Chasing the Wind 8

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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Chasing the Wind, Episode eight. Why do you bad people win right? What do you do when life refuses to follow the rule central ideas? Q has discovered something terrifying something. Sometimes wisdom works and sometimes the fool gets the promotion. And Q's right, he deserves to be heard here. Yeah, that's not fair. That's what children say. One of the first theological statements most children learn isn't God is love? That's not fair. Your sister got the bigger piece, your brother got to stay up late. Somebody cut in line, and somehow a four year old who cannot locate his shoes has developed a sophisticated theory of distributive justice. That's not fair, and parents say something profoundly unsatisfying. Life isn't always fair? Be really? Why not? Welcome to Gospel Rant podcast and doctor Bill Senyord YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Sinyard. We are free wherever you get good podcasts, of course on YouTube as well, so please subscribe. As always, one of the fastest ways you can help us is by leaving your comments below. Thank you ahead of time. Also thanks for making Gospel Rant podcast one of the top ten percent of the world and top sixty of Christian podcasts in Colorado. Thank you for listening every week. We hope that it helps to regularly hear about God's love. That loves the unlovable, love the unlovely, the unworthy and unlikely. That's you, that's me on any given day. It's important to be able us to say that aloud and realize how important it is and how badly I needed that. I mean, when he found me, I'm that. When you find me today, I'm that. Yep. Well, I want to get right into it. After this brief word from our sponsors, we'll be right back. So somewhere inside of many of us is a simple equation. Good choices, good outcomes, bad choices, bad outcomes, and to be fair. Proverbs often sounds like that, because wisdom really does describe patterns in God's creation. So you work hard generally better than laziness. I tell the truth generally better than lying. Choose friends carefully, or avoid foolish decisions great, But eventually reality strikes us in the mouth. The honest employee gets fired, the manipulator gets promoted. The faithful spouse gets abandoned, the careful person gets cancer, the corrupt businessman buys another house. The bully becomes popular, and Q says, excuse me, I have some additional data, and that's C's thing. And he refuses to throw away the inconvenient data. So what does he do? Experiment goes to court. Ecclesiastes three gives us this devastating observation, and in place of judgment, he says, wickedness was there, and the place of justice wickedness was there. And notice where Q finds evil, not in some dark alley. He finds it in the courtroom. The place specifically designed to produce justice is producing injustice sometimes, and that's worse. Modernize it right without becoming political. The institution established to protect people sometimes protects itself. The leader entrusted with authority sometimes uses it for him or herself. The person everybody trusts sometimes turns out to not be trustworthy. And Q isn't shocked that bad people exist. He's shocked that sometimes the system rewards them. And he can't make that fit. By the way, neither can I well. Ecclesiastes fo gets darker. Q looks again and sees the oppressed and their tears, And that's important. This isn't abstract philosophy anymore. There are people crying and Q notices something awful. They have no comforter power is on the other side, right, because this is one of the moments where well, check, this is one of the moments where Q becomes profoundly sympathetic. QC's suffering and refuses to call it okay, And that's admirable. There are religious ways of talking about suffering that can become almost obscene. Everything happens for a reason. Yeah, maybe, but don't they say that too quickly? Do the person whose child just died. Q doesn't. He sits with the tears. He sits with the one who weeps, the one who grieves, and Jesus does as well. That's one of the beauties of Christianity is when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but don't fear because God is with us and the Holy Spirit can make that arm around us known. We have but to ask. Yeah, anyway, Q sits with the criers the weepers and says something's wrong, and he's right, So where's God? See now, the problem becomes theological, well theocratical, to be technical, because if the universe is random and justice is unpleasant but not particularly surprising. But Q does believe in God, at least a distant God, and that makes injustice harder, not easier, because now God sees the suffering and the injustice, and presumably God could do something about it, And yet it happened. And that's the problem, not why don't atheists understand suffering? The much harder equation and question is why do believers have to? And this is where Q digs, He observes, compares reason searching. Is there all the thing that Q does, and still can't find a pattern, because once again Q has information, but he doesn't have the ending. He can't see beyond the sun. He's not discerning, and without the ending, he cannot discern what the middle means. You know, I'd just shift to Psalm seventy three enter Asaf Asath looks around and sees precisely what Q ses. The wicked prosper. They're healthy, wealthy, arrogant. They seem untouched by ordinary trouble, and Acef admits something wonderfully honest, I envied them. Yeah, thank you Asaf. No religious pretending, no whitewashing. He's basically saying, apparently, I've been doing this righteousness thing incorrectly? Why remain faithful if the crook has the beach house and then something changes. ACEF doesn't simply acquire additional information. He enters the sanctuary, right, He enters the presence of God, and you know that place where, even though it's under the sun, is over the sun, and he understands their end. That's discernment, the q lax, same wicked people, same bank account, same injustice, different horizon ASAF sees the inn, that's a spiritual thing. Qc'es Tuesday. Well, let me give you another keyhole analogy that might help us understand this. Imagine walking into a movie theater forty seven minutes into the film. The hero has been arrested, the villain has the money, The hero's girlfriend thinks he betrayed her, his dog has disappeared. Everything's terrible, and you stand up. This movie makes no sense, and the people behind you say, sit out, n The villain is winning. It's not over, but look it's not over. See. That's Discernment's objection to CU's not you didn't see what you saw, but you haven't seen enough yet. Yeah. The disciple, though, is learning. Now we bring back our overarching silent disciple back. Q says, I saw righteous people perish in their righteousness and wicked people living long in their wickedness. And the young disciple looks around. He sees it too, Q says, explain that, and the disciple can't don't make you know, the disciples not omniscient. Maybe the wise answer sometimes begins, I don't know. Q smiles exactly, But the disciple isn't finished. I said I don't know. I didn't say there isn't an answer. You see the difference. Q. If I cannot discern the meaning, perhaps there is none. Disciple. If I can't discern the meaning, perhaps I cannot discern the meaning. Right, that's honesty and a little humility there, and honestly that's wisdom. That's discernment. See, God doesn't owe us the middle. We often want God to explain himself, Why this? Why now? Why her? Why me? And beneath the question could sometimes be another assumption that God owes me and the explanation before I'm going to trust him. But scripture rarely provides one. Job doesn't get one even at the end. Joseph didn't get one while he was in prison. Abraham didn't get one on Mountain Mariah. The disciples didn't get one on Good Friday. I mean, if you think about that, Good Friday looked like Q was right. The righteous man died, the corrupt authorities win, the mob wins, Rome wins, Death wins. If Christianity ended Friday afternoon, it's all havevel meaninglessness. But the movie wasn't over. Sunday changes Friday. And this is where Christianity provides something deeper than don't worry it'll all work out. You don't know. Some things in this life don't work out. Some relationships aren't restored, some injustices aren't corrected, some apologies just never come. Some people die waiting. Christianity's claim is so much bigger. History itself isn't finished, and it's in the hands of someone over the sun. So resurrection, judgment, restoration, new creation, the Holy Spirit, which means God doesn't merely promise to help us cope with injustice. He promises injustice will not have the final word. Let me say that again. He promises injustice will not have the final word. And again the disciple possesses something Q cannot obtained by observation. The ending not every detail, but enough. Okay, let me give you a little bit of a light bit of humor here. After twenty minutes discussing oppression, corruption, death, cosmic justice, we leave church. Someone pulls into the parking space we were waiting for, and immediately that's not fair. Apparently our theology of justice remains highly sensitive to parking. Yeah, but maybe that's because the longing itself is real. We were made for a world where things are right. You resonate with that, and that's what That's why injustice doesn't merely inconvenience us. It offends something deep inside of us, something about that God image. It's something feels bent, like a carnival mirror, all messed up. And perhaps our outrage and injustice isn't evidence that the universe has no moral order. Perhaps there's evidence that's that somewhere inside us. We remember that it should well. Q saw teers, so we don't dismiss him. As I said at the beginning, he's well meaning, he's relatable, likable. Q saw corruption. We're not going to correct him. Q saw righteous people suffer. He was right. He saw wicked people prosper. He was right. Q dug deep He gathered the evidence. He asked the uncomfortable questions. He refused the easy religious answers. But he couldn't dig his way to discernment. Nobody can. It's a gift from above the sun because discernment requires something Q cannot excavate from beneath the sun. The ending, The disciple doesn't know everything. He doesn't know why this happened. He doesn't know when God will act. He doesn't know how God will repair it. But he knows something Q doesn't. The story isn't over, and God's got this, And sometimes that's enough wisdom for the next step. Yeah, what's next? I will let you know after this brief word from our sponsor. My new book is out, Good Enough Christian getting great reviews as the sequel to Good Enough Parent and My Good Enough Christianity series. Here's part of the press release. Could God's Love actually Frighten us? New book explores why Christians struggle to experience the love they say they believe. Good Enough Christian asked a provocative question, what if God's love is so vast, so unconditional, so unlike our usual human love, that part of us is actually afraid to trust it? Yeah? Meaning we can't trust it. It's too good to believe. And you know what happens that things are too good to believe. But this one's true. But our brain may not be able to distinguish, and maybe our brains will actually push back and hinder us from unconditional love. We talk actually about seven hindrances that is keeping me from experiencing God delighting in me, God dancing over me, Jesus loving me the favor of God. Really, this is a must read that this is great discipleship material, Bible study material for adults and teenagers. By the way, this is great new Christian stuff that I'm just saying this is this is something that I think we'll change the conversation about God's love and how to get it. When somebody comes up to me after my talks on good enough Christianity and says, you know, doctor Bill, what what does the love of God feel like? Yeah, I pat him on the back. That's exactly the right question. And I can tell you get the book and let me know what you think. Bill at gospel dash app dot com get a bunch of them and hand them out. I think it's important. So back to the podcast. Thanks for listening to my series Chasing the Wind Next time. Q is another problem if justice eventually comes, well, what about right now? What do you do with a life that you cannot control? Do you work harder, worry more, try to predict what's coming, build fortifications, moved to a deserted island? Or could there possibly be another way to live? Episode nine, A Time for Everything? Yeah, well, we'll see you next time. Take her child of God,