Theodicy: 4 Biblical Motifs (Week 1)
OPENER: Have your small group think back to Linda’s testimony on Sunday.
What does the theological term theodicy mean?
Answer: Terry summed it up well when he told us that theodicy “Is the technical name for the largest of all questions and it goes like this “If God was really there. And He was really good, and He loves me. And He was powerful enough to do something about my suffering and evil, then there would not be so much pain in my life (or evil and suffering in the world).” Note: You don’t have to go into precise detail with your answer, the heart of theodicy is “why do we suffer/why is there evil in the world/why does a good God allow it.”
In trying to answer this question of suffering, some solutions/conclusions have included such things as:
- God is not there.
- He is not good, or He doesn’t love some people or me.
- Or, He is not that strong…He can’t stop it.
But what does the Bible tell us? The Bible declares God is there, He is good (He loves us), and He is powerful. At the same time, it does not deny the existence of evil and suffering. It does give answers, but they are not simple answers, because the issue is not simple.
Discuss/Share: Now think back to Terry’s opening and to Linda’s testimony. In what way did her comments sum up the biblical response?
Answer: She said multiple times, “He is a good, good Father.” And she also said, “That’s a good question” without throwing out easy answers.
What did you think of her answers? Was there something that stood out to you? What was it? Why did that particular thing stand out to you? Did it shift your thinking on suffering, if so, in what way?
Why do you think suffering is such a hard topic for us to get our minds wrapped around?
Transition/Note: There is no easy answer. The problem of pain is a very personal one. We are going to spend much of April looking at some of what the Bible says about it.
OBJECTIVE: Today we want to look at four of the seven biblical motifs’ on suffering so we can understand better why people suffer and what the Bible tells us about suffering. We can have confidence knowing that the Bible faces suffering head on and does so in a way that is holistic, not simplistic. It does this because what we most need in times of trouble and suffering is God Himself. We can become people who live with certainty as we trust God with our daily lives.
STUDY
Biblical Motifs
- Human Sin / Choice.
Read Passage: Gen. 3:8-17 “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Question: 1. God made us with “choice” ( Meaning that God set forth the good, but humans had the chance to choose the bad, and they did, and so we do as well). Why do we choose bad today? What does it reveal about our hearts? 2. What resulted from this choice?
Answer: 2. What followed that evil choice was a cataclysmic system failure: Break in a relationship with God that led to a:
- Break within themselves: shame and fear and all kinds of internal problems
- Break in relationship between one another, murder and eventually war.
- Break in relationship with the created order…it was not against them and they against it.
- Breaking your back to create food and order and entropy and weeds fight us.
- A Cause and Effect World.
Read the following passages: Ex. 20:5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. Deut. 24:16 Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.
Prov. 19:3 A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the LORD.
(The NLT: People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord.)
Question: What twin truths do Ex. 20:5 and Duet. 24:16 together communicate?
Answer: 1. I am not responsible for your sins, only for my own and 2. my sins and your sins cost us together because we live together in the human community.
Question: How have you seen Proverbs 19:3 played out in life? Give an example.
- Soul Building/4. Satan.
2Cor. 12:7 To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Question: What is the main point to remember?
Answer: 1. The main point to remember is suffering can be a tool in the hands of God to “build our souls.” C.S. Lewis famously said, “God whispers in the pleasures but shouts in the pain, pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a sleeping world.” 2. Satan was in involved in this suffering even though God was using it for Paul’s ultimate good. But, remember, Satan is like a wolf on a leash. He does not have untethered freedom to roam and bite, remember when he wanted to attack Job he had to get permission. 3. Paul said, “that is why (Purpose: his growth and God’s glory) I delight (Choice: choose to embrace and be grateful for) in weakness, insult, hardship, persecutions, and difficulties.”
- God’s Glory is Revealed Through Suffering.
Read John 9:1-2 “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life…(then Jesus healed the man).”
Heb. 11:1 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
Question: 1. As you read John 9, what did Terry tell us was a common misconception in Jesus’ time and our time? 2. What did Jesus tell us?
Answer: 1. That good stuff happens to good people, and bad stuff happens to bad people. 2. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,”
Question: Concerning Hebrews 11:1, Terry said, “We hope for but do not see with our eyes, how God is going to use suffering for His glory and our good.” What does this hope look like? What does this passage tell us about faith?
Answer: This is not a blind leap of faith, this is a seeing leap by faith. Faith is defined here in two ways:
1. Being sure 2. Being certain. (Take some time and talk about what that looks like.)
Note: “Certain of what we do not see” might go like this. “I cannot see how God is going to be able to bring good from this difficulty or terrible suffering…but what I see is not certain, what I know is!”
“I am certain of God, therefore I judge my Circumstances based on that certain foundation.”
CONCLUSION
We must live with this kind of certainty (Heb. 11:1). We do this by building high trust in God so that we can live with certainty when things in your life become difficult, and God’s presence, goodness, and power are not immediately apparent. We do this by remembering!
We must practice remembering so that we become good at doing it when we need it the most.
- Worship is remembering
- Conversations with friends should include remembering (not just complaining)
- Time to be still should include remembering… think back on your life and speak out loud what God has done for you.
- Reading the Bible is remembering
- The Lord’s Supper is remembering
- A prayer before a meal is remembering