Crisis time, grace time

What are the meanings that lie hidden in the troubles of the church? Where is God when in one way or another the church is knocked to her knees by some confounding situation, as often enough she has been? In the discomfiture and chagrin that have battered our own church community in recent years and months, what is God trying to say and do in His church?

In such circumstances it is easy to become disillusioned with the Church, questioning her authenticity, even her character and charter. Or maybe in looking into the face of today's church we see a dulling of the luster we once admired in her, and perhaps we feel touches of helplessness or resignation. These kinds of feelings are almost inevitable if we evaluate the church's afflictions in merely rational or political terms. If the meanings that come forward spring from such valid, though limited vantage points, then we are virtually destined for the land of despondency and disillusionment.

How then may we view the meaning of the storm fronts that blow through the Church? A friend recently shared with me the following pro found and wonderfully true expression of the way in which the disabling and damaging mingles in God's sovereign providence to generate among us the beneficial and beautiful:

"I now know that my encounter with Brother Cancer has been a time of grace. Initially, I could not fully acknowledge his presence. Later, I was not always a ready listener. But, both patient and persistent, he has helped me to see more clearly and to know my Lord more intimately. As I wonder about the future, one concern looms large. Should I walk now alone, [without the benefit of Mr. Cancer's companionship] will I live always with the wisdom and intensity that accompanied me as I walked with Brother Cancer?... I hope that I have journeyed honestly and openly with my companion.... And most profoundly, I pray that I might now more fully live in Christ... and give praise to God."¹

The author of this immeasurably wise insight had battled high grade sarcoma with all its accompanying pain and anguish. Instead of viewing his cancer merely as a demonic, mystifying emissary of pain and death, he sees the sovereign God majestically exploiting the missiles of Satan so that they bring a redemptive meaning and discipline to his life. This is indeed a redemption he badly needed, and would not have been able to embrace had it come in any other form. It was indeed the naked distress and fear that, under the skillful touch of God, opened his soul to insight and healing. It is this that brought him to the kind of inner restoration he sought all along and needed most.

Isn't this a basic and underlying theme in the history of God's approach to those who are His? Isn't this fundamental to the way God has related to His people throughout their history, even if some of our contemporary views of the way God loves, seem to contradict it?

David's poetic review of Israel's history confirms this. "... Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom, prisoners suffering in iron chains, for they had rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High. So he subjected them to bitter labor; they stumbled and there was no one to help. Then [directly because of their predicament] they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away their chains" (Psa. 107:4-14, NIV). And so goes the whole psalm and much of the Bible itself, and the more deeply one interacts with the text, the more parallel it appears to be with the contemporary experience of today's church.

In C. S. Lewis' great allegorical work, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe there is a telling conversation between Susan and Lucy and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. The two girls are asking Mr. and Mrs. Beaver about the magnificent, mysterious King Asian (Christ), to whom the Beavers promise to introduce the girls.

'"Is is he a man?'" asked Lucy.

'"Asian a man!' said Mr. Beaver sternly. 'Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood.... Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Asian is a lion the Lion, the great Lion.'"

"'Ooh!' said Susan, 'I'd thought he was a man. Is he quite safe?...'"

"'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver.... 'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'"²

In the light of God assuming such a role in the life of his church, it seems to me that a rather different-from-usual meaning and response should be embraced when trying to explain what the dynamics are and how the players are to play as the church faces the arrows that come from the quivers of the Archenemy. It is clear that one of the most honest ways of viewing the struggles of the church, or more specifically, of locating God in the vicissitudes of church crises, is found in the message to Laodiceans. "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock" (Revelation 3:19,20, NASB).

We are so used to evaluating our troubles in almost exclusively organizational, structural, political or pragmatic terms, that our most common reaction in all our crises is to ask such limiting questions as "Who is to blame?" "What structures, policies or organizational measures must we modify to prevent this from happening again?" or "Isn't it terrible that the Devil seems to have such a foothold in the Church?" Of course, these are important questions, but they tend to be asked in such a way and with such an assigned significance that they tend to eclipse the spiritual realities hidden in the storms that pound the church.

So it has been enriching to be part of the process of electing a new General Conference President. Personally, I have seldom if ever felt in myself or in this Church of ours the extent of prayer, the magnitude of corporate soul searching or the level of eagerness to know the will of God that was palpably present last month as we met to search out a leader for our worldwide congregation. I am convinced all that has happened has been divinely intended and even calculated, as events shaped themselves into the crisis of the last few months. In God's sovereignty the storm brought us figuratively and literally to our knees. A good place to be, especially if we had not been there much of late.

But let us now continue to embrace God's call to us to "live always with the wisdom and intensity that accompanied" us as we walk within our crises. If we do not there maybe in God's sovereign discretion another and perhaps yet another storm, even more severe than those that have so far blown through the Church, exploited by God to bring us about so that the ship of the church will sail as He means it to on the course He has chosen.