I had a couple of interesting conversations today. A friend called to ask a question about trusting God. He had seen a 10 year old boy who was afflicted with epilepsy and wondered what good God could possibly bring out of that terrible situation. I told him I didn’t know but was convinced that God could bring some good from this evil. However, I am simply not privy to God’s intentions for that family, nor is my friend.

Then another friend called to talk about a terrible family burden he is bearing. He said it felt like God was not listening to him and he felt rather abandoned over this. He needs God to help him bear this awful burden and God apparently had gone into silent mode. I could relate to that as well because it has happened to me before, and more than once. I have great empathy for my friend because he too is forced to deal with an evil disease that has afflicted a loved one.

So why does this stuff happen? Why does God allow evil to apparently have its way in the world? If you are hoping to find an answer here you will be very disappointed because I don’t have the answer. Scripture is remarkably reticent on the subject as well. For example, you read Job, which is all about the mystery of suffering, and when you get to the end of the book, you hope God will let us in on the joke. He doesn’t. He basically tells us that we aren’t big enough or smart enough to handle all that God deals with and therefore urges us to be faithful and to trust him because God is big enough to handle evil and suffering. So I didn’t have an answer for my friends today in this regard nor do I have an answer for you.

But here is what I can tell you. When you get smacked in the face by some form of evil and are wondering if God really is trustworthy, or whether he really does love you, then remember the cross.

By all means remember the cross because it is a real antidote to doubt and despair.

The cross will not give you an answer to your why questions. What it will do is to remind you of God’s great love for you and his ability to deliver for you when you are being smacked in the face by evil or suffering.

How so, you ask? The cross is a tangible and powerful sign of God’s great love for you because it reminds you that God has done a terrible and costly thing to end the alienation that exists between humans and God, an alienation caused by our stubborn rebelliousness and our attempt to play God instead of letting God be God. Remember that when Jesus hung on the cross he was not some independent third party whom God had hired out because God didn’t want to get his hands all bloody and messy. This was God himself hanging there and dying for you so that you have a real chance to live, both in this mortal life and in God’s New Creation.

When you look at the spectacle of the cross and remind yourself that it is God himself hanging there, suffering and dying for you so that you have a real chance at having a restored relationship with him so that you won’t die, it boggles the mind–at least it boggles my mind. It also boggles the mind–at least it boggles my mind–to believe that a God who would do this for you does not love you or has decided to abandon you in the midst of your struggles or trials. It just doesn’t make sense–unless, of course, you choose to believe that God is the most capricious being in the whole universe. But then you are not worshiping the real God if you worship a god like that because the real God is not capricious at all.

The next time you are confronted with evil or suffering or any of the nasty stuff that can afflict us, remember Christ crucified. Bring your hurts, your fears, your anger, your anguish, your sense of betrayal, your sense of abandonment and whatever else you have, and lay them at the foot of the cross. If it helps you, make or buy an actual cross so that you have something tangible to lay all that burdens you and threatens to destroy your faith. Take a minute or two (or however long you need) and consciously do this. The God who loves you and gave himself for you in a terrible and costly act is big enough to help you handle anything you can bring to his cross and you are frankly not very bright if you do not let him. He may not deliver you or your loved ones in the way you pray for, hope, or fervently desire, but he will give you (and those for whom you pray) what you (and they) need. You can believe this precisely because you have spent some time at the foot of his cross and pondered his great love for you and all humankind.

And then after you have spent some time at the foot of his cross, open up your Bible and read Romans 8.31-39. Part of what you will read there is this:

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8.37-39).

Reflect on this carefully. Paul is reminding you to embrace your heritage that is God’s great love for you in Christ. Reflect on the breathtaking implications contained in this short passage. Paul reminds us that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus. Nothing. That means epilepsy cannot separate us. Terminal cancer cannot separate us. Blindness cannot separate us. Madness or dementia cannot separate us. Alzheimer’s cannot separate us.

Why? Because all of these evils exist in creation and nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us in Jesus.

This, of course, brings us back to the beginning of Romans 8 where Paul tells us that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because of what God has done for us in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Notice carefully that no explanation is given as to why evil exists. What is given is a declaration of God’s ability to deliver for us, and his great love for us in and through Jesus. If you do not think Paul is a liar, then you had better be prepared to do something with what he has just told you. Think about this. If God can raise Jesus from the dead, what can God not do? If he is willing to suffer and die for you when you did not want him to do so nor deserve anything like this great love that he has demonstrated for you, why would he abandon you in the midst of your struggles and trials?

Again, you either must believe this and do something about it or admit that you really don’t believe it and do something else about it. In the former case, your response will be hope, real hope. In the latter, you can expect to fall into despair and hopelessness sooner or later because try as you might, you don’t have very much control over the little things in life, let alone the big things. And unless you think you can raise yourself and others from the dead, you don’t have much to look forward to, either now or in the future.

In sum, when you need to ask the why questions, remember to bring those questions along with the rest of the accompanying baggage and lay them at the foot of the cross. Give them to God and ask him to help you bear them. Then do yourself a favor and memorize Romans 8.31-39. Repeat it anytime the stuff hits the fan. You will find the power, the strength, and the love and the grace that will be sufficient to help you bear your burdens. And you will have a real hope because you know that Christ is risen, and where he is so will you and your loved ones be. You’ve also got God’s promise that nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate you from his love for you.

But you cannot be an armchair quarterback. You have got to act. You have got to take the chance and trust Jesus by hanging out frequently at the foot of his cross. Otherwise, you will never, ever know the power that lies behind this truth.

Bet your life on this and dare to trust the God who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead and promises to raise you and everyone who is in Christ too.

¹⁹ This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰ If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹ Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²² and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. ²³ And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴ The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

¹ Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ² This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³ but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

–1 John 3.19-4.3 (NIV)

We are currently looking at the classic old book from J.B. Phillips titled, Your God Is Too Small. In it, Phillips identifies various unreal gods that we construct and attempt to worship–all with quite unsatisfactory results. Over the next several weeks where there are relevant lessons from the Daily Office (as there is in today’s lesson), I will comment on these unreal gods. Today we look at the unreal god that Phillips called “Resident Policeman.”

Resident Policeman is a terribly oppressive god we construct and is essentially equivalent to our conscience, specifically a guilty conscience. People who labor under this unreal god are usually convinced that God is bound and determined that they not have any fun at all because if they do, well, that’s just wrong. Besides, everybody knows God is against having any fun in life–or so this kind of sad (and terribly mistaken) thinking goes–and he will prove it by pricking us with a guilty conscience every chance he gets.

Sound like a god you would like to worship? Me neither.

Of course, God can speak to us through our conscience, but to equate our conscience to God is a serious mistake because our conscience can be morbidly underdeveloped or overdeveloped, depending on multiple factors. Moreover, since our conscience is, in part, culturally conditioned, it is not always an accurate indication of God’s voice speaking to us. We therefore have to approach listening to it with the appropriate caution.

But as we see from today’s passage, John will have nothing to do with this unreal notion of Resident Policeman. He reminds us that if we have an oversensitive conscience, God can quiet it because he is greater than our hearts (which in biblical language refers to more than just our emotions; it also refers to our mind and will, our core being). How can God do that? By knowing our hearts better than we do and by reminding us what he expects from us. And what is that? John tells us this as well. We can tell if we have a saving faith (which could well stimulate an oversensitive conscience) if we do what pleases God. And what pleases God? Two things. First, to believe that Jesus is who he claims he is, that is, God’s Son, and second, to follow Jesus’ command for us to love one another (see the farewell discourse starting in John 14ff). The latter, of course, is consistent with what our Lord himself told us when he summarized the Law for us: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets (Matthew 22.34-40).

In other words, these two criteria should be the controlling criteria when assessing our moral behavior.

We must also remember that when Scripture talks about love it has in mind action rather than emotion. Love always manifests itself for the good of the beloved. It doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in affection for the person, although it might at times. That is why it is possible, for example, to love our enemies because our love is based on what we do (or don’t do) for a person rather than our feelings about the person.

Here, then, is the antidote to the unreal god called Resident Policeman. We believe God loves us so much that he became human and died for us so that we would not have to bear the just punishment of his wrath poured out on us. This should bring us great hope, comfort, and reassurance because we remember that we did not earn, nor do we deserve, this grace offered to us through Jesus’ death. God became human because he loves us and wants us to have the kind of relationship with him that he intended when he created us, and it all starts by having our alienation and exile ended by the cross of Jesus.

And when we are pricked by a guilty conscience we are to do what John advises. Test the spirits using the two criteria he gives us in today’s passage and which he will flesh out further in 1 John 4. This makes it fairly straightforward for us to decide if we are suffering from a legitimate guilty conscience or whether we are suffering from something false and of our own making. We simply must be honest enough with ourselves to ask if the guilt we feel stems from an unloving act we have done (or failed to do).

Of course, as with most things in life, this is never quite as easy as it sounds and we must do some other things to help us in evaluating the legitimacy of a guilty conscience. The best thing we can do is to develop a thorough knowledge of Scripture to help us draw on the many examples of love that are offered there. Toward this end, memorizing as much Scripture as possible is massively helpful. It also never hurts to have faithful Christian friends to help us with this task as well, but for that to happen we need to be real with each other and stop trying to put on a phony front. We must be willing enough and trusting enough to expose ourselves to our friends, warts and all, and then trust that they love us enough to speak the truth in love to us, and that God will use them to help guide us in assessing our moral behavior.

If you are laboring under the false and destructive god known as Resident Policeman, think deeply on these things. Remember the real criteria for assessing the legitimacy of a guilty conscience, something that you can only do with the help of a thorough knowledge of Scripture. Remember too the God who loves you wildly through Jesus Christ. God is indeed a God of justice, but the symbol of God’s justice is the cross. Always keep that at the foremost part of your mind. Finally, ask God to send you a Christian friend who will love you enough to be honest with you and who will help you discriminate between a legitimate guilty conscience and a false and destructive one. Then start enjoying life, abundant life, in Jesus.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!