Don't Quote Nietzsche

 

There's a lot of dodgy theodicy in our folk theology. That's not hard to understand, because pain is hard to understand. We try to explain it to ourselves and often make things worse when we lean on explanations that seem to explain things, but don't really reflect Who God Is.
 
For example: "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". This isn't Scriptural at all. In fact, it's Friedrich Nietzsche. The first rule of quoting Nietzsche is: Don't!
 
What we can say is God can desires our salvation and will, if we cooperate, work all things together for the good of those who love Him.
 
On that subject, be really careful about rolling Romans 8:28 out in the immediate shock of pain and loss. While I won't deny the truth of it, I do prefer Romans 12:15: "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." There's more compassion and grace in sitting with the grieving in their grief than in trying to explain it. Let the grieving tell you when they're ready to wrestle with "why?" Explanations are a kind of control, so we should be really, really careful with them.
 
"God won't give you more than you can handle." 
 
No. Just No. God's people have gone through the ringer more times in more ways than anyone but God can count. It goes on to this very day in places like Nigeria. The right approach to our massive challenges and crushing pain is not to pretend we can handle it, but to admit we can't. 
 
Instead, we look to our Crucified God and unite our pain and weakness with His. We can pray, for example, for the sanctification of our weakness, pain, and struggles. In Christ, we can do all things, when God perfects His strength through our weakness. In ourselves, we're already dead. Trusting our own strength instead of God's is a kind of idolatry. It's a very American sort of idolatry.

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