BY ERICK-WOODS ERICKSON
Today, on Holy Tuesday, we remember Christ’s predictions of His death and the questions of the Pharisees to Him, trying to entrap Him.
Atheists ask me one thing more than any other — how can I worship a God who gave my wife cancer?
I think it is an understandable question from someone ignorant of the faith when so many Christians themselves treat God like a piggy bank. The most prominent voices in culture on Christianity are prosperity gospel heretics like Joel Osteen, who tells you that God wants you to live your best life now.
Try telling that to the Christian about to get eaten by a lion in the Roman Coliseum.
But I can’t blame the atheists when so much of the news media and cultural commentary television programs put on the Osteens of the world to represent the 2 billion orthodox Christians. The national media conflates basic Christianity for Christian Nationalism. Asking them to distinguish orthodoxy and heresy is just a bit too much.
As a Christian, I believe we live in a fallen world. Disease is a product of sin tainting the world and twisting everything. For reasons Christians do not have a good answer for, God chose a long and incredible path to rescue us from sin.
That path included a covenant with Abraham — a divinely unbreakable promise. To take on that promise, Abraham cut up animals and was prepared to walk between them as a symbol that if he broke his covenant with God, God would do to Abraham what Abraham did to the animals.
Instead, before Abraham could walk the path, God put Abraham to sleep and showed him a vision of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passing between the animal parts. God was telling Abraham, essentially, that if Abraham broke his covenant with God, God Himself would pay the price for Abraham. God put the burden on Himself.
Thousands of years later, God came into the world as a baby born in a food trough. He grew up in a perfect, sin-free life. But He was executed as a criminal with the whole world’s sins piled on Him. He, at that moment, was the greatest sinner the world had ever known — so sinful that even the sun would not shine on Him.
He died, was buried, and then rose again from the dead. He conquered death.
God has not given us an easy way out of this life. It is challenging. It is cruel. It is unfair. It is filled with sin.
But God loves us so much that He came into the world, lived with us, died for us, and rose again so that we can have an eternal relationship with Him. I cannot spare my wife from cancer. But God did not spare Himself from torture and death so that we can have restoration, reunion, and communion with Him for eternity.
So no, I do not believe God gave my wife cancer. But I do believe He has given all of us eternity. In that, I have my hope — my profound certainty — in the resurrection and all that comes from it.
We live in a cruel, unfair, and fallen world. But we are just passing through to glory.
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Jn 12:23–26). (2016). Crossway Bibles.
