04.30.2023 - The Good Life

Scripture: 1 Peter 2:19-25

1 Peter 2:19–25 NRSV

19 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20 If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 22 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 23 When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

The Good Life

04.30.2023

Losing Our Teeth

Do you remember losing your baby teeth? My grandpa never lost his baby teeth. Of course, that happens to some people, but it is a little strange. I don’t know if kids got money for baby teeth back then, but if they did, he missed out. Even our dog had baby teeth as a puppy, and I remember my brother helping pull them.

Sometimes I wonder why God created baby teeth in the first place. Those first ones can be traumatic coming out. It feels weird, and they often bleed. It can be scary for kids who have never experienced it, especially if they are lost or nearly lost suddenly. Or perhaps you had family members or friends that tried to help pull your baby teeth. That may have been traumatic in other ways.

As teenagers and young adults, we often look back at that experience of losing teeth and realize that it was not as awful as we thought at the time. Losing those baby teeth allows us to grow and have a new set that fits our adult bodies much better than our first set of teeth. Therefore, we can look back at losing our baby teeth as a necessary growing pain and a change for the better.

In my late twenties, though, I experienced a different tooth problem—wisdom teeth. For wisdom teeth, it was not a simple matter of wiggling them until they came out and new ones came in. Instead, those teeth had to be surgically removed. Losing baby teeth made sense to me. I’m still wondering why God created wisdom teeth that we don’t keep and often don’t get to use. That may be one of those questions I ask God when I reach heaven. God, why did you create wisdom teeth?

We tend to focus on what we gain in life to measure what is successful and good. But baby teeth and wisdom teeth are not as good to gain as they are to lose. The truth is that we eventually lose everything in life. Indeed, if we are saved and want to live the new eternal life that Jesus gave us, we have to lose the old life, just like we have to lose our baby teeth for the new permanent teeth to grow and replace them.

The measure of a good life is not how we win but how we lose.

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Losing Everything

Everyone suffers, and we all will eventually lose everything, but we each experience it in unique ways and at different times. There is a distinct difference between suffering due to natural consequences and suffering unjustly. Suffering due to natural consequences is like playing out in the rain without proper clothing and catching a cold. Suffering unjustly is like people sneezing in your face and giving you a cold.

Peter wrote:

1 Peter 2:19 NRSV

19 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.

Because our world has experienced and inflicted so much suffering, we must read this verse in alignment with the rest of the Bible. Why is this verse so important? It is not because people drive around with bumper stickers and ball caps that say 1 Peter 2:19. We are not likely to make VBS and Sunday School songs about this verse to teach our children to memorize it. It is unlikely to make it into any new church creeds for us to recite together. No, this verse needs to be handled carefully because it will get twisted almost unconsciously into something that is not true.

We usually understand that suffering is bad. This verse tells us that enduring pain can be a credit to you or counted as something good, but only with two qualifiers. First, it is only a good thing if you are suffering unjustly. Peter followed this statement by explaining plainly that if you do wrong and suffer consequences for it, learn from your mistakes and don’t do it again. That is not good suffering. Good suffering only comes when you don’t deserve it.

But there is a second qualifier as well. Suffering injustice is not automatically good. Peter wrote that suffering an injustice is counted as a credit to you when you are aware of God. We must dig into that last little phrase to better understand this passage.

Peter could have written that we need to believe in, have faith in, or even trust God. But instead, he noted that we need to be aware of God. Peter had witnessed and experienced suffering. He knew what it meant to suffer injustice. And he knew that God could redeem any of that.

But the credit for redeeming suffering goes to God, not to us. God makes good things come out of bad situations, not us. This is where the rest of the Bible comes in. You can pour over the pages from Genesis to Revelation and find all kinds of suffering and injustices given and received by God’s people in every book. It doesn’t end. We’ve had over 4,000 years of history between Abraham and us today, and we have not eradicated any injustices from society. Not one. You can follow the worst stories of Genesis among the pagan nations and find them in Israel at the end of Judges, perpetrated in the Promised Land. Again and again, the stories of God’s people end with the phrase:

“...all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” - The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Jdg 21:25). (1989). Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Murder, abuse, slavery, extortion, and every other evil are alive and well. We don’t get credit for redeeming suffering and injustice because we can’t redeem suffering and injustice. Injustice is a sin, and we cannot eradicate it from our lives by ourselves. So, on our best days, we merely keep it manageable.

But there is one exception. Our suffering is redeemed and credited to us, with God, when we are aware of God working in our lives and choose to follow God’s will. There’s no formula or special rule that helps you know when you are following God’s will or not. We have to know God, we have to listen to God, and we have to follow Him if we are going to get credit for suffering. Peter tells us that Jesus is the perfect example of that. He did not suffer needlessly. Instead, he chose obedience to God and was willing to take everything that went with that.

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Finding Healing

We struggle with justice because it is only half of what is needed when we face suffering. Ghandi is famous for stating, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Justice by itself is incomplete. What we need in the face of suffering, and perhaps why we struggle so much when we focus on justice alone, is healing.

You have seen and heard stories in the news about suffering and injustice. We know that lost lives cannot be returned no matter how much we punish wrongdoers. In many cases, both the guilty and the innocent suffer. If we dig deep enough, we might discover that no one is entirely innocent, nor are the guilty free from suffering injustice themselves. But, unfortunately, life is rarely that cut and dry.

Jesus was not often remembered for rendering judgments on people. One instance from Luke 12 is when a man asked Jesus to judge in a family dispute, and Jesus declined. Instead, Jesus was known for HIs healing. Jesus will come and bring ultimate justice and make every wrong right, but He is both able and worthy to do it because He has the ability and power to bring healing along with that justice.

This whole concept of suffering unjustly exists because we live in a broken world. The result is always the same: sin and death. Jesus could have come in with guns blazing or a super-strategy to fix this world. But He brought a kind of healing instead and raised an army of wounded healers, handing the authority of His kingdom into the hands of those who knew they had no hope but Him. At the best of times, those apostles might put their lives on the line to stop harm done in ignorance or arrogance, but they sought a righteousness beyond the Law that only came from the wounded made whole and sinners saved. This work we are called to each day is like walking on water. It is impossible if we take our eyes off Jesus and lose our awareness of His presence leading us.

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Finding it all in our Shepherd

So how do we handle this life of suffering unjustly, seeking healing on behalf of others and knowing that we will eventually lose it all? Peter tells us we have to return to the shepherd of our souls. When suffering strikes, the sheep are scattered. Anxious and afraid, they run away from everything that frightens them and end up lost, alone, and vulnerable. We may build fences around us to keep everything disturbing out and then end up keeping everyone out of our lives. It is not fences or even the size of the flock that keeps sheep safe. It is their shepherd.

Our Good Shepherd, Jesus, may lead us through the valley of the Shadow of Death, but we have no reason to fear evil. On the contrary, he will protect and comfort us. Though we lose everything along the way, we know He will care for us because He has gone this way before us. Jesus showed us that we can experience temporary healing in this world, but true healing, complete healing, does not come until we have gone through the cross, through the tomb, and reached the other side of the resurrection.

We lead by example, and sometimes we lead best when we don’t even realize we are leading at all. There are lost sheep all around us, maybe here within us, who have never heard the voice of the Good Shepherd calling their name. Some people have followed false shepherds and have been wounded by them and are hesitant to follow anyone ever again. They are unaware of God’s presence and cannot see the Shepherd we follow, but they are watching us.

We cannot shepherd them ourselves, but we can bring them to Jesus, and He can lead them. However, if we try to shepherd them on our own, we will become the lost sheep leading the lost sheep, and we may end up causing more harm rather than bringing them to the healing Jesus offers.

“Oh, but don’t we have anything to offer ourselves?” that voice of pride within us whispers. We have many things to offer. Many gifts and talents, and perhaps even more than we realize. But all of them combined cannot compare to what we have to share in Jesus. When the world watches us lose everything with humility and gratitude as we follow Jesus, they will see and know the way to Salvation.

On the road you travel and the trials you face, can you see Jesus, and are you following Him?