Transcript
Ben Fallon: For today’s episode of Ask Paul Tripp, we found two archived answers from Paul, as he replies to similar questions from Christians who are struggling to reconcile the goodness and love of God with the reality of suffering here on earth and suffering for all of eternity—that is, damnation. Here’s the first question: if a loving and sovereign God forms a baby in the womb, why does he allow disability?
Paul Tripp: I can’t think of a sadder, more heart-rending thing than for a parent to watch your child suffer some physical, mental or emotional disability. It does tear your heart out. Our daughter was walking down the street in Philadelphia several years ago and a drunken, unlicensed driver careened onto the sidewalk and crushed her against the wall. She had massive injuries. If it happened in the suburb, she wouldn’t have made it to the hospital. She was bleeding profusely and internally, had twelve breaks of her pelvis alone.
And when I went into her hospital room, the highest level in intensive care, she’s hanging between life and death at that moment, vital signs out of control. As a dad, I fell apart. And the only thing I could think of doing was to climb up into her bed, put my cheek next to her cheek -- I didn’t know if she was conscious enough -- and say, “Nicole, I’m here, your dad. I love you and I won’t leave until you’re okay.”
Now, by God’s grace, that was a temporary thing and Nicole has recovered quite well. But some of you may be facing things like autism or a physical handicap where it may go on for an extended period of time, may never change. What do you reach for, what do you grab for? I feel the weight of the holiness of this kind of question, and how easy it is to throw a piece of theology and walk away. And I don’t want to do that.
If you would ask me why God would do such a thing in your family, my best biblical answer is I don’t have a clue. But I know things about God and I know things about His plan. Here’s the first thing I would say is God, for our good and His glory, has chosen for us to live in a world this dramatically fallen, broken, not functioning the way that He had intended; and, somehow, some way, that brokenness will enter all of our doors. There’s no indication that the brokenness of the world and all of the harm and danger, disease, whatever, that exist, there’s no indication that as a child of God, I’m given a ticket out of that. I’m not.
In the mystery of God’s plan, He has chosen us to stay in this broken world for an extended period of time. And that brokenness will invade us -- sometimes in the birth of a child, sometimes in the death of a spouse, sometimes in a crippling accident. Suffering is a universal experience of everyone who lives. If you’re not suffering now, you’re near someone who is. And if you’re not suffering now, you will someday. It’s a universal experience. Don’t think that you have been singled out because suffering is a universal experience.
Second, God promises that the way He rules His world will make Him near. I love what it says in Acts 17 that He determines the exact place where we will live and the exact length of our days; and He does that, so that He’s not far from each one of us, so we can reach out and touch Him. It’s the theology of imminent sovereignty. God is close. He’s near. The God who you cry out to for help is near, so at any moment, you can reach Him.
There’s one third thing I would say. The scripture is very clear that God will not call us to a task without enabling us to do it. The grace of God is not just forgiving grace, but it’s right-here-right-now enabling grace. Now, in the huge burden of parenting an autistic child, you could say, “A good God wouldn’t do this,” and walk away. Or you can say, “I don’t understand why God would do this, but everything the Bible says about Him is He’s good and loving and merciful and near. And I can’t handle this by myself. I’m going to run to Him and say, ‘Won’t You meet us in this moment? Won’t You provide for us what we could never provide for ourselves?’”
I’ll encourage you. Don’t bring God into the court of your judgment. That would never go anywhere good. In the mystery of His sovereignty, run to Him and He will meet you and He will provide what you need.
BF: This second question is very brief: why does a loving God send people to hell? Here’s Paul’s answer:
PT: One of the things that’s very important when you talk about themes of punishment in scripture, the theme of consequences for sin, the most ultimate of those is hell, is the position from which you examine those themes. Here’s two starting points that will always get you into trouble.
First is the starting point of the centrality of the human being in the biblical story. Human beings are not central. God is central. This is God’s story. I think the most important words in the Bible are the first four words. “In the beginning, God…” If God is on site, if God had created all of this, then everything is His. Everything belongs to Him. Everything is from Him and of Him and through Him. To Him be the glory. That’s Romans 11:36. And so, whatever doctrine I look at, I have to look at it from the centrality of the glory of God, the glory, the holiness, the perfection, the centrality of God. You’ll never ever understand difficult doctrines unless you start there. This is God’s world.
Now, this is where this goes. He has the right to do with this world whatever He wishes because it’s His. If I’m a painter by avocation, when I put my hands to that canvas, it’s my creation. I can do with it whatever I want because it belongs to me and that’s the position of the Creator.
There’s a second starting point that will get you in trouble. It’s the worthiness of the human being, that we are innately, theologians say ontologically, worthy human beings. We deserve good happening to us. And so, if you don’t start with the centrality of God, you get into trouble. And if you start with the worthiness of the human being, you get into trouble. What the Bible declares is that God is central and that we are unworthy.
One of the most shocking passages in all of the Bible is in the Psalms, where it says, “58:3 The wicked go astray from the womb, speaking lies.” There’s never a moment in my existence where I’m good. There’s never a moment, not my very first breath, where I have God in His rightful place. And so, hell is not this horrible thing that God does to these good people who are in the center of the whole thing. That’s not what it is. Hell is actually the rightful state of everyone who has ever been born because everyone who was ever born rejects and rebels against the One who is central.
So I don’t actually struggle with the doctrine of hell. I struggle with, “How could it ever be that I would be freed from that?’ How could there be mercy this great? How could there be grace this huge? How could it be possible that people who shake their fists in the face of the One who is central could have His arms of love wrapped around them and spend eternity in His presence? How could that ever be? That’s crazy to me, but for the cross of Jesus Christ.
Hell isn’t crazy to me. It’s sad. We should not want for anybody to ever be in hell, but it makes sense to me. God’s mercy given to me makes no sense except for the sacrifice, the payment of Jesus. That’s how I handle the doctrine of hell.
BF: Paul’s book on suffering has so much more to say about practical theology that comforts during trials and difficulty, and Paul’s book on doctrine, titled Do You Believe?, has chapters on sin and eternity. These two books and dozens more on a variety of everyday life topics can be found on our store at PaulTripp.com/Books.
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