I came across a verse in the book of Isaiah today that both comforted and confronted me. It comes when Isaiah is prophesying about the fall of Judah and also how God will restore them. In the middle of this he says these words.

The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death. Isaiah 57:1-2

It seems like Isaiah is addressing the age-old question regarding why good people suffer.

Just yesterday I attended a funeral of a friend who only 10 years ago wanted to take his own life. He was in a mess and life wasn’t worth living for him.

However Jesus entered.

From there he broke free from addiction, got clear of debt, had a home again, found a long term girlfriend, a job, re-established connection with his previous family, life was finally worth living for him. Then 3 months ago he was told he had an aggressive cancer, and 3 days ago he went to be with Jesus.

From my human standpoint I wonder why he didn’t die 10 years ago when he didn’t want to live, why did he have to wait until he had something to live for?

I don’t know the answer to that question, none of us do, but in moments like this these verse can be helpful to us. I am thankful my friend is no longer suffering. I am thankful that he doesn’t have to face a future of pain. I am thankful that he gets to look Jesus in the face and is more alive than ever. Even though his friends and family feel the pain of the loss, he is pain free and happier than he has ever been.

However, verses like this can often be misused in our desire to explain pain to those of us left behind. Perhaps we do it to try to defend God? Maybe we are just trying to bring comfort. Here are a few ways that I think we can mess this stuff up.

1 – We make binary conclusions from the verse

I’ve written before how we don’t like mystery and tension. In the western world, we prefer things to follow rules, to be right or wrong, left or right, etc. We don’t love things that hover in and around the middle and are neither fully one or the other. So when we read scripture like this, we prefer to decide on a hard truth that doesn’t accept the context, mystery, or wider enlightenment that the Holy Spirit may wish to open to us.

We may take a verse like this and conclude ‘truths’ like this;

• Everyone who dies is righteous
• Every righteous person dies because God wanted them to die
• If you live to an old age you clearly weren’t righteous

These kind of ‘truths’ cause us to live out some pretty weird theologies that simply aren’t consistent with the wider truth of God’s word. For example, we know through the scriptures that many die who are not righteous, we also know there are occasions where the sheer evil of humanity has caused a death that God did not desire, and we know people who lived long lives that God honoured for their righteousness. Binary conclusion are not going to be helpful.

2 – We dismiss the verse because it doesn’t fit our experience

Because of the mystery I alluded to in the earlier point we find that hard truths don’t exist in the area we are searching for answers in. When this happens we start to lose faith in the truth of the verse because it doesn’t fit our experience. If we truly believe the Scriptures are the inspired word of God then this is surely a problem.

Truth is truth if God says it is truth. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to us or not. His ways and His understanding are miles beyond ours. He does not have to obey the earthly rules of humanity that He established, but we must trust the heavenly ways that He also established. That is difficult for us because we are so accustomed to earthly thinking and understanding but that is the call of the believer; to live out heavenly truth in an earthly context.

3 – We don’t invite the Holy Spirit to increase our trust and hope

Anytime we read the Scripture we require the partnership of the Holy Spirit to reveal heavenly truths. We need to see with His eyes, hear with His ears, feel with His heart, and understand with His mind. So often when I read the word of God I scratch my head because I just don’t get it. I have been so conditioned into understanding my world from my perspective that I just can’t see any other way to do it. However, I serve the great creator who set the world in motion but doesn’t move in the way that the world does. He has a whole different set of rules and ways that the world operates and I would be silly to not invite Him into helping me understand them.

Anytime we see mystery in the world it is an opportunity to invite God to grow our trust and hope in Him. We don’t need to exercise hope or trust when we understand something. There are logical reasons why those things happen. When there isn’t however, that is where these two can grow. What an opportunity we have in these moments.

You might be reading this and you are feeling the pain of loss. I know. It’s tough, and this post may not help you. Just know you are loved and God wants to talk with you about what you are experiencing. You may not get all the answers you were hoping for but you will get to walk it through with someone who is well acquainted with grief.

Go gently.