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Why You Can Have Hope & Strength in Suffering
Open Theism likes to see the God of orthodoxy as remote, controlling, and unyielding while promoting the God of openness as familiar, involved, and caring. Like all theological novelty, openness theology fails to deliver; it robs God of his glory and robs his people of his goodness.
Where Is God When We Suffer?
Take suffering. I’ll spare you the details of my wife’s pain. It’s complicated. It’s long-term and it’s horrible. Like many of God’s people, we know the experience of unanswered prayer in the face of desperate suffering. Like many, we know the struggles, the disappointments, the frustrations and the hurts of that experience. We know the questions openness theology wants to answer. An Open Theist can be gentle, sympathetic, sincere, and vulnerable. He can be well qualified to draw alongside those who are suffering. No trite platitudes, no well meaning dumb words, no shallow hopes, no stick on smile hiding a broken heart. In troubled times, an honest understanding friend who knows your pain is just what you need. But we don’t need an Open Theist.
God Is Sovereign
Open Theists often assert the goodness of God. But for all their compassion, their theology robs us of the deep and mysterious comfort of God’s sovereignty and looks instead to a God who "chooses to limit his own power," a God who "does not always get his way on earth" (Socinianism, which is undergoing a modern revival under the guise of Open Theism, says the same things). If this is true, God cannot always be our "very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1), he is not always able to answer our prayers, he is not always able to shield those who take refuge in him (Proverbs 30:5). If God is not always in control, he might want what is good on earth, but he simply isn’t able to do it. Here is a God in whom there is no comfort at all.
In tough times, we need a friend who will bring us the hope and comfort that we have a good and sovereign God who is working out all things, even suffering, for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). Without that, our suffering is simply pointless, hopeless, and cruel, and our God weak, uncaring, or distant.
Know the God of the Bible
When God appears mute and our prayers unanswered, when God is apparently absent from our sufferings, we can imagine God has chosen to limit his power and his will is frustrated. But to still our fears in the face of suffering, we must inform our knowledge of God by the Bible, not by our experiences. The Bible leaves us no doubt: God is in control. His power is not limited. He always gets his way on earth. "He does as according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth." (Daniel 4:35)
When the truth of God is abandoned, so is the hope and strength to face suffering.
Even in suffering, God always gets his way on earth. "I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things" (Isaiah 45:7, see also: Job 42:2; Psalm 33:10-11, 115:3; Proverbs 16:9, 19:21, 21:30; Ecclesiastes 7:13; Isaiah 14:27, 43:13, 46:10; Lamentations 3:37-38; Ephesians 1:11; James 4:15). Though the power of Satan and his demons is real, even they must get permission to act (Job 1:12, 2:6; Luke 22:31-32).
The Bible is certain: whatever our particular circumstance or suffering, whatever our unanswered prayer, we can be sure that our Heavenly Father is in control and has a loving purpose in it. As Jeremiah says, "Though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love" (Lamentations 3:32) and Hezekiah, "Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness" (Isaiah 38:17).
The Truth of God Helps Us Face Suffering
My wife and I may not understand God’s sovereignty and goodness in the midst of her pain, but our comfort is that he is totally in control, lovingly working out his loving purposes. Our confidence is that he brings or allows into our lives only what is for our good. By stripping God of his absolute sovereignty, Open Theism denies us that comfort and confidence. When the truth of God is abandoned, so is the hope and strength to face suffering.
In the face of pain and unanswered prayer we need a book of hope, comfort and profound biblical insight. We need orthodox theology with a big pastoral heart. We have found Jerry Bridges, Is God Really in Control: Trusting God in a World of Hurt to be such a book.