Doctrine that Weeps

In spite of her lengthy decline, I was nowhere near as prepared for my mother’s death as I thought. Only afterward did I learn that grief was not the straightforward thing I'd expected. And even though I had every reason to believe that my mother was with the Lord, I found myself grappling with the cold reality of death, not just for my mother but for everyone.

When she died it was like a veil was lifted. I saw clearly for the first time the horror of what I’d only given lip-service to before: everywhere and every day some deeply beloved person is dying. Every day, everywhere someone is aching and weeping for their loss. And if the Bible is true, then not all of those people will spend their eternity with Christ in heaven. As my mother’s death brought home this tragedy, my heart began to break.

"Some of us have absorbed a form of theology with all the answers. We can offer standard answers to every problem that comes along, especially if the problem is afflicting some other person. Our certainty and dogmatism give us such assurance, our systematic theology is so well articulated, that we leave precious little scope for mystery, awe, unknowns. Then, when we ourselves face devastating catastrophe, and we find that the certainties we have propounded with such confidence offer us little relief, our despair is the bleaker: we begin to question the most basic elements of our faith. Had we recognized that in addition to great certainties there are great gaps in our comprehension, perhaps we would have been less torn up to find that the mere certainties proved inadequate in our own hour of need.” —D.A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?

It is through pain and confusion that our beliefs are tried, and my "mere certainties proved inadequate in [my] own hour of need." I found myself trapped by questions for which I’d once had pat answers. I could no longer stomach the doctrine that real people, deeply loved people, end up in hell. But I knew that if I could not accept that teaching, I could no longer claim to trust or believe the God of the Bible at all. 

So I struggled for months with that unthinkable doctrine, hoping I could disprove it or interpret it away.  But I couldn’t. And though I couldn’t—through it all— the only real comfort I found was between the covers of the very same Book that also taught the thing I feared. My dread was in Scripture, but so was my hope. I returned again and again to the words of Abraham: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18:25. I began to accept that I am not God; I am not holy; I am not righteous; and I do not see what He does. There are “great gaps in [my] comprehension.”  So I put my trust in the Righteous Judge, trusting that when I see Him face to face, He will close those gaps. 

In the end, what my grief revealed was not that my doctrine was false, but that I had been far too glib. I had forgotten that my Savior is a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Is. 53:3) and that when His dear friend, Lazarus, died “Jesus wept” (Jn 11:35).  He wept even though He chose not to prevent it (Jn 11:6), and he grieved even though in mere minutes He would raise him from the dead. The tragedy of death and the mourning of those around Him broke His heart. And it was with a broken heart that our Lord called Lazarus forth from the tomb. 

It took my own grief to show me first-hand what a cold and heartless thing it is to speak hard truth from anything but a broken heart. And it took my own grief to learn that the most Christlike thing we can do when we encounter someone’s sorrow is to “. . . weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15).

(This article was originally published here.)