As I’ve said in other posts, I do not believe that God causes trials. But He clearly does allow difficult times to come upon even those that are closest to Christ. (If you don’t believe this, please study the life of the Apostle Paul).

When you read the Old Testament, especially the book of Job, you’ll find that people of those times believed trials and tribulations only came upon the ungodly. Most of the book of Job is his so-called “friends” trying to figure out what Job did or didn’t do to deserve these horrible trials. Poor Job sits at their feet scraping his boils trying to defend himself against their baseless accusations.

Trials humble us and expose self-righteousness in others and in ourselves.

I’m thankful that I don’t have friends like Job. Today, when looking upon those going through difficult trials, the humbled believer will likely think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” So we usually don’t have to deal with people like Job’s friends today, but self-accusing thoughts do come and they can be even harsher than Job’s “friends.”

It’s true that, for good or bad, we reap what we sow. Being a Christian doesn’t exempt us from the health problems associated with smoking and obesity or the financial problems of living above our means. But I’ve seen Christians experience so many trials and tragedies (health and financial problems and horrible accidents…) that do not follow a simple pattern of cause and effect. ALS is one of these – there’s no known cause, yet I used to torment myself searching my past trying to find something so I could blame myself for this horrible disease.

It’s not that I had some kind of sick desire to add to my long list of mistakes, sins and dumb decisions, I just wanted things to be understandable – to fit a simple pattern of sowing and reaping.

This is one of the first lessons this 18-year trial with ALS taught me: man-made religion is simple, true faith is not. Religion looks for simple answers and this seems to be the “default setting” for humanity. In that sense I’m normal. Having the child-like faith that Jesus told us we needed goes against every adult instinct; it seems so illogical, and illogical is really difficult for reasonable adults.

“Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” (Mark 10:15)

Will you trust the unseen God when you face a trial that doesn’t fit the simple and logical law of sowing and reaping?

Spiritually speaking, answering “yes” to this question is to forfeit our right to adulthood. But I finally came to the point when I realized that this is the only way to receive the abundance of grace needed during these horrible trials – when things just don’t make sense. Before this revelation my spiritual walk was much like my physical walk; many stumbles and painful falls.

Children can understand simple things, but they have to trust adults when comprehension is beyond them. This is genuine humility and trust. If fallible adults receive this kind of trust from children, how much more should an infallible God receive this kind of child-like trust from even the most knowledgeable of adults?

“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys’ philosophies–these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.” C.S. Lewis

Thank you for reading,

Bill