Why are we bothered by trauma, pain and evil?

I was closing down a church plant I have been working at for the last nearly two years. Lori and I are painfully and joyously relocating to Boise, Idaho. We will be taking on leadership of New Heights Church there and continuing to lead Square One Ministries from there. It should be fun.

But in our closing time we took turns celebrating the things we had learned as a group. One of my good friends brought back to my memory a message I did on how our revulsion and disagreement with pain and crisis was a sign that we all know it is abnormal. If we didn’t react negatively that would mean that pain was normal in the sense of part of an original design.

We all know loss, pain and trauma, death doesn’t fit in our insights as to how the world is “suppose to be.” Our reaction to life’s stuff in the negative is proof there is a heaven. And that the world is, as the Bible says, residing in an abnormal state. Otherwise again we would all enjoy the pain and want more. But we don’t. We don’t, because we know it shouldn’t be.

I believe this is evidence that we are made for a more orderly, healthy world and we know it. It is evidence that things are as the Bible says.

So the next time you hurt say, “This is proof that there is more to be seen, and a more perfect world I long for on its way through Christ.”