Many times I hear Christians when going through difficult situations say, “Why is this happening? What have I done to deserve this? This is not fair; this is not right.”
In America, there is a sense that struggles and hardships are bad. To most people, difficulties are something to be avoided. Sadly, there are even certain Christians that believe that if one is sick or is having problems, it is because they don’t have enough faith and that they brought about all of this on themselves. Some people get mad when people even speak of a problem or sickness that they have because they believe speaking of it gives power to that problem or sickness.
This thinking is quite ridiculous. As Americans we are obsessed with rights and justice to the point of absurdity. One person might get upset because they were passed up for a job promotion. They worked very hard for it, but the person who got it had connections. They might say, “It is not fair that this person got this job. I worked hard and they did nothing. I have a right to that job.”
What is considered fair and what is considered a right?
I for some reason have a fascination in reading and studying about life in the Communist Soviet Union. Millions of people were imprisoned and sent to harsh work camps for absolutely nothing. After they were arrested, fake charges were trumped against them. During their interrogations they were mercilessly tortured. Many were executed and many died horrible, slow, deaths. Was this fair? Didn’t they have rights?
In Christianity, there are no “rights.” There are no special privileges given to certain people. Men are not privileged over women. The rich are not privileged over the poor. No nationality or race is privileged over another. No one can say, “This is my right. I deserve this.” For if we talk about justice and fairness, then we deserve nothing. There is nothing that we can do to earn anything in the site of God.
So if there are no “rights” in Christianity and there are no privileges given to certain people, then why do horrible things happen to us? Why must we endure trials? Is God punishing us? Is it because we don’t have enough faith?
No, absolutely no! God is sovereign and as humans we do not understand everything that he allows to happen. But I know that often, these struggles, these problems, these disasters aid in our salvation. Many people in those Soviet harsh work camps came to know God in intimate ways. This may have never happened if they had been free.
Everything that happens to us is a way to become closer to Christ. Some people pray for miracles and miraculous healings. These do happen and I don’t deny it. However, when some people don’t get healed or their circumstance don’t get better even after they have prayed constantly, they get desponded and loose faith.
Healings and miracles are nice and it is okay to want them. But we must remember that often the point of our struggle is not to have it taken it away. The point is that Christ is struggling with us. He has not abandoned us. He is with us in the midst of our suffering and it is our choice to get closer to Him or not.
St. Paul teaches us in his second letter to the Corinthians that we should rejoice in our weaknesses because it is only in our weaknesses that we are made strong. We must also rejoice in hardships because we are becoming refined as gold in a furnace.
Christians should not avoid struggles. We should embrace them. (Don’t get the wrong idea. We should not look for struggles or purposively create them. This is wrong because it is a way of testing God and a way of cheapening His mercy.) When hard times come, we should not get defensive and ask “why?” or complain that it is not fair or right. We should draw closer to God and ask Him to give us the strength to grow spiritually. We should thank Him for giving us a way to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
Of course, all of this is much easier said than done. But as we grow in our spiritual walk, we will see that we are slowly learning how to rejoice in our sufferings.
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