Though God’s ways are often hard to understand, God’s love for us is utterly reliable.
Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the LORD has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe.
Some Christians are quick to pronounce God’s judgment on victims of suffering. While it is true, according to Lamentations, that God sometimes causes people to suffer as an exercise of divine discipline, we would do well not to throw around our opinions about when this is happening to others. Moreover, when we are going through hard times, Lamentations encourages us to tell God all about it without holding back. Though God’s ways are often hard to understand, God’s love for us is utterly reliable.
Every now and then, I find myself deeply unsettled and offended by the pronouncements of judgment offered by certain public Christian figures. Most often, this happens in the wake of some terrible natural disaster. Even before the hurricane flooding has fully subsided or the earthquake aftershocks have ceased, we’ll start hearing self-righteous explanations that point to God’s judgment. Inevitably, I’ll feel embarrassed to be associated with the proud pundits who bear the name of Christ.
Now here’s the shocker. We see something very much like this in Lamentations. Consider this verse: “[Judah’s] foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper because the LORD has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe” (1:5, emphasis added). Ouch! What are we supposed to do with this sort of claim when it’s right there in Scripture? Does this mean that those who utter such pronouncements of judgment today are standing on the solid theological ground?
The translation of 1:5 is sound. The crucial phrase could be translated literally as “The Lord afflicted her on account of her many transgressions.” The author of Lamentations clearly states that God caused Israel’s grief. Therefore, since this statement appears in Scripture, I accept it as true, no matter how I might at first feel about it. This text, among many others in the Bible, asserts that God sometimes causes suffering as a way of disciplining God’s own people.
Yet, this does not permit us to start explaining natural disasters and other tragedies as acts of divine judgment. For one thing, God clearly and unambiguously warned Judah in advance of what would happen if they rejected God and God’s justice, turning to other gods (see, for example, Deuteronomy 28). Even apart from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the author of Lamentations could have known from Scripture exactly why Judah was suffering. Moreover, God had repeatedly sent prophets to warn the people and to urge them to be faithful. When their sin prevailed, God followed through on what had been promised centuries earlier.
So, those who claim to explain tragedies as acts of divine judgment are treading on perilously thin theological ice. They run the risk of attributing to God that which God has not done, thus blaspheming the Lord while turning many away from God. Moreover, they easily obscure the good news of God’s grace and love.
Thus, I would strongly urge Christians, including me, to judiciously avoid making pronouncements of divine judgment upon others when bad things happen to them. Yet, if we’re going to be people shaped by Scripture, we need to be open to the possibility that God will use suffering to guide, mature, and shape us. Suffering often helps us grow more than we do when life is easy. I’ll say more about this tomorrow.
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