“For He inflicts pain, and gives relief; He wounds, and His hands also heal.” Job 5:18
“Come let us return to the Lord,
For He has torn, but He will heal us;
He has stricken, but He will bind us up…” Hosea 6:1
******,
I am desperately sorry and grieved over all the terror your daughter and your family has gone through. It breaks my heart to think that a child would have to go through what your daughter has gone through.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I walk by faith as much as the next person. All I know is that when I read the Scriptures I see in Job someone who went through and experienced unimaginable suffering and the only explanation that he received is that “God is sovereign, and as the Creator He does not owe explanation to a demanding creature.” I believe that is true.
I also see in Genesis after all the trials that Joseph went through (beat by Brothers, sold as a slave, falsely accused of rape, thrown in the most disgustingly imaginable prison though innocent) Joseph tells his brothers,
“You intended your treatment against me for evil but God intended it for good.”
From this I learn that your daughters rapist intended all that he did for evil, while God intended it for good. Ask me what good there is in any of this and my answer is … “I don’t know.” I must take it on faith, just as I took all the many extreme physical abuses I received as a child as the abuser intending it for evil but God intending it for good. However, if you had asked Joseph the same question when he was languishing in Prison he would not have had any answer either in terms of how it was at that point “good.” He had to take the matter on faith as well. As God’s silver we seldom see the end when we are in the refiner’s fire.
If I flee from Christ because of my disappointments, anger,and bitterness over what He has providentially ordained where do I turn to find meaning in life? I find no meaning and nothing but more disappointment, anger, and bitterness. I am the clay. Can I ask the potter, “Why have you made me this way”?
Instead I choose to believe that those uglinesses and tragedies that have come into my life, and do come into my life, come into my life through the hand of a God who is good all the time and from a Father who loves me so much that He ordained that His Son would suffer my eternal deservings that I might not be eternally condemned. The reality of forgiveness and the gift of eternal life causes all other real hurts in my life to seem inconsequential in comparison.
I do not have the ultimate final answer to the problem of evil. I do not know why God ordained your daughter’s rape. I know God is good. I know that evil is real. And I know that God has a morally sufficient reason to have ordained these matters that I am not yet aware of. If I leave him, where would I go for he alone has the words of Eternal life?
I prayed for you and your family in our long Pastoral prayer Sunday *****. I’ve prayed for you and your daughter before I sent this. It is my earnest prayer that all of you will find not only emotional healing but that you will discover in the dark night of your soul that Christ alone is the only place where real comfort can be found.
As one pilgrim to another making our way to the Heavenly land,
Bret
