Hurricane Idalia slammed into Florida’s Big Bend area yesterday morning. Some residents who chose to ride out the storm at home had to “swim out of their windows” to escape waves of water crashing through their front doors. It then flooded parts of Georgia and the Carolinas before moving offshore this morning.

In other news, a fire ripped through a rundown five-story building in Johannesburg, South Africa, killing at least seventy-three people as of this morning. Several of the victims were children. And today is the anniversary of Princess Diana’s death in 1997 at the age of thirty-six.

I’ve written often over the years on the subject of innocent suffering and truly believe that God redeems all he allows, even disasters like those in today’s news. At the same time, I don’t want to sound a positive note that would be tone-deaf to those who are grieving. So instead, I’ll offer some very personal reflections that are different from any I’ve shared in the past.

My two great crises

My father died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of fifty-five. The shock was nearly overwhelming for me and my family. He had been in poor health since his first heart attack nineteen years earlier, but we did not expect his death to come so soon or abruptly. And I had no idea why God would allow such a tragedy.

The other great crisis of my life came ten years ago when our older son was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent surgery and six weeks of radiation treatments. The thought that he could die from this was more than I could contemplate. Watching our son go through surgery and radiation was more grievous for me than I can express in words. To this day, I try not to think about the pain of those months.

Here’s my point: In both cases, I learned the truth of Robert Frost’s observation that there is “no way out but through.” Avoiding the realities we were facing did not make them any less real. Pretending that our pain was less painful did not make it so. Keeping up appearances with others did not change the condition of my heart.

And being anything less than honest and transparent with God only made things worse for my soul.

“O Lᴏʀᴅ, how many are my foes!”

Over these years as a “fellow struggler” (to use John Claypool’s poignant metaphor), both as a pastor and as a human, I have come to appreciate the honesty of God’s word. The so-called “psalms of lament” (nearly half of the Psalms) have become especially important for me.

The first is perhaps the most deeply personal for David. Psalm 3 was composed while he was fleeing for his life from his son Absalom (2 Samuel 15–18). Imagine what this aged king must have felt as his son usurped his throne, staged a national rebellion, and sought to kill him.

In response, David begins: O Lᴏʀᴅ, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, ‘There is no salvation for him in God’” (Psalm 3:1–2). I would have followed this very honest statement with a litany of complaints against the Lord, asking him to explain why he allowed this crisis in my life and nation.

David does not: “But you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the Lᴏʀᴅ, and he answered me from his holy hill” (vv. 3–4). He chooses to see God’s unseen presence and providential protection and to cry to him in faith.

Consequently, he can make a statement I find absolutely astounding: “I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lᴏʀᴅ sustained me” (v. 5). Even while fleeing from his son’s armies, David can sleep while trusting that God will protect him. As a result, he testifies, “I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around” (v 6).

And he prays, “Arise, O Lᴏʀᴅ! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked” (v. 7). Then he extends his intercession to his divided nation: “Salvation belongs to the Lᴏʀᴅ; your blessing be on your people!” (v. 8).

Reflections for all who suffer

I take from our psalm two life principles that are relevant for anyone facing life’s tragedies today.

One: David’s prayer invites us to be honest with God.

Psalm 3 and others like it are preserved in Holy Scripture as models of true transparency. They remind us of our Lord’s call to “reason together” (Isaiah 1:18); the Hebrew is literally translated as “argue it out.”

Do you need to argue with God today?

Two: David’s example invites us to be honest with ourselves.

My favorite part of Psalm 3 is verse 7, where David prays, “You strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.” This is not pious religiosity but personal transparency. David is honest with his emotions in the moment, secure in the knowledge that he can admit how he truly feels to himself and then to God.

After my father died, I began praying the words I felt I should say, telling God that I was grateful for my father’s life and that I trusted him with our family’s needs. But then, the Spirit somehow opened a door in my spirit to how I genuinely felt at that moment—angry, hurt, and frightened. I was mad at my father for dying and mad at my Father for allowing my father to die.

That evening, I went into our backyard, looked up into the night sky, and shook my fist at God. But he did not shake his fist at me.

He never does.

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“It will be pretty crazy when I watch him walk by. I’ll be able to say, ‘There goes my kidney.’” This is what Eddie McCarthy, a high school math teacher in Toledo, Ohio, told a Washington Post reporter after donating a kidney to Roman McCormick, who was one of his geometry students. The teacher and student are doing well following the transplant surgery.

Stories like this illustrate Albert Einstein’s observation, “Only a life lived for others is a life worth living.” And they are especially notable in a day when such altruism seems so rare.

Maui residents say they are being looted and robbed at gunpoint following catastrophic wildfires on the island. On the mainland, retail theft is up 26.5 percent across the US. A recent video showed more than thirty people stealing $300,000 worth of items from Nordstrom in Los Angeles. A few days earlier, the same thing happened at a Yves Saint Laurent store in the LA area.

“A society that’s terrible at moral formation”

“How America Got Mean” is New York Times columnist David Brooks’ latest in-depth article for The Atlantic. The subtitle explains his premise: “In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.”

As examples, Brooks documents the rise of hate crimes and murder and the decline of social trust.

He writes that “the words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces” (his italics). In his view, “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.”

His explanation is simple: “We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.” Said differently, “We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation.”

He notes that America’s Founders had “a low view of human nature, and designed the Constitution to mitigate it.” Consequently, for the first 150 years of our history, teaching virtue was central to society’s endeavors. Foundational was the conviction that “concepts like justice and right and wrong are not matters of personal taste: An objective moral order exists, and human beings are creatures who habitually sin against that order.”

“Whatever feels good to me is moral”

What changed? Brooks reports that humanists responded to the horrors of World War II by claiming that “the existence of rigid power hierarchies led to oppression in many spheres of life.” In their view, “We need to liberate individuals from these authority structures” since “people are naturally good and can be trusted to do their own self-actualization.”

The result was the abandonment of moral formation in schools and society. Psychology, especially emphases on self-help and self-esteem, replaced philosophy and theology. The consequence is what philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre called “emotivism”: “Whatever feels good to me is moral.”

However, as Brooks perceptively notes, “Expecting people to build a satisfying moral and spiritual life on their own by looking within themselves is asking too much. A culture that leaves people morally naked and alone leaves them without the skills to be decent to one another.”

Brooks quotes Duke Divinity School theologian Luke Bretherton: “The breakdown of an enduring moral framework will always produce disconnection, alienation, and an estrangement from those around you.”

A sobering conversation with a cashier

This is where the Christian faith becomes relevant, or at least it should. Christians are called to imitate Jesus (Romans 8:29) and manifest virtues vital to flourishing such as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). However, Brooks mentions churches only twice in his lengthy article. In his prescriptions for a more moral society, he nowhere includes religion or faith (even though he converted to Christianity a few years ago).

Why is this? My answer is that Christianity is not obviously producing culture-changing Christians. Too many of us act too much like the world when we’re not in church.

This fact was driven home for me yesterday when I was checking out from a store and struck up a conversation with the cashier. When our discussion turned to faith, she said that she was a Christian but she had to work on Sunday mornings, so she attended services on Sunday night. She added that she was hoping to change her hours to be off on Sunday mornings, but not for the reason I expected.

She explained that so many Christians come into her store after church services and treat her so rudely that she would rather not work the Sunday morning shift. I’ve heard similar stories from waiters and waitresses who say the after-church shift is their hardest all week—church attenders are the most demanding and tip the least.

“May all who come behind us find us faithful”

I say all of that to say this: the moral crisis David Brooks analyzes so perceptively is a historic opportunity for our faith to impact our culture. People are dying—some literally through “deaths of despair” such as suicide and drug addictions, the rest spiritually—to experience God’s life-giving love and grace.

But they understandably judge Christianity by Christians. When I was lost, I did the same thing. It was the vibrant joy and peace I witnessed in Christians I met that drew me to their faith. I wanted what they had. Nearly fifty years later, I’m so glad I saw Jesus in them.

Now it’s my turn and yours. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to fill and control us today so fully that we exhibit the compassion and character of Jesus to everyone we meet (Ephesians 5:18). Let’s measure success by the degree to which people see Christ in us (cf. Colossians 1:27). And let’s settle for nothing less than a movement of culture-changing Christians whose love for their Lord and their neighbor transforms those they influence (Mark 12:30–31).

In the words of Steve Green:

O may all who come behind us
Find us faithful,
May the fire of our devotion
Light their way.
May the footprints that we leave,
Lead them to believe,
And the lives we live
Inspire them to obey.
O may all who come behind us
Find us faithful.

NOTE: Our Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series is a perennial favorite, so I encourage you to request your copy today of the newest edition, Vol. 12. We discuss cremation, horoscopes, and whether God supports war—all from a biblical perspective that we pray leads you back to the timeless truth of God’s word.

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