So I was talking with a good friend this morning about God and pain, and I have always had this simple analogy of light and dark. I got thinking, and I want to first outline this simple analogy and then expand on it!
Why does God allow pain, if He is a good, righteous, loving God? So many Christians fall from the faith because of this question they cannot answer, and many still won't come to the name of Jesus because of it. Though I cannot give a definite answer, I can shed some light on the situation (major pun intended)! Think of a dark room. When I ask you to turn on the lights, with a simple flick of a switch the room is flooded with light. There may be shadows, but the darkness is substantially lessened. This room is like you, the darkness is pain, and the light is God. When He enters our life, pain and hurt will remain (shadows) but we have a hope, we have sight, and we have a path set clearly before us that gives us JOY. We know where we are headed and how to get there. We are on the path of salvation!
Now, let me ask you this. Can you turn the darkness up in the room? You may respond by turning the lights off, but thats not what I asked. I want the darkness to be intensified and the light to run and hide. Of course this is ridiculous, it goes against logic! Light ALWAYS defeats darkness. And vise versa: when you add light, darkness cannot stand against it. It HAS to go away... there is no other option. Literally. Because darkness does not exist. Darkness is only a word created to describe an absence of light. Pain is an absence of Jesus.
Now, Christians feel pain too. I am not saying we are free from pain. Remember, there are shadows all over our 'room' that can still affect us, but we now have HOPE!! But when Adam and Eve sinned, the communion we once had with God became this distance; a void separated us. There was an absence of God in the world, just like there is today. Back in the day this absence was fought against with sacrifices and repentance, now we can cross the void with Jesus and repentance. Because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. When we add the Light to our darkness, the darkness ceases to exist as the sole power ruling over us. Now we are in a battle, until we die and our faiths are perfected.
Lets switch gears: now I am going to ask you to think of one, just one, thing that can create darkness. We have fire, stars, radioactive materials, and more commonly lightbulbs. There are SO MANY things that create light, even rocks like flint and magnesium create light! I cannot think of one thing that can CREATE darkness. You may answer with the obvious: a black hole. Let me explain some science behind black holes.
Light is made of very small particles called photons. These photons have a very very very small mass, meaning they are affected by gravity. They bounce off surfaces until they hit our retinas and our brains can translate this into images. Light actually bends around the Earth, because it is affected by gravity. Now, black holes are just immense gravity wells centered on a single point, called a singularity. If you know something about electrical engineering, black holes almost act as a light-capacitor; they suck and store photons, creating the black spot we see. But eventually the hole gobbles too much and it gets 'full'... time to throw up! The picture below shows a picture of a quasar, which is just a black hole that is spewing all the light it 'ate' out both ends.
See, black holes don't create darkness, they store light until it all erupts in a beautiful display (just don't get too close!). In the same way, nothing can create pain. This is some abstract thinking, so stay with me. Because pain is the absence of Jesus, and we have a hope in something eternal, it does NOT need to affect us. It can and it will; I am pained all the time. But the option is there. I never explained why pain is the absence of Jesus, I have only drawn parallels. Here's why:
Pain is the unexpected loss or tearing away of something important to us. Something essential to us. When you have Jesus, if you 100% rely on Him for everything (which I don't believe anyone does, but we can get awfully close!) you won't feel pain because you will have EVERYTHING important found in JESUS, and He will never go away; thus you will never feel pain. The problem comes when we make earthly things important and then those fade away, making us susceptible to pain. But with Jesus, the option is always there for freedom from pain!
Pain isn't a substance of itself, just like darkness. We can measure darkness, we can subtract darkness, we can quantify darkness..... but this means nothing because when light is applied, darkness is obliterated. In the same way pain can be measured, felt, and grieved, but once Jesus is applied, it all just fades away as if it was never there! Because pain and darkness are just the absence of something else, Jesus and light, we can rest assured we will always have something to hold onto! God doesn't necessarily 'allow' pain, but it DOES draw us closer to Him! He doesn't want to see us hurt, but when we don't have our all in Jesus, we will feel pain.
And here's the beauty: in heaven, we WILL have our all invested in Jesus because our faith will be made sight! Our old lives will be forgotten and we will just rejoice in Him! And sadly, in hell, where there is an eternal absence from God, there also will be an eternal presence of pain. Lets make sure our lights shine, obliterating the darkness and pain of this world, and live for the glory of God! Lets run this race set before us and not slow down for anything, and when we inevitably fall down, lets pick our fallen comrades back up and fill em with some good ol' Light: Jesus!
#LiveItLikeJesus
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