Objection: Belief in God’s Sovereignty over Sickness and Suffering Has Proven a Tremendous Comfort to Countless Christians Through the Ages
The objector goes on to cite a case of a famous person whose family was “comforted” by the “fact” that his death from illness was God’s sovereign will.
I will agree halfway with the objector and admit that many have felt “comfort” believing that God wanted someone to die from sickness. It is “comfortable” to assure yourself that nothing could have been done differently. It is “comfortable” to think that there was no issue on man’s end because it was all up to God anyway. It is “comfortable” to think that a person’s horrible suffering and death were all part of God’s mysterious master plan.
Now let me make a parallel that will probably aggravate traditional religious people but at least make them think. It is “comfortable” to assume that everyone is saved, regardless of whether or not everyone receives Jesus. It is “comfortable” for the preacher to declare to a family at a funeral that a noted unrepentant mobster and extortionist “is in a better place now.” Belief in universalism has proven a tremendous comfort to countless spiritual ignoramuses through the ages.
“Wait!” someone will say. “Universalism is heresy, and although people are comforted by it, it is FALSE comfort!” Exactly. Many people are comforted by the false teaching that sickness is God’s sovereign will, but it is FALSE comfort because it is contrary to the Bible.
As my universalism example demonstrates, the test of whether doctrine is correct is whether it agrees with the Bible, not the degree of “comfort” people get from believing it.
Jesus, who went about healing all who wanted healing, certainly didn’t subscribe to the idea that sickness and suffering from bodily problems are part of God’s sovereign will. He came to do the will of the Father, which was healing the sick.
John 5:30:
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.
Jesus said that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father (John 14:9). The will of God MUST be what Jesus did, which was healing.
I assert that belief in God’s “sovereignty” over sickness and suffering has proven a tremendous discomfort to countless Christians through the ages. The Christians who resign themselves to sickness being God’s will suffer great discomfort from their conditions, which they will almost always try to alleviate by seeking medical means to defeat what they think is God’s sovereign will. (I know that doesn’t make any sense; why would anyone want to be out of what they are convinced is God’s will? Dead religious ideas never make sense.)
False comfort always causes unintended future discomfort.
Take for example the mobster’s funeral. The people listening to the false assurance can now logically reason that if that man is in a better place now, they will all go to a better place because they are better people who never ran a protection racket. If the extortionist didn’t need Jesus to go to heaven, they will assume that they don’t either. The natural result of the lying preacher’s false comfort will be eternal discomfort for anyone who believed his comforting lies.
When a preacher declares that God “sovereignly” wills sickness, the believers listening to this false assurance will just let Satan have his way in their bodies, experiencing discomfort, because the preacher led them into that mindset. Worse, the unbelievers listening to this false assurance will believe that God is indifferent to people’s suffering and is not “good” after all, and may experience eternal discomfort because they don’t know the truth about God that would attract them to get saved. I know someone who used to be in church (though not in Christ), but when a preacher declared his family member’s death to be God’s sovereign will, he decided (logically but tragically) that he didn’t want anything to do with that kind of God. As of this writing, he is still bound for the eternal discomfort of hell as far as I know. Many other people have also concluded that they don’t want a God who is indifferent to suffering and are hell-bound as a result. They desperately need to hear the truth about the goodness of God that draws men to repentance (Romans 2:4).