When we suffer, it can be hard to look around at the blessings that some Christians enjoy and wonder what happened with our lives. Social media does not help, as it gives us front-row seats to the blessings of hundreds of people we know (and millions of people we don’t know). While even the average person in relatively pleasant circumstances can struggle in this way, the experience is greatly compounded for those enduring comprehensive and/or chronic suffering.
It’s one thing to envy the prosperity of the wicked. Asaph describes his own experience of that in Psalm 73, and the psalm is instructive for believers who envy the blessings of unbelievers. But how are Christians who experience comprehensive and chronic suffering to understand their lives in contrast to the more prosperous believers around them who seem to suffer much less? Why does God treat His children so differently? Does He play favorites? Why is there so much apparent inequity of circumstances among believers, and how are we to understand that disparity?
These questions can plague those experiencing comprehensive and chronic suffering. Not only can these disparities tempt us to disbelieve God’s goodness, but they can also lead us to doubt our standing before God. We might conclude that if God is taking His other children on a field trip and we’re left behind at school to stand in the corner all day—or even worse, thrown under the school bus—we must have done something to anger Him. Hard thoughts about God, other Christians, and ourselves can overwhelm us as we get pulled into the undertow of our observations and conclusions.
The question we must answer is this: How does God treat His friends?
One of These Things Is Not Like the Other
For many of us who live in the West, it can be hard to gain an accurate perspective of the Christian life. Our moment is quite abnormal compared to other parts of the world and other eras in history. And when the abnormal becomes normal to us, any deviation from that norm makes us feel as though something has gone awry.
In this milieu, it can be easy for us to look at the comfortable lives of the average Christians around us and conclude that something has gone horribly wrong for us. This is especially the case when our suffering is comprehensive and chronic, touching many areas of our lives at the same time, perhaps permanently: our physical health, our finances, our church involvement, our friendships, our careers, our families, and our homes and belongings. When this occurs, our daily lives and rhythms become so different from those of most of the people we know that we can feel as though we don’t belong. When it seems as though others are prospering in these various areas of life while we are experiencing deep loss and affliction in most (or all) of those areas, we may wonder, Why does God seem to be treating me so differently from His other children? Is this a sign that I don’t belong to Him?
That’s what’s so hard about comprehensive and chronic suffering: Because it invades more parts of life than it leaves alone, it places you in a strange new world in which you may struggle to relate to the average Christian in your church. You may become very aware of the fact that what is “normal life” for many of the Christians around you is nothing like your life. It might even become difficult to have casual conversations with other believers. Maybe you feel like a deer caught in the headlights when you’re asked about “normal” things that don’t apply to you at all and can’t give the answers that people expect.
When that happens, the place where we should feel like we belong the most—in the church and among fellow believers—can become the place where we feel most different, most “other,” most out of place. It’s hard to put into words how draining and discouraging these experiences in the house of God are. How do we answer people’s questions or contribute to the group conversation when everyone else’s lives and concerns are so different from ours and we cannot relate to them in these ways?
It’s not surprising, therefore, that those experiencing comprehensive and chronic suffering can be tempted to conclude that God is cruel or unkind in how He dispenses temporal blessings to His children. It’s not surprising if sufferers fear that they must be guilty of some sin, that if they could only figure it out, God would take them out of the corner and let them go on the field trip too. It’s also easy to see how sufferers can feel that they simply don’t belong at church, when conversations always seem to revolve around the differences between their lives and others’ lives rather than around that which they hold in common.
All this is why we must turn to Scripture to try to make sense of the painful question of inequity among believers in this life, allowing God’s Word to shape our interpretations of our experiences rather than the other way around.
What Scripture Says
What does Scripture say about how God treats His friends? More than we might expect. In fact, when we look closely at redemptive history, we see that it was often the people used by God in mighty ways who led what we would consider the “worst” lives. That fact in itself can encourage us if we’re tempted to believe that we must not be friends of God if we’re experiencing comprehensive and chronic suffering. After all, many whom we might consider to be God’s “closest friends” suffered in profound ways during their earthly lives.
For example, Hebrews 11 contains a jarring and—given the flow of the text—unexpected verse. In this famous chapter, we read about the marvelous acts of faith of various biblical figures throughout redemptive history, including Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and more. In verses 33–35, we read that these men and women of faith
conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.
This sounds like something we can all get behind. Who wouldn’t want a life of faith that conquers kingdoms, obtains promises, performs mighty deeds, and experiences the resurrection power of God in bringing the dead back to life?
That’s precisely why verse 35 is so disturbing. In the first half of the verse, we read, “Women received back their dead by resurrection.” But then the chapter takes a very unexpected turn.
Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (vv. 35–38)
It’s stunning how quickly the script flips in verse 35. No new paragraph. Not even a transition word to signal that we’re going from “good” to “bad.” Just one continuous narrative of the people of God that moves from miraculous to macabre. Yet this passage is actually very good news for those experiencing comprehensive and chronic suffering.
Despite how we may feel, the truth is that we are not outside the circle of God’s favor, care, and concern any more than the people described in Hebrews 11:35–38. Yes, from an earthly perspective, it may be that many of God’s children are on the field trip while others are left in the classroom standing in the corner. But, just as we see in Hebrews 11, this does not mean that God plays favorites.
It can be easy to feel that way, but when we widen our perspective to others in Scripture and in history, we realize that God is not targeting us individually because of any cruelty or favoritism in Him or because of any deficiency in us. He simply has different purposes for different people while showing perfect love toward every single son or daughter who belongs to Him in Christ.
It’s also true that sometimes we can’t see and don’t know the sufferings that people around us are facing. From the outside, it may look like they have “perfect” lives, and we may be tempted to envy them. Yet they, too, may be experiencing deep affliction that, for various reasons, they are not able to candidly share with others. Things are not always what they seem.
You Follow Me
I’ve always been jostled by Jesus’s response to Peter at the end of John’s gospel. Jesus had just predicted that Peter would die a martyr’s death, saying to him:
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God). (John 21:18–19)
Peter responds by asking Jesus what would happen to the Apostle John: “Lord, what about this man?” (John 21:21). Jesus answers, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that you? You follow me!” (John 21:22). Jesus says the same to each one of us as we look at what’s happening in our lives and compare it to others’ lives. His response to Peter, and to us, is that it really shouldn’t matter how God chooses to work in others’ lives for His glory. No matter where the road He lays out for us may lead, the important thing is that we continue to follow Him on it.
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