Affliction not Accidental
John Burton. Lamentations 3:31-36 For the LORD will not cast off for ever:… A more melancholy, dirge-like plaint than that of this heart-broken prophet never fell from human lips. The lofty confidence of this suffering man in the fidelity and compassionate rule of God, his own bitter grief notwithstanding, is not less majestic than his sorrow is plaintive (vers. 22-26). Then comes this grand prophecy of a triumphant faith in the providence of a Divine compassion, under which all suffering is being ministered with a purpose and mixed with a tenderness out of which emerge definite and healing results, as it is given in the text: "For the Lord will not cast off forever: but though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion. For He doth not afflict willingly." This apparent contradiction between the Divine compassion and our human griefs, is today what it has been from the beginning, the standing problem, the bitter tragedy of human life. It has but one solution. Man as he actually is, is under a providential training for what it is possible for him to become. There are not two Gods, as the old Persian theosophy imagined, one good and the other evil, contending for man; but one God, contending with the evil that is in man. I. HERE, THEN, IS THE FACT THAT GRIEF IS THE HERITAGE OF MAN. 1. "The whole creation," said the apostle, "groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Things have not altered much in their outer aspect in this matter since the apostle's time. Life is still the natural history of sorrow — man's life the bitterest of all. Man is born into a world where he does not so much find the trouble, as the trouble finds him. He is born into it, as the insect is born into the air. There are troubles which belong to the lot of individual man. And in this form they are the impartial inheritance of the race. All men, in whatever other things they may differ, agree in this, that they are alike born heirs to a patrimony of sorrow. If we escape it in one form, it meets us in another. There are the troubles which afflict the community, which fall upon the mass in its aggregation of families, neighbourhoods, communities, and nations; in which men indiscriminately seem to be the victims of a common affliction, of which no account can be given. The air gets contaminated, and chokes them wholesale with its pestilential fevers. Then there are the troubles which overtake us not unfrequently in the form of sudden calamities, the "terrible things" which, in the shape of accidents, explosions, fires, and shipwrecks, strike dumb a nation's heart. The judgments of God, or some strange license in the physical agencies of the universe, seem embattled against the interests and the safety of man. Suffering, like sin, has no vacation: it keeps no holiday. If in this huge complex of human grief it were true that the guilty only suffered, or that the profane and the incorrigible were chiefly its victims, one might suppose that a natural providence were somehow at work to guard the rights of the virtuous against the wrongs of the sinning. But as we have seen, "there is no discharge in this war." "There is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked." 2. Let us bear in mind that we have been speaking only of facts, not of causes or theories. And, further, let it be remembered that these facts are independent of any belief or disbelief as to their origin or purpose, and as to the relation, if any, which man holds to a moral government. They are not the creations of our Christian philosophy; and they are not the coinage of our Christian faith. They are a difficulty to the Christian philosopher; but they are equally so to the sceptic. They are to both equally facts. They pertain as much to the newest infidelity, as they do to the oldest Christian belief. Nor will atheism itself, the doctrine that chance or fate rules the destinies of men, afford its advocates even a momentary relief from the perplexing enigmas of fact. That doctrine, indeed, deprives us of a personal God, and, consequently, of all intelligent provision in the arrangements of the universe; it cuts us adrift from all relation to a fatherly providence. Instead of "the living God," "our Father in heaven," whose "tender mercies are over all His works," it gives us an unconscious, unintelligent, and eternal nature. In the place of creative law and a final purpose, it sets up a grim and remorseless fate. But it mitigates no evil; alleviates no pang; dries no tear in the sorrowful history of man. You ask: Why, if there be not only goodness but an Almighty justice reigning over the world and men, does it not stretch forth its hand to rescue and save from suffering? But why, if there be an Almighty chance, or fate, does it not do that? If thinking matter, or materialised thought be God, still it is a God under whose creative auspices man is born into a world of trouble. "By one man, sin" entered into the world and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have stoned. Man is a fallen being, a self-ruined intelligence — poised and quivering between two infinities; from the one of which he is banished, for the other of which he is being trained. He is God's child, in exile. He suffers as a discrowned king. That is the one interpretation. Suffering and guilt are correlated facts. They mutually involve and explicate each other. II. WE HAVE, SECONDLY, THE DIVINE COMPASSION, IN ITS RELATION TO SUFFERING. "He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men." 1. And here, first, it is claimed that all human suffering comes within the fore. knowledge, and is under the control of God. While, as a fact, suffering in its origin and infliction does always hinge on to secondary causes in the fatalities and falsities of man; those secondary causes in their action do always, immediately or remotely, fasten on to the purpose of God. Afflictions are not an accident. "The curse causeless shall not come." The writers of the Old Testament Scriptures are never more emphatic than in their assertion of this double parentage of human sorrow. If they knew but little of the scientific set up and mechanical movements of the laws of nature, they knew a great deal inspirationally of the supreme life, of which those laws were the appointed expression. They never ignore the immediate presence of God in His works; they never unfasten His governing hand from the smallest or the greatest events. They neither substitute the sovereignty of the Divine will for natural law; nor put natural law in the place of the Supreme will. As these writers uniformly teach, the plan of Providence takes in the universe as a whole. The individual is never forgotten in the multitude or the magnitude of the Divine cares. The interests of the man have a place in the complications of his actings in the world. "His eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men." Even in what are held to be the accidents of life, those strange, unforeseen, and as we are apt to think, purely fortuitous events, which anticipate all our foresight and calculation, and which entail so constantly so large a measure of suffering upon the man and the community, the inspired writers have a place for the anticipation and the activity of a prescient providence. They are contingencies to us, a mere chapter of accidents; but not to the foreplanning and all-seeing mind of God. Surely there can be no absenteeism, no indifference, no incapacity in the all-perfect infinite God. Along the myriad antecedent lines of concatenated human agency at any point of space or time, He, indeed, is alone able to look. But that the first link and the last link and each intermediate link in the chain of human causes leading to that and similar catastrophes fasten on to the foreknowledge and governing will of God, we can accept on the testimony of His Word. We are speaking of foresight, of that prescient outlook of Providence, which takes all human occurrences out of the run of chance surprises, and puts them amongst foreseen and permitted events. There can be no accidents in the scheme of infinite thought; there can be no surprise to the intelligence that infinitely knows We see only results. To God the beginning, with its antecedents all hidden and remote, is a presence. 2. Many of our troubles, probably most of them, have their causes in ourselves. They come within the Divine plan not as visitations which God foreordains, or directly inflicts; but as actualities which He foresees, emergent in the history of man. They would be equally facts if they were not foreseen: that they are foreseen does not necessarily make them facts. This is not to shut out all direct intervention on the part of God from the sufferings of man; it only puts in a protest against the notion that makes all suffering the direct and arbitrary infliction of God. Providence is the action of God through law; and, as a general rule, providential laws work best for him who works the best with them. They work — it may be silently and in secret — but they work surely against the man who works against them. There are laws of health, physical, and mental which, if a man wilfully disregard or habitually transgress them, will work directly against and not for him. A man is intemperate in his habits; he lives in excess. Very well. Subsequent temperance may alleviate, but it cannot wholly exonerate him from the penalty of a long course of riotous living. In how many ways, and with what a perverse tenacity of wilful ignorance, we are violating these laws and are suffering bitterly and hopelessly in consequence, can be known only to God. That we do violate them, that many of our sad experiences are due to such violations, it would be idle to dispute. This suicidal raid on the economies of life, in spite of the warnings and protests of God, is one of our deadly sins. So, too, in what is called the mystery of sudden death. In the case of many a successful man of business, the cup is dashed from his lips just when its fragrant sweetness is being filled to the brim. Of course, everyone is shocked at the mystery of Providence which, in so arbitrary a manner, puts its arrest on the life of such a man. To God, it may be, all the mystery of the case is explained in that man's dogged determination to crowd the work of two lives into one. The engine. work of the brain was driven at high pressure; and so the machinery broke down. 3. But now there are troubles and afflictions — and these not few — which we must consider only as the punishment of sin. "The Lord doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men." But then He does afflict and grieve them, when they offend. "He will not cast" them "off forever. He will have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies." But the compassion is in the use of the rod, not in the withholding of it. We thus suffer because we sin. And, presumably, we all suffer in some form and at some time, because we have all sinned against some law or commandment of God. Do a wrong thing, with a bad intent, — and though you put the breadth of creation between you and it, the penalty will reach you. "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished." In the Old Testament Decalogue we have a summary of the moral statues under which man is placed. And as these were intended to determine the actions of men and do determine them, all men keeping or breaking, or alternately breaking and keeping them; so the providence of God, as the guardian of law, deals retributively with men. May we not expect that God will claim the right to be heard, and to vindicate Himself and His works against the insults of men? No: God will not abdicate His throne because of the atheism of men. We may refuse to see any convincing proofs of His busy presence with us. We may openly deny that any such presence exists; or we may distress ourselves with a superficial reading of the many mysteries which are burdening the air with shrieks or breaking human hearts with grief. But that presence, if unseen and unrecognised by men, is immanent and real God works in silence. He works and waits, on lines that stretch into the eternal And now, what, in view of these conclusions, is the first sentiment with which we ought to fill our minds? Is it not that of profound thankfulness for that revelation in which the origin and the purpose of all human suffering are made known? In the meantime, let us always recollect this, — that the dealings of God with men are regulated and are to be interpreted by the fact that we are a race of sinners. And, finally, let us also remember that the issues of this strife between God and man are not all played out in the present world. They do not expire always in the waste of health, in the loss of friends, the wreck of property, the crumbling down of the pride of man. The last settlement will cover all the future; as it will explain all the past. Let us then be patient and submissive. "The Lord is at hand." (John Burton.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the Lord will not cast off for ever: WEB: For the Lord will not cast off forever.