What’s In It For Me?
In Reaching for an Invisible God Philip Yancey relates a story of a young, beautiful woman afflicted with an inoperable brain tumor. He and his church watched the steady “physical deterioration.”
Every month our church had a time of prayer for healing, and Sabrina and her husband went forward each month. Soon she was wearing colorful scarves to hide the effects of the chemotherapy. All too quickly, she began walking with a limp in need of assistance just to make it down the aisle. Then she lost the use of all her limbs and attended church in a wheelchair. Then she went blind and was confined to bed. Toward the end, she could not speak and communicated by blinking her eyes at her husband’s promptings. (ch. 6)
I can’t imagine being in that church. I don’t want to imagine myself in that church. Praying monthly for a woman whose life was slowly taken from her by this tumor would greatly harm my faith. Just knowing that such things happen all the time to Christians who have placed their faith in a God of love and power sickens me. My stomach rolls with nausea.
The paradox of a powerful, benevolent God and a wicked and pain-filled world is a question young coffeehouse philosophers will discuss forever. Meanwhile the bed-ridden believers, the poverty-stricken and friendless, tackle a more pressing question: How does believing God benefit me? It’s not a selfish question. It’s not “What’s in it for me?” (God might reply: You’re getting eternal life. What else do you want?) The question is: how life is changed by believing God?
The Bible is full of believers. They all seem to experience some measure of trials and tribulations. God’s faithful were faithfully murdered, beaten, plotted against, slandered, and sawed in half. They were imprisoned, mocked, dragged into court, and beheaded. Being a prophet, one that God actually spoke to, was no better. They didn’t find their lives enriched with benefits. In fact, they could look forward to scorn or suffering. A few were fortunate enough to witness miracles of deliverance of one sort of another, but overall a prophet was not a desirable career choice.
When you look at unbelievers you can see the same sorts of trials and tribulations. If you compare the circumstances of believers and unbelievers one seems to find they are similar. There are similar ratios of poverty, opulence, divorces, and happy marriages. So what is the benefit of believing in God? It’s an important question. It has to be important to me as a Christian because many Christians, including myself, are guilty of misrepresenting the gospel. We tell unbelievers their lives will be easier if they come to the faith when in fact the Bible promises the opposite. We imply that their lives will be better but we don’t specify in what way.
Believing God makes my life better not because I won’t experience pain. I will experience pain whether or not I place my faith in Christ. Believing God arms me with what seems to be the flimsiest weapon: hope. Believing God gives me hope that there is a reason for the pain and suffering. Believing God gives me hope that the world is not out of control, but squarely in the hand of a powerful being. Believing God moves my feet forward, it stretches out my hand to do and to work. It opens my mouth to speak. It bars the closet as a place to hide. If God is out there in the world, I can go out in the world with all its misery and shameful apathy. The benefit of believing God is being able to not cry out in anguish twice a day: each time you wake in the morning and again at night before going to sleep.
I’m not trying to answer whether or not believing God is rational (though I believe it is as rational as anything else). I’m not currently interested in arguing if Jesus is a liar, Lord, or lunatic. I’m asking and answering, if only for myself: so what if Jesus is Lord? Is faith in Christ merely fire insurance or is there a reason for my life today to believe? I believe there are a couple of reasons. And just one of those reasons is hope to fight against despair.