Why Do We Suffer?
A survey of Paul’s Second Epistle to Timothy
Part 3 of 3 (Final)
Khen Lim
Image source: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
12. Despite the suffering, our future is hopeful
The biggest problem with suffering is that we are all
blindsided. Very few of us can remain rational when we’re deep in suffering.
Once we’re plagued with tremendous hardship, we forget to be optimistic and
hope flies out of the window faster than we can blink an eye.
Often the worst
part of suffering is that those closest to us suffer our conflagrations as some
of us take out our frustrations at them. Inevitably, they become easy targets
for us to vent our spleen at.
As hopeless as it does seem, suffering can bring about a
future filled with hope if only we take the time and make the effort to trust
Scripture. As difficult as it seems, once we pick ourselves off the mat and restore
our faith in Christ, our tomorrows can really be better. Not surprisingly, Paul
has something to say about this:
“These teachers oppose the truth just as Jannes and Jambres opposed
Moses. They have depraved minds and a counterfeit faith. But they won’t get
away with this for long. Someday everyone will recognise what fools they are,
just as with Jannes and Jambres.” (2 Tim 3:8-9, NLT)
Jannes and Jambres were magicians in Exodus 7-9 whom Pharaoh
summoned to challenge Moses and Aaron at his court. After Moses turned Aaron’s
staff into a serpent (Ex 7:8-10), Pharaoh turned to “these Egyptian magicians”
who “did the same thing with their magic” (vv.11-12).
However, they are not
mentioned specifically by name anywhere else in the Bible. Besides, Origen
believed Paul’s source was the apocryphal book ‘The Book of Jannes and
Jambres.’
“Alexander
the coppersmith did me much harm, but the Lord will judge him for what he has
done.” (2 Tim 4:14, NLT)
In the second passage, the apostle must have been really
angered by a coppersmith called Alexander for him to declare that “the Lord
will judge him.” Other than this instance, the name Alexander does appear in at
least two other places in the Bible but we cannot be sure that they’re the one
and the same person since this was a fairly popular name at that time.
Acts 19:25-27
does record a person called Demetrius who complained to the guild of tradesmen
that Paul’s ministry was having a detrimental effect on their business. His
complaint brought on a riot in which a certain ‘Alexander’ – who was also a
metalworker – was pushed to make a statement to the rowdy crowd.
In his first letter to Timothy, Paul wrote of yet another
‘Alexander’ who rejected his new-found faith and conscience (1 Tim 1:19). That
angered him enough that Alexander and another person called Hymenaeus were
thrown out and “handed over to Satan so they might learn not to blaspheme God”
(v.20).
According to Paul, Alexander had previously professed to believe in
Christ but then together with Hymenaeus, later jettisoned their faith in order
to embrace false teachings. He rejected his moral conscience, preferring to
walk in the flesh and not in the Spirit (Rom 8:5-9).
Therefore while he claimed
the Name of Christ, he didn’t behave like one, resulting in Paul declaring an
apostolic curse upon them where Satan would be given free rein to destroy or
harm them in order that their souls might be saved (1 Cor 5:5).
God is not to be mocked (Gal 6:7) and repercussions come to
those who defy Him. Whatever the wrongs are that we are confronted with and
hence, suffer under, God will right them one day. That’s where our hope lies in
the future.
But that ‘one day’ will be in His time. It will not be to our
bidding. His will be done but we must be patient and wait. His way will be
unlike any we know but it shall be done:
“But the Lord stood with me and gave me strength so that I might preach
the Good News in its entirety for all the Gentiles to hear. And He rescued me
from certain death. Yes, and the Lord will deliver me from every evil attack
and will bring me safely into His heavenly Kingdom. All glory to God forever
and ever! Amen.” (2 Tim 4:17-18, NLT)
Meanwhile, take a look at Psalm 27. Here is where David
counsels our hearts in accordance to the wonderful truths and promises laid
down by God. In this psalm, David inspires and reassures us of what He can and
will do to uphold us no matter what our sufferings are.
All of these will
culminate in “that Day” when all of us believers can stand before the Lord,
free of all our encumbrances, burdens and labouring, and having trusted Him
with our lives:
“That is why I am suffering here in prison. But I am not ashamed of it,
for I know the One in whom I trust and I am sure that He is able to guard what
I have entrusted to Him until the day of His return.” (2 Tim 1:12, NLT)
Here are three other passages that affirms what “that Day” is
about and how important it is for us to keep in perspective of our sufferings:
“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will
continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus
returns.” (Php 1:6, NLT)
“For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live
pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.” (Php 1:10, NLT)
“Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I
will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not
useless.” (Php 2:16, NLT)
For all the sufferings we endure today, on “that Day,” we will
enjoy many things. One of them is that we will rule alongside Christ:
“If we
endure hardship, we will reign with Him. If we deny Him He will deny us.”
(2 Tim 2:12, NLT)
We will have the greatest of rewards that have been sitting
there all our lifetime waiting for us to redeem:
“And now the prize awaits me – the crown of righteousness, which the
Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of His return. And the prize
is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to His appearing.”
(2 Tim 4:8, NLT)
To claim that prize – the crown of life – God appeals to us to
be patient, to resist temptation and to have endurance with the view that in
the end, we will be delivered upon His promise:
“God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation.
Afterward, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who
love Him.” (Jms 1:12, NLT)
Image source: Heartsong Live
13. Amidst our suffering, remember Jesus
To place our hope in a better future wouldn’t mean much if the
future itself offers little in the way of hope. After all, what is so
reassuring about the news we read, about where we all believe the world is
headed or how dystopian society is becoming?
What is so inspiring or motivating
about the travails of socialism or surveillance through online social media or
political correctness? None of these offer as any reassurance. If anything, the
future would make us even more morose.
While God’s promises lie at some point in the future, we are
suffering right now. To get to the
future, we need to get past the fact that we are suffering today. Each day,
some Christians somewhere suffer untold persecution, torture or even death.
Each day, we Christians find our liberties curbed even more so. Each day, we
Christians are getting painted to the corner and we can’t fight back.
Amidst our suffering, our endurance is the way to our future.
Our endurance is pinned on Christ Jesus. In other words, to overcome our
suffering, remember the Son of God. Take Him out of the equation and there is
no meaning in our future. To put it more clearly, there is no future worth talking about.
To remember Jesus, first, think of His life. Read the four
Gospels and you will have a very clear and well-rounded picture of not just who
He is but what He has done to bring redemption to all of us. In the Gospels,
you will also learn about how He suffered for our sakes. Every lashing He
endured. Every ribbon of flesh that was pulled out through the whippings He
took. Every torturous step He took, carrying His cross to His death.
Putting
His suffering into perspective, we might then understand our own (suffering).
And in that sense, maybe we can also understand that through His suffering on
the cross, it was His sacrifice that brought life back to us:
“Endure suffering along with Me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”
(2 Tim 2:3, NLT)
Secondly, consider that only Jesus would triumph over Satan.
This in itself opened the only way possible for us to have life. It was Jesus’
victory at the cross that put sin into submission and overpowered the threat of
death. Jesus’ resurrection showed up Satan’s weakness and proved to all of us
that sin can be defeated:
“Always remember that Jesus Christ, a descendant of King David, was
raised from the dead. This is the Good News I preach.” (2 Tim 2:8, NLT)
Jesus showed the world that there is now a real opportunity to
bring meaning and purpose to our lives. Despite whatever sufferings we go
through, there is light at the other end of the tunnel. And that light leads to
the clearest sense of hope we have because He has shown the way, a way that is
not possible through anyone else:
“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come
to the Father except through Me. If you had really known Me, you would know who
My Father is. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him!” (Jn 14:6-7,
NLT)
Jesus came not only to reveal His power over death (although
that in itself is very important) but He brought to us and confirmed the
Father’s promises. His presence on earth was evidence of who He was in history
as it is today.
Therefore, through His power, promise and presence, Jesus,
through His disciples, made known to the whole world that no matter the
suffering, He would be with us all the way:
“Jesus came and told His disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in
heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising
them in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new
disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am
with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Mt 28:18-20, NLT)
Jesus is our connection to the promises that lay ahead so long
as He is our future. What He plans to do and prepare for us in heaven is the
clearest possible sign of what is in store for us as we endure today:
“There is more than enough room in My Father’s home. If this were not
so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When
everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with
Me where I am.” (Jn 14:2-3, NLT)
Image source: CNBC.com
Even more suffering coming
It’s not an easy thing to admit but it’s true that despite
what the Lord has promised us, many Christians aren’t prepared for suffering,
just like I wasn’t. Even understanding its pertinence doesn’t quite prepare us to
face it squarely.
Somehow these days, we’re not as ready the way the Christian pioneers
and missionaries we read in history were. Maybe, over the centuries, human
comforts and conveniences could have softened us, rendering us more vulnerable.
The fact is many of us might have a somewhat very different
concept of suffering. Distanced from the harsh reality of persecution, many of
us might moan because of a few hours of power outage or having gone through
lunch without a meal.
Maybe a bout of diarrhoea or a malfunctioned elevator
might be enough for us to complain for hours, if not days. For some of us, poor
road manners can get us so upset.
Young people have their fair share of complaints about ‘suffering.’
If the exams were a little bit on the challenging side, there’d be outcry to
make things easier to pass. When one student misread his English exam paper, his
mother laid blame on the question, citing confusion that caused her son to
suffer as a result. She even called for marking ‘leniency.’ If the discipline in
school is tough, some parents are bound to demand that the principal tone it
down.
In America, many of the millennial liberal youths are called ‘snowflakes’
on the basis that they demand to be specially treated, that they are more
precious than others and they’re unique. Therefore the world needs to revolve
around their interests and preferences. Otherwise, they’d melt into a puddle.
These are likely the youth who feel that they should be given well-paid jobs
without requiring the commensurate level of education. They just don’t see the
point in ‘suffering.’
They also want a larger share of their civil rights,
complaining that they haven’t gone far enough and hence, they are ‘suffering.’
They demand even more social programmes to tailor to their needs without a
regard for the immense burden on taxpayers. They go hysterical at the white
population whom they blame for all of
the minorities’ sufferings.
And if you so much as disagree even with the
semantics, be prepared to be labelled a bigot, racist, fascist, alt-right and ‘un-American.’
Complacency is everywhere. And with complacency comes not just
false suffering but a complete lack of appreciation for the lessons learned
from the wars of the past that had claimed tens of millions of lives, those in
the military and innocent civilians including women and children including
millions of others who suffered through those years and beyond.
For those born
in the last twenty or so years, most of this is lost on them. These lessons are
too far into the past to mean anything other than a bunch of distorted
Hollywood movies.
Sunao Katabuchi’s human perspective of suffering by a Japanese
family during wartime Japan in his 2017 anime called ‘In This Corner of the
World’ was critically acclaimed by all but based on online forum discussions, mainland
Chinese media and fans condemned it.
According to Variety’s review of the film
by Maggie Lee, some viewers in China and Korea viewed the anime as “self-victimisation”
in order to evade Japan’s war responsibilities even though the writer herself
admitted that, “the shock and emotional trauma is conveyed sharply.”
No matter
how much ordinary wartime Japanese folks were afflicted – including the atomic
ruination of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – many Chinese continue their deep
resentment against the Japanese that they forget suffering during a war is
non-discriminatory.
For all of these hatred and lack of understanding, so many throughout
the world had died in their attempt to uphold peace and democracy but it is
becoming increasingly probable that fewer and fewer appreciate their
sacrifices.
Not wanting to have anything to do with war is one thing but not
having a proper understanding why there were wars in the first place is quite
another. For so many, suffering had purpose so long as something was constructively
achieved.
“Millennials did not grow
up in an era where communism was a significant threat to the American way of
life. When the Cold War and its hot proxies were raging around the world, they
were hardly a gleam in their parents’ eyes. They grew up in a world where the
major threat to the American way of life came from Islamic jihadism and, to
their increasingly-twisted way of thinking, corporations like Bank of America
and Wal-Mart.”
But that’s not all:
“The spoils of
unchallenged capitalistic supremacy has given them the easiest life of any
generation in human history… and perhaps that’s exactly the problem. They have
been inundated with privilege and it has turned to boredom. Boredom with
consumerism, social media and non-stop entertainment. They need a cause to rail
against so they can bring some meagre form of meaning back into their lives and
so they are doing what so many generations before them have done – turning
against the status quo.”
Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin (Image source: Wikimedia)
A 2016 report conducted by YouGov in conjunction with the VOC (Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation) reveal a very worrying trend in which one in in every five Americans in their 20s revere former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin (1878-1953), a person whose reign of terror cost millions of lives.
British historian Robert Service (1874-1958) called him “one of the most
notorious figures in history” who ordered the “systematic killing of people on
a massive scale.” Another British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore placed that
figure at between 20 and 25 million.
Another 25 percent of more young Americans
placed the same degree of reverence on Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) and even
current North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. As founder of the Russian Communist
Party, Lenin was the inspirer behind the Bolshevik Revolution and also the
deaths of at least 6 to 8 million of his own people during the Russian Civil
War between 1917 and 1922.
Since ascending to power in 2011 following the death
of his father, Kim Jong-Un (1984- ) has killed as many as seven officials who
served under him. Of these, his uncle Jang Song-Thaek was executed in 2013
along with his sister and her husband, his nephew and two sons including
children and grandchildren of all close relatives in a bid to erase all traces
of his familial existence.
For anyone to show reverence for such
dictators and mass murderers is inexplicable and immoral. But all this is a
clear sign that things will get far worse. Not only are today’s youth incapable
of understanding history and its implications but they have an inability to
make the correct moral judgement.
So while they cry out “in sufferance” to what
they deem “unfair treatment,” their collective attitude and lack of morality
offers us nothing but clear reason to suffer in silence ourselves, worried that
our future leadership is founded in people of their ilk.
There is no doubt that we can
certainly expect suffering to worsen. The political barometer in the most
volatile parts of the world has long pointed in that direction. The powers-to-be
who wield military nuclear capabilities are closer to the hot button than never
before. Industrialisation is going haywire, ready to plunge the world into
mayhem with some of the worst decisions ever made.
But in all of this, we cannot
afford to forget the powerful resource that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we learn to entrust our lives to His ever-present care and control, we can
then know that no matter what happens in this world, we will endure.
In the
greatest encouragement for the hardest days that are yet to come, remind
ourselves what Paul specifically wrote in his second epistle to Timothy:
“If we die with
Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure hardship, we will reign with Him.
If we deny Him, He will deny us. If we are unfaithful, He remains faithful for
He cannot deny who He is.” (2 Tim 2:11-13, NLT)
For further reading sources:
- (Nov 2017) Not Good: Nearly Half of Millennials Want to
Scrap Capitalism for Socialism (Scottsdale, AZ: restoreamericanglory.com).
Accessible at http://www.restoreamericanglory.com/freedoms/not-good-nearly-half-of-millennials-want-to-scrap-capitalism-for-socialism/
- (Oct 2016) General Perceptions: Victims of Communism
Memorial Foundation Annual Report on U.S. Attitudes towards Socialism (London,
UK: YouGov). Accessible and downloadable at http://victimsofcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/VOC-Report-101316.pdf
- (Oct 2017) Annual Report on U.S. Attitudes towards
Socialism (London, UK: YouGov). Accessible and downloadable at https://victimsofcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/YouGov-VOC-2017-for-Media-Release-November-2-2017-final.pdf
- Brzezinski, Zbigniew (1993)
Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve
of the Twenty-First Century
- Fulton, Brent (Apr 2016) China
Reveals What It Wants to Do with Christianity (Christianity Today).
Accessible at http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2016/april/china-reveals-what-it-wants-to-do-christianity-xi-jinping.html
- Jolene (Nov 2017) Some Students Wrongly Answered English SPM
Paper, Parent Blames ‘Error’ in Question (World of Buzz). Accessible at http://www.worldofbuzz.com/students-wrongly-answered-english-spm-paper-parent-blames-error-question/
- Lee, Maggie (Feb 2017) Film Review: ‘In This Corner of the World’
(Kono sekai no katasumi ni) (Variety), accessible at http://variety.com/2017/film/asia/in-this-corner-of-the-world-film-review-1201998441/
- Montefiore, Simon Sebag (Oct
2008) Young Stalin (New York, NY: Vintage
Reprint Edition). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Young-Stalin-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/1400096138
- Rummel, Rudolph J. (1990) Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass
Murder Since 1917
- Service, Robert (Sept
2004) A Biography of Stalin (London,
UK: Papermac). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Biography-Stalin-Tpb-Robert-Service/dp/0333726308
- Staff Reporter (Jan 2014) Jang Sung-Taek’s Remaining Family Executed
by Kim Jong-Un: Yonhap (Taipei, Taiwan: Want China Times). Already archived
but accessible online at https://web.archive.org/web/20150705171755/www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx/?id=20140127000056&cid=1101
- Staff Reporter (Jan 2014) North Korea Executes Relatives of Kim
Jong-Un’s Uncle Jang Song-Thaek, Reports Say (Sydney, Australia: ABC News).
Accessible online at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-27/north-korea-executes-family-of-uncle-of-kim-jong-un-reports-say/5221194
- White, Matthew (Feb 2011) Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the
Primary Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century. Accessible online at http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm
- Zylstra, Sarah
Eekhoff (May 2015) After Removing 400
Crosses, China Proposes Where Churches Can Put Them Instead (Christianity
Today). Accessible at http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2015/may/after-removing-400-crosses-china-proposes-zhejiang-wenzhou.html
- Zylstra, Sarah
Eekhoff (Oct 2017) Chinese House Church
Leaders and Toddler Arrested After Singing in Public Park (Christianity
Today). Accessible at http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2017/october/china-house-church-leaders-toddler-arrest-ministry-new-law.html
- Zylstra, Sarah Eekhoff (Oct 2016) Constrict Christian Activities with 26 New
Rules (Christianity Today). Accessible at http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2016/october/red-tape-china-constricts-christian-activities-sara.html
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