BILLOWS ROLL
This is a drawing of an historic tragedy at sea. On board the Villa de Havre, which sunk after being struck by an iron ship, was Horatio Spafford’s wife and his four young daughters: Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanita. All of his daughters drowned. His wife was rescued from a plank of wood and taken to Europe where she telegraphed her husband with these famous words:
Saved alone. What shall I do?
He came on the next ship, but asked the captain to stop at the place his four little girls drowned. After looking into those deep dark waters, he went back to his stateroom and penned: It is Well With My Soul.
Spafford has been called a contemporary Job, and he was. Most of us know this story — but there is more. He was a wealthy Chicagoan who loved the Lord deeply — he was extremely active, at risk to himself in the anti-slavery movement. He was a great friend and supporter of D. L. Moody. Like Job, his first tragedy was loss of property, for Spafford lost tremendous wealth in the great Chicago fire. After the fire, the family decided to go to a Moody crusade in Europe, but Spafford was detained and sent his family ahead. It was then, like Job, that he lost all of his children. Spafford, like Job, trusted God and clung to Him.
After this tragedy, Spafford and his wife were blessed with a son — a son who died at the age of four. (If you happen to be a Netflix member, I heartily recommend renting the documentary on five songs called “Amazing Grace” — not the movie about William Wilberforce, though it has the same title — but a documentary on five songs, including It Is Well With My Soul.)
Please memorize all of It Is Well With My Soul, quieting yourself in the presence of God with it each morning, before you study.
Here are your questions to ponder for January 7, 8, and 9:
1. Looking at the first chapter of Job, what parallels do you see between Job and Horatio?
2. Ponder verse 1 of It Is Well With My Soul. What new thoughts do you have, knowing the Spafford story?
3. According to the first chapter of Job, what was the reason that Job suffered? What thoughts or questions do you have about this?
4. Why did Satan think Job served God? What does loss reveal about our hearts?
5. Ponder the second verse of It Is Well With My Soul. Do you think Satan may have also been behind Horatio’s tragedies? Why or why not?
6. What does Satan hope will happen to the Christian who suffers loss? What truths, according to the 2nd and 3rd verses of It Is Well With My Soul allowed Horatio to overcome Satan?
7. How can you apply this to your storm right now — or to storms in the future?
Finally — I want to issue a personal invitation to anyone in the Chicago area to sign up and come to the live event next Thursday at Moody. I’ll be there and would love to meet any bloggers. Amy Shreve will be there, playing “It is Well With My Soul” on her harp as well as other great songs. I realize most of you cannot, though we covet your prayers, and hope you’ll listen online or on the radio! You can connect to the Midday site through my homepage.
I’m praying for you as you study! Thanks for praying for each other as well. He is with us.