SOMETIMES, LIFE JUST DOESN’T GO TO PLAN, DOES IT? ONE MINUTE, IT’S PLAIN SAILING; THE WEATHER IS CLEAR, THE DIRECTION IS GOOD. THE NEXT MINUTE, IT HAS ALL COLLAPSED. PERHAPS A CIRCUMSTANCE IN LIFE CHANGES FOR THE WORSE. PERHAPS A FRIEND OR RELATIVE HITS A CRISIS. PERHAPS OUR YOUTH WORK BEGINS TO FLOUNDER; YOUNG PEOPLE LEAVE AND WE FACE CRITICISM THAT SEEMS COMPLETELY UNWARRANTED. LIFE DOESN’T ALWAYS GO TO PLAN...
This is an issue we all wrestle with at some time or another. It is also a question regularly asked of us by young people, usually wrapped up in some pastoral crisis they are facing: ‘Why did my sister get cancer?’ ‘Why did my parents get divorced?’ ‘Why did I fail my exams when I worked so hard?’ ‘Why is life so unfair?’ Surely, if God loves us, he would prevent these types of thing happening to us!
The last thing we want to do is give trite responses. We may feel that we have to defend God in the light of life plans not working out – but we don’t. God doesn’t need us to defend him. Often, silence is the best response; to sit alongside the young person in their pain, without trying to rationalise the situation, is quite enough. That is the example of Job’s friends to us in Job 2:12-13: ‘When they saw [Job] from a distance... they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No-one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.’ That was an incredible pastoral response to Job’s pain! It was only as they started talking, trying to justify God and rationalise Job’s pain, when things started to go wrong...
Most times, we do not have an answer about why life does not always go to plan. But we can help young people avoid the error of attributing the situation to the wrong source. I never cease to be amazed at how often, in the face of difficulties, Christians immediately assume that it is the influence of Satan! For many Christians, Satan is the source of all the bad things that happen in life. That, of course, is entirely unbiblical. At the very least in our own walk and our pastoral ministry, we should be able to avoid attributing everything bad to Satan. So, what are the sources of bad circumstances in life? Let’s see what the Bible has to teach us.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
It may not seem like the obvious place to start in considering this, but Mark’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the desert gives us valuable insight. Compared with those of Matthew and Luke, the account by Mark is brief: ‘At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert and he was in the desert for 40 days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the beasts, and angels attended him’ (1:12-13). For Mark, there is no exposition of the temptations Jesus faced and no record of any dialogue between Jesus and Satan. It is a simple account. Mark wants only to introduce us to four ‘characters’: Jesus, the beasts, the angels and Satan.
Each one of these characters can be taken as a metaphor to help us understand not just the power of temptation but also the problem of difficult life circumstances, as well as the promise of God’s saving power when we face times of trial. In brief, the beasts represent ‘the world’. Jesus represents ‘the f lesh’. Satan represents himself, ‘the devil’. The angels represent the intervention of God. The world, the f lesh, and the devil: each one of these can be the source of problems in our lives. To understand our negative experiences more, we need to understand what is meant by each of these.
THE WORLD
The world is an imperfect place. That’s just the way it is. We can spend time debating whether this is the result of a literal ‘fall’ in the Garden of Eden, whether this is an ongoing result of human indifference, or whether it is just the way the world was made. At the end of the day, the origins of an imperfect world are not what really matter. What matters is how we cope with it and how we live with it, in our everyday experience.
The truth is, sadly, we all face difficult times in life. Often there is no explanation, there is no rhyme nor reason. People get ill. Relationships fail. People die. Youth work projects diminish and change. That is the way of the world. Like Jesus in the wilderness, we can feel that we are surrounded by beasts, waiting to devour us and destroy us. Life often feels like that. Rather than trying to find a reason for it, the best we can do is survive it.
There is something unhealthy about a Christianity that looks for triumphant victory in every situation. Sometimes, survival is enough. Jesus survived his wilderness experience. Mark does not give any hint of the triumphalism that infuse Matthew and Luke’s telling of the story. I am glad to have Mark’s version in the Bible, because it gives us permission to be content in surviving a difficult trial in life without having to search for a moment of triumph. That is important when we experience grief, for example, or debilitating sickness. To get through to the other side is enough. We pastor young people well when we do not try to find a ‘learning point’ from every bad experience in life. Certainly it can be the case that God brings something good out of a period of trial, including a strengthening of character. But we should be slow to speak of this to a young person who is struggling, lest they hear it as some sort of justification for the trial itself, as if God has brought it upon them as a way of bringing them to spiritual maturity. Any such suggestion is likely to turn a young person away from God, not towards him.
THE FLESH
There are two Greek words used in the Bible that approximate to the idea of ‘flesh’. The first is ‘soma’ and the second is ‘sarx’. However, these two words carry very different meanings indeed.
The word ‘soma’ relates to the idea of the human body (Philippians 1:20), plants (1 Corinthians 15:37), and, occasionally, the Church (1 Corinthians 12:27). As such, it is a neutral word; it is neither good nor bad. The body is the body – it is what it is. Good things can happen to, and through, the body. Bad things can happen to, and through, the body. But in and of itself, ‘soma’ is neither good nor bad. It merely means ‘physicality’.
Conversely, the word ‘sarx’ is only ever used with negative connotations. Especially when used by Paul, this word ‘sarx’, meaning ‘flesh’, can carry one of two meanings. First, it refers to our fallen being; everything about us – body, mind, and spirit – that needs redeeming by God. So, in Romans 4:1, Paul can refer to us all as ‘descendants of Abraham according to flesh’; a reference to our need for salvation by grace, embodied in the promise made to Abraham as our forefather. Second, Paul uses the word ‘sarx’ to describe our social context. It symbolises how we relate to the world around us. So, in Romans 6:6, Paul says that ‘our old self was crucified with [Jesus] so that the body of sin might be done away with’. He means that sin loses power while we are here on earth, because, in our social context and in our relationships, we are no longer living under the dominion of sin because we have been fused with Christ in his death and resurrection.
When we think about the difficulties we face as a result of ‘the flesh’, it is ‘sarx’ to which we are referring. That was certainly the case for Jesus being tempted in the wilderness; it was the social context in which he found himself that caused difficulties, not the physicality of his human body (although his context certainly impacted on his human body).
For young people, ‘the flesh’ can be a major cause of problems in life: the choices they make, the social circles in which they move, the activities in which they partake, the relationships they form. As youth workers, we need to stand alongside our young people as they develop as human beings ‘in the flesh’. Our role is to help educate them into right choices, right relationships, and right activities. When they suffer as a result of ‘f leshly’ errors, we are not to stand in judgement over them. Instead, we stand with them in compassion, guiding them to reflect honestly on what has gone wrong, and help them move forward as stronger, wiser people.
THE DEVIL
All too quickly, some young Christians attribute problems in their life to the intervention of Satan. I think we would be wiser to encourage them to take a complete approach; only when every other possibility relating to ‘the world’ and ‘the flesh’ has been exhausted should we even begin thinking about satanic influence. There are two reasons for this.
First, if we immediately leap to the assumption that Satan is the cause of all our ills, we give him too much credence. The truth is that Satan is not that powerful. He has been defeated by Christ on the cross. There is no spiritual war raging between God and Satan. The war is over. As Jesus proclaimed just before his death, ‘It is finished!’ (John 19:30). Certainly, we are living in a period of ‘after shock’ in the light of the satanic spiritual earthquake, and there is an impact for us as a result. But these spiritual tremors are not so strong as to be the cause of every ill in the world.
Second, pointing the finger at Satan as the cause of our problems absolves us too easily of personal responsibility. A great deal of our pain comes as a result of the way the world is. But most of our struggles come from the choices that we make; our interaction with the world ‘in the flesh’. We must be self-aware, and brave enough, to take responsibility for our own errors in life and come before God honestly with those. Otherwise, we are only replicating the cowardly sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: ‘the man said, “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some of the fruit from the tree, and I ate it”...The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, so I ate”.’
This is not to deny the reality of the influence of Satan. Certainly, Jesus experienced satanic opposition during his time in the wilderness, and so do we. It is true that Satan vents his rage at Christians because he has been unable to defeat God (Revelation 12:17). But we would be wrong to attribute all negative experiences in life to Satan. The battle is not over, but the war has been won on the cross. That is a wonderful truth to share with our young people, so they need not live in fear of Satan’s attacks.
THE ANGELS
Mark’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness ends with the beautiful, but simple statement: ‘...and the angels attended him.’ Here we have a metaphor for God’s wonderful provision and compassionate care during a time of trial. Ultimately, of course, this is the truth into which we must lead our young people. We can never be absolutely sure about the root cause of problems in life. It may be just because that is the way the world is. It may be as a result of poor life choices. As a last resort, we may consider it due to satanic activity. In any given situation, we may not be able to be sure of why the situation has arisen. We can be sure, however, of God’s care and provision during difficult times in life. As youth workers, our task is not to explain the problem so much as to point the young people towards God, their eternal provider.
REV DR STEVE GRIFFITHS is a priest living near Cambridge, UK. He was formerly the Director of the Cambridge Institute for Children,Youth and Mission (CYM)
