The Difference between Hurt and Harm...
"Struck down, but not destroyed. . . "
2 Corinthians 4:9
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At a climactic moment in the first Star Wars trilogy, young Jedi-in-training Luke Skywalker defies teacher Yoda’s warnings and heads out alone to save his friends from the villain Darth Vader.
Earlier in his training, he and Yoda have an important exchange:
“I’m not afraid,” Luke confidently proclaims.
“You will be,” Yoda mutters.
While most of us could make a strong case against such vain philosophies as a mindless, godless “Force” that supposedly powers the universe and is available to one who knows its secrets to wield against others for one’s own ends, nevertheless, even secular writers like George Lucas get it right now and then when they depict the battle between good and evil with a certain honesty of observation. In this case, the truth portrayed is both astute and profound: If you make it your business to stand up against evil, sooner or later, you are going to get hurt.
This is mightily confusing to some Christians. After all, have we not agreed to follow a God who says that he both loves us unconditionally and rules the universe sovereignly? Has he not promised to be our “tower of refuge”? Has he not promised to make our “cup runneth over” in the presence of our enemies? Is he not the invincible “shield about us”?
The Associated Press reported on Sunday, October 29, 2006, that one Philip Paulson had died of cancer at age 59 in San Diego, California. Paulson, the article explained, was a self-described atheist who had waged a seventeen-year battle to have a 29-foot cross removed from Mount Soledad, where it towers famously over one of the city’s prominent war memorials.
Philip Paulson had further described himself as having been raised a devout Christian, the grandson of a Lutheran pastor, who lost his faith during two bloody tours of duty in Vietnam. His battle over the cross was a fight for “equal treatment under the law, and religious neutrality.”
What would prompt a man who once upon a time thought of himself as devout to spend his time, talent, and treasure on a crusade—if we might be forgiven for calling it that—to remove a marker whose significance is not even in this case directly religious, but is a commemoration of the sacrifice of the honored dead? Constitutional principles aside, why would such a man fight so costly and consuming a war against what amounts to a simple symbol?
Some committed atheists are convinced beyond the slightest doubt that there is no such thing in our universe as the supernatural. Exemplars of this thinking, such as the late Carl Sagan, would testify that everything that is, is natural, and everything that is natural can be detected and measured by our five senses (or at least by supersensitive aids to our senses). Their evidence for this thesis is that nothing supernatural has ever been—well—detected or measured by our senses. Never mind the apparent circular reasoning. To their way of thinking, if you say the supernatural exists, you ought to be able to offer some evidence for it. Natural evidence, of course.
Setting aside these true believers, another group exists who describe themselves as atheists, but this particular group exhibits one significant difference in comparison to the Sagan crowd. These atheists, deep down, actually believe God exists. They just hate the fact, and they attempt to punish him for it in the best way they can—that is, by proclaiming that he doesn’t exist.
What they are really saying, of course, is that they choose to have God no longer exist to them. It is the ultimate form of rejection, and, when you think about it, the only practical way anyone has of rejecting an omnipresent God. After all, it’s not like you can storm out of the room he occupies and slam the door in his face.
What would make a theist—a believer in God—so angry that he would want to punish God in this way? The answer is the same thing that makes some Christians doubt God’s promises or harbor bitterness toward him. Somewhere along the way, they have experienced such pain or loss that they can no longer reconcile the conventional view of God’s nature with the suffering they endure. If God is good, then he must be powerless, and thus also dishonest about his nature; or else, if he is truly omnipotent and yet allows these things, then he must be heartless or crazy.
It is difficult for us to conceive of a third alternative. The problem we have in doing so lies in the fact that we have no workable way of determining the difference between hurt and harm. The difference is not something we can measure with our five senses. Whenever the hurt is deep or intense or protracted, we commonly believe we must be suffering harm. And this seems to contradict directly both God’s description of his nature and character and his promises to us.
The explanation for this is actually simpler than it might appear. We can’t determine the difference between hurt and harm because that difference can’t be detected or measured by our senses. A real difference can be made manifest only through someone who first sees the future and then acts to cause all the threads of the present and past to be interwoven in such a way that justice prevails and all things finally work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Without God, there is no difference between hurt and harm. With him, there is. The difference between hurt and harm is entirely supernatural.
Once we understand this, we are able to reconcile the promises of God that he will protect us from harm with the promises of Christ that we will, indeed, suffer pain and loss in this life. These promises do not conflict with one another, even though they seem to do so. God allows us to suffer hurt, but he will not allow us to suffer harm, and even while permitting the former, he carefully guards us from the latter.
This means that whenever our faith is tried—whether that trial comes in the killing fields of some bloody war, or at the death bed of a loved one, or in the terror and despair of our own pain—no matter how intolerable or unbearable it may seem, we can cling with all our might to one, single, overriding truth: Regardless of the hurt, God will set it right.
Afraid sometimes? Me, too. Destroyed? Never.
Listen carefully, next time you are hurt, for that still, small voice, undetectable to natural ears. The Speaker will meet you somewhere in that supernatural space between hurt and harm. It may not be an easy meeting. You may have every reason to wonder in the midst of the anguish in your heart, “Am I all right?”
“My beloved,” the answer will come, “you will be.”