Can God Create a Future That Justifies the Past?
Overcoming the Third Greatest Obstacle to Faith

a sermon on Romans 8.18-25
by David C. Mauldin


I will be addressing today the greatest obstacle to faith that I can hope to overcome by preaching, though it is, in my opinion, only the third most imposing obstacle to the kind of faith that brings peace to a person’s life. If I do not identify the other two, you may spend time wondering, so here they are: The greatest obstacle to faith is reluctance to change. Jesus aims to transform you, and some people, rightly perceiving this, balk. They would have to change too much, give up too much, and so, like the rich young ruler of the gospel story, they go away distressed. There is nothing a preacher can do about this. A wise friend and recovering alcoholic once told me that people change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. The greatest obstacle to faith can only be met by the work of God in your life.

The second greatest obstacle to faith is the difference between the Christian ideal and the way some Christians live. This is the one that tripped up Mahatma Gandhi. He read the gospels and was eager to follow Jesus, until he was refused entrance to the local church because of his race. Sometimes Christians, even ones who mean well, cause a scandal to the gospel. I cannot preach a person around this one either. We all have to overcome it with our lives. We must live in such a way that those struggling with faith find the truth of the gospel confirmed, not denied, in our lives.

So what is the third greatest obstacle to faith, which I do hope to tackle with preaching? It is the pain and suffering so prevalent in our world and in our own experience. Christianity asks people to believe in a God who is just and loving and who also is all-knowing and all-powerful. We are taught to believe that if God really wants something to happen, it happens. In fact, Presbyterians emphasize the sovereignty of God, pointing to things in the Bible like Jesus’ assurance that not a single sparrow will fall to the ground apart from our Father in heaven. God even knows the number of hairs on our heads. And this all-knowing, all-powerful God is our Father in heaven. “What father,” Jesus asked, “would give his children a stone when they ask for bread?”

If one were to believe this encouraging message, and one did not know better, one might expect everything in the world to be hunky-dory. Yet that is not the case. I believe everything I just told you about God’s love and power. Jesus himself taught it. Why then would I feel like a jerk if I were to stand before a grieving family at the funeral of a small child and say, “Not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father’s will”? Something is not right. If God is so good and so powerful, why is the world so full of evil and pain and suffering and injustice and the like?

We can attribute a lot to human sinfulness, but this alone does not get God off the hook. Why would God create us with the capacity to commit horrible acts of evil? Why are the wicked not punished immediately, so that a correlation is established between sin and consequence? So many questions are beyond our wisdom; and as Job found out, we are in no position to call God to account. Nevertheless, thoughtful people rightly wonder about all this. Jesus gave us his compassion, and then we look out at a hurting world. Like the writers of the Psalms or the martyrs in the Book of the Revelation, we cry out, “How long, O Lord?” How long until God steps in to set things right?

The 20th century was a time of unprecedented bloodshed: two World Wars, the Holocaust, Stalin, the killing fields of Cambodia, the threat of nuclear annihilation, more Christian martyrs than in the previous 19 centuries combined. And yet the problem is hardly new. Because evil contradicts the character of God, it has always seemed out of place in God’s world.

The struggle for faith in a broken world is a key theme in one of my favorite novels, The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The book is about three brothers and their father. The middle son, Ivan, is a modern man with modern ideas. He does not believe in God or the church. He believes in what he sees around him, and logic persuades him that morality is make-believe. Might makes right. That is his philosophy. A person is free to do whatever he or she has the power to do. This way of thinking has come into vogue in our culture, I believe. Morals require a theological grounding. Once you give up God, you lose any sense of right and wrong. But this is Ivan’s problem. His mind tells him one thing, but his heart says another. Deep down he wants to believe, because he does have a sense of right and wrong. His father lives out Ivan’s philosophy. He is a shameless moral reprobate who indulges his selfish desires. Ivan despises him for it. Ivan wants to believe in God, but he cannot.

Talking to his younger brother, who is a man of faith, Ivan identifies the suffering of children as the source of his frustration. The suffering of adults he is willing to chalk up to divine retribution. We are sinners; we deserve it. But not children. Why children? For Ivan, the idea that they could be somehow guilty for the sins of others refutes the claim that God is just. Nothing could possibly justify their suffering. Ivan asks his brother to imagine that he were the architect of the universe, setting it up for the ultimate happiness and peace of all creatures, but the price of this bliss and harmony is the suffering of just one child, would he agree to be the architect under such conditions? His brother would not, and neither would I.

Ivan identifies the one thing that might rescue his faith: a future that justifies all the suffering. He says, “I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings of the world will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, … and that ultimately, at the world’s finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men—let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it!” The one possible solution he deems impossible.

Many years ago, a neighbor saved my life. I would not be here today had he not bravely intervened on my behalf one horrible night. He was my friend. His name was Scott. When he was in his mid-twenties and newly married, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The disease worked quickly, and over the next several years he lost control of his body and endured agonizing pain. When death finally came, it was a merciful end. For me, the problem of suffering and evil and pain has a face, the face of my friend. I find myself in strong agreement with the fictional Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov. There is no answer. I am neither wise nor eloquent enough to give you a satisfactory solution to the problem of suffering. No one is. It cannot be answered … at least not by any human being. I have struggled to come to terms with the way the world is, and I have reached the same conclusion as Ivan. The only possible answer must come from God, and it can only take the form of a future that justifies the past. It would not be enough merely to end suffering and evil—though most of us would surely be willing to settle for that; it would be no small thing of itself. And yet it is not enough. Because rebellious sorts like me would still wonder, “What about Scott?” No, a better future is not enough. The only answer that accounts for God’s love and power and the suffering in the world must take the from of “something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts … [and] justify everything that has happened.”

Ivan could not accept that. He was forced to abandon either God’s love or God’s power or both. He was forced to abandon hope, though he wanted it desperately. I readily admit that I cannot imagine how God might go about justifying everything that has happened. How could God redeem every tear? I cannot picture in my mind what such a future might look like. I do know this: every picture of heaven I have encountered outside the Bible, whether in words or images, is inadequate for exactly this reason. None of them would make a mother’s tears for her child worthwhile. I confess: It is unthinkable … unimaginable … beyond our comprehension and imagination. And yet I believe it is so. I believe God can and will create a future that justifies the past. From the perspective of God’s glorious future, everything will make sense. We will look at the whole of creation and the full sweep of history—all the good and all the bad—and we will say, “Yes! It fits. It makes sense. God was right all along. God was doing something we could not see. Now it is revealed, and we praise God’s infinite love and power.” … Am I crazy? Have I given myself over wholesale to foolish dreams and false hopes? Before you write me off, hear why I believe.

Let us talk about the suffering of the innocent. Scripture suggests the intriguing idea that Jesus of Nazareth was none other than God in the flesh. Having created the world in love, God was unwilling to abandon it (especially us human beings) to the consequences of our own sin. So God became one of us, in order to show us God’s love and teach us God’s way. And what did we do when God came to us in this humble form? We took him and beat him and mocked him and nailed him to a cross. Forget what you know about God’s greater purposes in the cross for a moment, and look at it from a human standpoint. The only innocent man, God in the flesh, was crucified. It figures. Look at all the evil human beings have done through the ages, and it just figures. Here is a deed of hideous, monstrous, grotesque evil. If I had been God I would have blasted the whole city of Jerusalem straight to hell before Pilate’s hands were dry. But what did God do? He raised Jesus from the dead … and not only that! It turns out that by dying on the cross, Jesus atoned for human sin and became the Savior of the world, so that anyone who believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life. God takes this nasty, evil thing that we did and not only reverses it but turns it into good. If scripture is right about Jesus’ identity (and I believe it is), the crucifixion was the greatest evil possible—the shameful torture and killing of the most innocent person ever and God’s ambassador of love. If God can take that and bring so great a good as the salvation of the world out of it it, do God’s love and power have any limit?

I cannot image how God might create a future that justifies the past. Thankfully, God has an imagination superior to mine. The cross and the resurrection prove it. Because of them, I believe and I hope. Our Romans passage talks about patient expectation. For those of you patiently expecting the end of the sermon, it is not here quite yet. I want to put some ideas from that passage before you, not only to show that what I have been saying rests firmly in the teaching of scripture, but also to help you take action. How should you respond to suffering and evil in light of your Christian hope?

At first this passage seems complicated, but really it isn’t. Paul is coming to the end of a large section of his letter to the Romans. He is wrapping up ideas he has been working with since chapter 1. He began the letter talking about the power of the gospel, and he lamented what an awful state the world is in because of sin. He wants to convince us of the righteousness of God, who makes salvation possible for all who believe and confess Jesus as Lord. God does not make distinctions among people. Everybody is in the same boat; everybody has the same way out. By the time he gets to our passage, Paul is ready to set the God’s plan of salvation against the larger backdrop of creation.

He starts our passage with an encouraging thought: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” When he talks about suffering, I think he has more in mind than just the suffering we endure because of our faith. Faith has a price, and God will reward those who pay it. But Paul is on to something bigger here. He will go on to speak about creation itself groaning in labor pains. He is talking about suffering, evil, and the brokenness of all creation. All this is not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

Clearly a new time is coming. Something glorious is about to be revealed. All creation groans in labor pains. Labor suggests the birth of something new. Paul talks about it with the words “adoption” and “redemption of our bodies.” God is going to do something. God is going to create a future, one so glorious you cannot even compare it to our present suffering.

If we did not know the Bible well, we might get lost in Paul’s shorthand. In verse 20 he links the brokenness of the world to the Fall of Adam and Eve. “Creation was subjected to futility.” The world is broken. This is not, however, God’s will. God wants to undo the effects of human sin. God wants to make things right. We want God to make things right. Paul can even talk about creation as if it were a person and say creation wants God to make things right. Creation groans and we groan, “How long, O Lord?”

If we had read straight through Romans, we would know what God has done and is going to do. God has acted in Jesus Christ to fix the world’s brokenness. The decisive moment took place on the cross, but we still await the final moment, when God’s glorious future will be revealed. What that future will be like we do not know, though Paul links it to Jesus’ resurrection when he talks about the “redemption of our bodies.” Christian hope is resurrection hope.

We do not have knowledge. We have hope. “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” You see, Paul gave the same answer to the problem of suffering that I do. You cannot explain it away. You cannot reason it out. God must do something about it—something so wonderful the suffering of the present age does not even compare to it. We are left, not with satisfactory answers, but with hope. We cannot make sense of the suffering and evil we find all around us, even inside us. But we can trust in God’s love and power. We can wait with eager anticipation for the rest of God’s plan to unfold. We who know Jesus Christ have experienced God’s love and power. God’s Spirit lives within us. We know God well enough to live with hope, despite our lack of understanding.

There remains one final thing to say. It is so important that if you do not hear this, I would rather you had not heard the rest of the sermon. God offers you hope in the midst of a broken world. God does this not so that you can feel better, but so that you can do something about the suffering you encounter. Armed with hope, you will not be overwhelmed by the problems of the world. God gives you this strength so that God can work through you. It is true that only God can finally put the world right and create a future that will justify the past. It is not true that God is sitting around doing nothing until the appointed time. Quite the contrary! God is at work in the world right this minute with all the incomprehensible force of God’s love and power. It is also not true that our part is nothing more than muddling through as best we can until God fixes things. When God does bring us to the point where everything makes sense, one of the most beautiful things that will make sense will be the things we did to show other people God’s love. We will figure out what God has been doing all along, and that includes what God has done through us.

Paul wrote, “We wait for it with patience.” He did not mean waiting passively, as if we had nothing better to do than sit on the front porch waiting for God’s promises as if God were the mailman bringing the mail. He has four chapters in Romans that tell us the kind of things we should be doing.

In light of our hope, how should we respond to suffering and evil? We should answer suffering with compassion. Jesus gives us his compassion. His love for others takes concrete form in our deeds of help and kindness. We should resist evil and take a stand against injustice. Whenever and wherever evil is found, we must fight it. Our weapons are love, truth and hope.

God has given you power. Most people avoid being overwhelmed by the suffering of the world by ignoring it. They pretend it isn’t there and busy themselves with diversions. Others try to do some good in this world, but are quickly worn down and disillusioned by the sheer immensity of the world’s brokenness. But you … you have hope. You can face the pain of the world and not be overwhelmed. You are not invincible, but God makes you strong enough to minister to a suffering world in Jesus’ name.

I close with a story from The Brothers Karamazov. After listening to his brother Ivan lament the suffering of children, Alyosha, the hero of the novel, encounters a child who is suffering. He intervenes and helps the boy. This act of kindness builds a community of support among a group of young boys around a family in crisis. What for Ivan was a philosophical problem was for Alyosha a person to be loved. There is no answer to the philosophical problem posed by suffering. You can either despair. Or you can trust God to create a future that will justify the past; and armed with that hope, do what you can to show God’s love. Amen.