Rev. Brent L. White

As a child, John Lennon played on the grounds of Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army orphanage near his Liverpool home.

Both John Lennon and the apostle Paul agree that life in the “real world” is filled with pain and suffering. John longs to escape to “Strawberry Fields,” the heavenly place of his childhood memories. Paul, however, knows better: by grace God is always working to transform suffering into something deeply beneficial for his children. Among other things, it can strengthen our trust in God, make us more dependent on him, and awaken our conscience to sin. The good news is that there’s no evil or suffering that’s beyond God’s ability to redeem. 

Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Romans 8:28

The following is my original sermon manuscript.

My birth mother, Linda, whom some of you have met, lives near Mt. Airey, North Carolina, hometown of the late-great Andy Griffith. There’s a shop there that I love, which sells second-hand merchandise. It has a sign out front that reads: “Remember all that stuff you had when you were a kid that your parents got rid of? It’s all in here!” And I’m like, “I got to go in there!” The store had old comic books, and magazines, and paperbacks, and baseball cards, and records, and tapes—along with old lunchboxes, toys, games, and memorabilia. You get the idea, right? The store exists for people like me!

It just so happens that about a dozen years ago, I had a fight with Mom. I was feeling nostalgic, so I decided to rummage through the basement and attic and closets of the house I grew up in and retrieve some of these priceless artifacts from my childhood—comic books, Matchbox cars, baseball cards, Superhero records, and my library of Hardy Boys books. To my shock and horror, I discovered that most of these things were gone—vanished, missing! My mom explained that she and Dad had sold them in garage sales over the years. And I was really angry. And I said, “Mom, I can’t believe you sold my childhood? How could you do it?” And she’s like, “I didn’t know I was ‘selling your childhood’!”  Read the rest of this entry »

Technological glitches have been solved. You can watch it below or in the original sermon post. I’ll post last Sunday’s sermon tomorrow.

Last year, my favorite football team, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, fired their defensive coordinator in the middle of the season. An assistant defensive coach took over as interim DC. He was quoted at a press conference as saying, “Defense… It’s not complicated.”

I thought, “Not complicated? What is he talking about?” It seems incredibly complicated to me—between 3-4, 4-3, nickel and dime packages, cover one, cover two, zone blitzes. I don’t know what most of these things are—and an objective observer might conclude that the Yellow Jackets don’t know what these things are, either. That’s the problem!

Still, what this coach was getting at is that defense is pretty straightforward when you boil it down: either prevent the guy from getting the ball in the first place or tackle him when he does.

Think of how this relates to our church’s mission. While I know firsthand that our mission difficult, it’s not complicated. God has entrusted us with this amazing gift—the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s genuinely good news for the world because it communicates how we human beings can be in a saving relationship with God. It’s true that some people won’t recognize their need for this relationship at first. After all, sin makes us strangers to ourselves.

But remember: this is the relationship we are designed for. Many people, upon hearing the gospel, will respond to it. They are waiting to respond to it—if only someone will bring the message to them.

That’s the mission: People are waiting for us to bring this good news to them so that they can joyfully receive it. How will we bring it to them?

Again, it’s difficult but not complicated. To make matters easier, the Holy Spirit does all the heavy lifting for us. He has already prepared the hearts of people to receive the gospel.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

“When possible, don’t wait until something goes terribly, tragically wrong until you decide what you think about it.”

This sound advice comes from a Christian apologist and theologian from New Zealand named Glenn Peoples, who was writing at the time in response to the Sandy Hook tragedy. It applies to many issues. For example, some time last year I was arguing with a friend in the comments section of this blog about homosexuality—specifically, my support for the United Methodist Church’s traditional position on the subject. My friend said, “Yes, but what if you had a child who were gay?” Surely I would change my tune if that were the case.

I said, “Maybe I would, but I shouldn’t. If I changed my convictions because the thing about which I’m convicted suddenly affects me personally, how would I be a person of integrity?” Am I currently unaware that many parents’ children are gay—and that that reality can be deeply upsetting? And that many Christians would be understandably tempted to believe that there’s nothing wrong with homosexual behavior, especially in light of pressure from contemporary culture? Have I not considered these things when I agree with my church’s convictions about human sexuality? How shallow and unreflective do you think I am?

I didn’t quite put it so strongly in my response.

But I did say: “It’s like asking, ‘Would you still believe that God is good, loving, and just if your child died in a tragic car accident?’” I hope I would!” My understanding of God as good, loving, and just shouldn’t hinge on the health, safety, or welfare of my own children. Why? Because I’ve already accounted for the fact that we live in a world in which millions of children are unsafe, unhealthy, and in constant danger of dying tragic deaths at every moment—as, indeed, many of them do. To put it another way: If God weren’t good, loving, or just, I shouldn’t need the death of my child to convince of that! Because I’ve already thought it through.

So, when we hear about the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, yesterday—91 deaths so far, many of them children—how can we think clearly and Christianly about this crisis?

Here are thoughts that help me:

1. Every moment of life is purely a gift from God. In other words, we are not entitled to a moment of life. That God enables us to enjoy even a single moment of it is gratuitous on God’s part and worthy of praise. I know we’re tempted to think, “These victims had so much of their lives in front of them!” No, they didn’t. None of us does. All we have—which, again, is pure gift—is this moment. Will we make the most of it?

2. The scale of suffering is irrelevant to the question of God’s justice. If we’re going to be indignant over the deaths of 91 people from a tornado, we need to be equally indignant over the death of just one. For all I know, there could be 91 tornadoes that strike the midwestern United States this year. If each one killed one person a piece, would that be any better than what happened yesterday? Would it be more just? Would it raise fewer questions about God’s justice? Of course not—although it certainly wouldn’t attract media attention. C.S. Lewis deals with this question in a sober-minded way in The Problem of Pain.

Suppose that I have a toothache of intensity x: and suppose that you, who are seated beside me, also begin to have a toothache of intensity x. You may, if you choose, say that the total amount of pain in the room is now 2x. But you must remember that no one is suffering 2x: search all time and all space and you will not find that composite pain in anyone’s consciousness. There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. When we have reached the maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something very horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there ever can be in the universe. The addition of a million fellow-sufferers adds no more pain.^[†]

3. Natural disasters are the price we pay for living in a predictable universe. I’m writing this on a sunny, warm spring day. It’s “chamber-of-commerce” weather in Atlanta, one reason so many people from colder climes settle here. Regardless where we live, however, about 99.99 percent of the time our planet does an exemplary job sustaining life, human or otherwise. We can complain about the exceptions, but those exceptions do not result from a suspension of the laws of physics. In other words, the same physics that create this beautiful day that I’m currently enjoying also produce things that no one enjoys—like tornadoes.

Is it possible to have sunny, warm spring days without also having tornadoes? It’s hard to see how—unless God routinely suspended the laws of physics to prevent human suffering. As I’ve said before, gravity works out well for us when we get out of bed in the morning and put our feet on the floor; when we’re on the wrong side of a fast-approaching boulder, not so much. We may ask God to suspend the law of gravity in the latter case, and maybe God will. But… if he did this very often, suddenly we wouldn’t live in a predictable universe. And we could no longer count on gravity at all.

4. Death, no matter how tragic, does not have the last word. Without final judgment and resurrection—without heaven and hell—then our concerns about God’s justice will never be satisfied. Our hope for heaven, therefore, is at the heart of the Christian faith. Heaven isn’t the cherry on top of a live well-lived: it’s essential for the sake of justice. We can trust that on the other side of eternity, justice will be done and suffering will be redeemed.

† C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperOne, 1996), 116-7.