At Trinity, Matthew Dutton-Gillett spoke of the crowd’s wholehearted welcome as Jesus entered Jerusalem, and the subsequent wholehearted disappointment and rage when it turned out that his mission was not what they had hoped it was. That is what we humans naturally seem to do; we don’t need to be taught, as my granddaughter showed me the other day. “Grandpa has to go away now!” she declared. She is not quite three years old, but she’s got the disappointment and rage thing down like a pro.
These days I often hear things that make me wonder about the evangelical beliefs I accepted when I was younger—beliefs I thought were traditional, but sometimes turn out not to have been believed by the Church for its first thousand years, or its first 1,800 years. I wonder how much of what I think I know about what the Bible says, or what the Church has believed for millennia, are in fact what I thought. Probably I need to consider these ideas in light of Acts 17:11, which tells us that the Bereans listened to new teaching and examined the Scriptures to see whether these things were so.
For example, I recently heard a podcast discussing hell, about which the Bible does not speak mathematically. When Paul writes that God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2), or Peter writes (2 Peter 3) that God doesn’t want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance, do they actually mean that? The Lord is the God of all flesh; nothing is too difficult for him (Jeremiah), right?
I've been taught that this is a tension, like the idea that God didn't create evil but he wants us to have a choice (etc.), but couldn’t it be possible that in the end God will change us and open our eyes (as Paul indeed prays in Ephesians 1:15sqq.) so that all will in fact come to repentance and a knowledge of the truth? And might they come to repentance after leaving this mortal life? (If not, what Scriptures prove that position?)
But I’ve digressed.
An hour or so after Trinity’s service, I watched as Laura Turner took the stage at Menlo Church to introduce the topic of what happens when our vision doesn’t agree with God’s. Laura spoke of hope and disappointment in light of eternity, quoting Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff from his book Lament for a Son. “I believe in God the father… I also believe my son’s life was cut off in its prime,’ and that he cannot reconcile those two beliefs. The eternity part comes from 1 Corinthians 15:19: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
She spoke of the need for trust, though we are often mistaken about God’s intentions, and at that point I wondered, how are we supposed to do that? I mean, what does that look like? What did trust look like for Laura when, after three miscarriages in nine months, she found herself pregnant for the fourth time? Each previous time, she and husband Zack hoped and trusted… in what?
I think I know a part of the answer, but I am not sure I have the authority to write it. You see, I have had almost everything in life a man could reasonably want. So I’m completely unqualified to write anything about disappointment.
That said, I think the answer has to be something along the lines of trusting in the name of Jesus, by which I mean his character and identity, as I wrote about before. As I hear about people’s lives these days, I often think of the place where Paul writes that God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep (i.e., whether we are still in this life or not), we can live together with him (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10).
How can I become like that—so that it’s a matter of indifference whether I continue in this life or not, so long as I can be with Jesus? I guess it requires a supernatural transformation. So be it.
