Warren W Wiersbe - When Life Falls Apart

B e kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle.

Im not certain who first made that statement, but it gives wise counsel indeed. All of us are fighting battles and carrying burdens, and we desperately need all the help we can get. The last thing any of us needs is for somebody to add to our problems.

It isnt the normal demands of life that break us; its the painful surprises. We find ourselves fighting battles in a war we never declared, and carrying burdens for reasons we dont understand. Im not talking about reaping what we sow, because most of us are smart enough to know when and why that happens. If we break the rules, we have to accept the consequences; but sometimes things happen even when we dont break the rules.

When life hands us these painful surprises, we start to ask questions. We wonder if perhaps weve been cheated. We begin to doubt that life makes any sense at all. Bad things do happen to Gods people; and when these bad things happen, our normal response is to ask, Why us?

This book is one mans effort to try to help the many people who are hurting, people who, in their pain, are asking fundamental questions that get down to the foundations of life. Is there a God? If there is, what kind of God is He? By what rules is He running the game of life? Is He free, or is He handcuffed by His own universe? Is He working out a plan, or is He so limited that He cant intervene in the affairs of life? Does it do any good to pray? Do we have any authoritative information from God and about God, or must we settle for our own limited conclusions, based on bits and pieces collected from the shattered experiences of life?

These are important questions and they must be answered.

This book is part of what Mortimer Adler would call the Great Conversation, that fascinating discussion that has been going on for centuries, wherever men and women have pondered the problem of evil in this world. My hope is to help people who hurt and who are perplexed by the problems of life.

For more than sixty years, I have been involved in Christian ministry, trying to help people draw upon the vast spiritual resources God makes available to us. I have had to ask some fundamental questions. Have I been applying the right medicine to the right maladies? Has my diagnosis of the situation been correct? How much do I really know about the God Ive been preaching and writing about all these years? Do I have the kind of faith that works in the battlefield of life?

As I wrestled with these and other questions, I came to some conclusions that will be elaborated on in the chapters of this book. But, just so you know where we are heading, here they are.

1. Our answers to the problem of suffering must have intellectual integrity . We are made in the image of God, and this means we must think. We must ask the right questions if we hope to get the right answers. This means we must all become philosophers and question our questions. We cant avoid this, because the minute you try to answer a question about life, you become a philosopher.

2. People live by promises, not by explanations . This is the balance to number one. Nobody can fully answer all the questions; but, even if we could, the answers are not guaranteed to make life easier or suffering more bearable. God is not standing at the end of a syllogism, nor is peace of mind found at the conclusion of an argument. In every area of life there must always be an element of faithmarriage, business, science, and ordinary everyday decisions. What you believe determines how you behave, but you cant always explain what you believe and why you believe it. Faith is one of the forces by which men live, wrote Henry James, and the total absence of it means collapse.

3. We must live! Life is a gift from God, and we must treasure it, protect it, and invest it. We may be able to postpone some decisions, but we cannot postpone living . Life cannot wait until the sciences may have explained the universe scientifically, wrote Jos Ortega y Gasset. We cannot put off living until we are ready.... Life is fired at us point-blank. Either we come to grips with life and make it work the best we can, or we give up. The ultimate in giving up is suicide. The most important question in life is not Why do bad things happen to good people? but, Why are people here at all? What is the purpose of life? Does anybody know?