Hendersonhome Chronicles

I’m ripping this off from C.S. Lewis. I think it’s from Mere Christianity…bonus points to anyone who can confirm or deny it.

What’s going on with Ian is a tragedy, no doubt. And there are tragedies going on all over the world, at any given time. Children have horrible things happen to them. Loved ones leave (either by death, or just go somewhere else). Things hurt deeply, and it takes a long time to recover, if we ever do. We spend years working through terrible events, trying to process them and come to terms.

Why? Why do these things bother us?

It’s not like awful occurrences are a novelty. All civilizations record tragedies, and all of them treat such things as negatives. If anyone can provide proof of a civilization that celebrates personal tragedy, please send it my way. But, why? Why do we react with tears when we miss a long-lost relative or friend? Why do we mourn a death? For what reason do we look at suffering and recoil? It’s all around us, all but unavoidable, and yet we try to avoid it at all costs.

I propose this answer: We weren’t made for it. We were not made to suffer. We were not made to experience a loss of relationship, either through disagreement or death. We were not designed to live in pain, hunger or sickness. We were not created for sorrow. You show me someone (an individual, not a celebration) who revels in suffering, and I will show you someone who is mentally ill.

So, here’s the dilemma. We live in a world of pain and suffering, and yet we were not made for such things. What are the conclusions?

1. We live in a screwed up world. Corrupted. Distorted. I won’t go through the story in Genesis, but mankind, in his pride and arrogance, wanted to be like God and tainted this world for all history.

2. We were made to live in perfection. We were created for perfect relationships. We were designed to not hurt, to never experience pain.

I plan on reading Heaven by Randy Alcorn soon. I don’t want to be a believer that is simply waiting for the Kingdom to come, but at the same time I fully believe that Christians need to have a clear vision of where we are going to spend eternity. We need to not be merely saved from damnation, but to be delivered into paradise. It’s a life that we can sample now in short, incomplete bursts.

Before we went to Maui, we must have read about it for a week. Why am I not reading more about where I’m spending not just the rest of my life, but all of eternity?