1 Peter Lesson 4 The Resolution of Contradiction
1-peter-lesson-4-resolution-of-contradiction
THE RHETORICAL UNIVERSE: 1 PETER
BY J. MICHAEL STRAWN
PHASE #3–VERSE 5 AND 6: THE RESOLUTION OF CONTRADICTION (APPARENT)
INTRODUCTION AND TERMINOLOGY
In the Christian life, there is an apparent contradiction when the believer looks at his circumstances and compares them to the promises God has made. We say it is only an apparent contradiction, because only our hold on human lived experience, and the explanations provided to us from within the context, make it seem that there is conflict between the two.
Part of this is because we have believed that the eternal and the temporal are somehow co-equal, each sovereign in its own sphere but somewhat impotent in the other’s. For many of us, we have believed that God reigns in heaven, but our circumstances and our wills are that which determine how we operate in the temporal realm. The result, of course, is that the power of the seen effectively overrules the realities of the unseen unless we consciously and deliberately give the unseen a superior ontological status–and then act upon it.
In this lesson from 1 Peter we will see how God wants us to create a certain type of unity between our world and His revelation, and through that He can achieve the status that He refers to as being “shielded.”
BIBLICAL TEXT:
“Through faith you are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this, you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have suffered grief in all kinds of trials.”
–1 Peter 1:5-6
ELEMENTS OF THE THEMATICS:
The first thematic depicts a Christian who is standing between two forces exerting pressure on him. On the one side, as described in verse 5, he feels the force that the knowledge that God’s power is actively shielding him. On the other hand, however, he feels acutely the pressure of the suffering he is undergoing–something that is truly painful, and apparently comes in many forms and onslaughts (“suffering,” “grief,” all kinds of trials”).
However, the Christian’s faith and the shielding process do not prevent suffering. In fact, Peter gives the suffering believer enough analogic information
for him to be able to not only understand some otherwise-incomprehensible aspects of the suffering and trial; Peter might actually be saying that faith can enhance suffering–just as suffering (when understood analogically instead of contextually) can build faith.
The human tendency to see a kind of tension between the ideas of God’s power and the realities of human suffering inevitably leads to questions that challenge this connection of power to circumstances. In issues that range from the Holocaust to feelings of helplessness when a child dies, we must be ready to show Christians the real relationship between God’s shielding power and our own circumstances of suffering. In particular, we must understand that while being shielded protects our souls in times of suffering, neither our faith nor our shielded status prevent suffering.
As another thematic demonstrates, though, when viewed only temporally the situation looks like this: God says one thing, but I am experiencing something different.
GENERALIZATIONS DERIVED FROM THIS THEMATIC:
The apparent conflict between what God says about protection and shielding often seems directly to conflict with what the sensorium (human response to the five senses), worldly logic, and human lived experience seem to be saying. The inevitable question arises: why shouldn’t experience overrule promise?
That’s because there is a parallel between the human tendency to see a relationship between God’s power and our personal circumstances in exactly the same way we view the relationship between the eternal and the temporal. By seeing reality as bicameral (two-chambered), we allow for the evaluation of each element’s relative value and weight in our lives. A non-Christian, of course, would summarily discount the influence of the eternal. But, unfortunately, many Christians regard the eternal and the temporal as equal, each in its sphere. Because of that, the tenacity and -ever-present nature of the temporal sphere (where pain, remorse, fear, and other reactions reign) causes us to surrender to the temporal and allow it to overrule the eternal.
The issue is not one of trying to “will away” or ignore the realities of human suffering. Instead, it is an issue of elevating or giving superior ontological status to the eternal–by an act of the will, acknowledging that the promises of God and His ability to shield and protect are more “real” and more powerful than one’s own personal suffering.
It has always been God’s will that there exist in the mind of believers a unity between the external world and revelation. When man wrests this concept away and by self-reference forges a unity between the external and his own common sense, the unity God intended between our circumstances and His revelation is shattered.
In 1 Peter !:5-6, Peter shows the compelling reality of the suffering that his readers are undergoing–they cause grief which is itself an emotional manifestation of the physical and mental suffering they were undergoing. The trials are not just powerful in their effect–they are also varied (the word translated “many” in the NIV is translated “manifold” in the KJV. It is also used in James !:2. It carries not only the idea of complexity and number, but also the sense of “many-colored”–and that’s exactly how each new onslaught of suffering seems.)
Elsewhere in Scripture: we see repeated examples of the way in which heroes of faith acknowledged the crushing reality of personal circumstance. Joshua and Caleb, for example, were undeterred by the reality of giants and other obstacles they saw on their 40-day trip into the Promised Land.
Also: Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:1-10 acknowledged and dealt with the tension between the “now” and the promise of eventual salvation, listing ways in which he had suffered, but prefacing his account of those circumstances by affirming that “now is the day of salvation.”
ELEMENTS OF THE SECOND THEMATIC:
The squares at the bottom illustrate a recurrent idea in different forms, depicted horizontally. The resolution to the apparent contradiction is to believe and act upon revelation. Just as the eternal must subsume the temporal, the promise must subsume experience, faith must subsume suffering, eternal truth must subsume experiential questions, and faith must subsume the empiric.
Another aspect is depicted vertically in this thematic: showing that the way that the eternal affects the immediate, creating the status of shieldedness, also affects our understanding of time–the “now” in which we live.
GENERALIZATIONS DERIVED:
The promises of God have the inherent power to subsume our own experience. The great Biblical tests of faith are pragmatic example for us of people who allowed the rhetorical–which stands outside time and space–to force the conformity of the temporal to eternal purposes.
We are effectively pulled out of our context in two stages: by first of all belief, and second of all by acting on the grammatical structure of the Text, or the rhetorical power of God.
All our circumstances are controlled within unseen borders, so we should not panic. The unseen is just as ontological–real–as the seen, and certainly more powerful for the believer who is willing to accept and act on the premises of that ontology.
Faith subsumed suffering in the life of Jesus, as we will see later in 1 Peter. Jesus didn’t threaten or revile when He suffered–He understood its nature and its result. He also understood, as we must, that there will be end to suffering–as Peter tells us, after we’ve suffered a little while, we will be lifted up.
The nature of the sheildedness takes place not primarily in the past or the future, but in the “now.” That has great explanatory power for those of us who suffer. During times of suffering, it seems to us that time “moves” more slowly during illness and other painful periods. But God would in this as well subsume our understandings: time does not move, nor does it elongate. As a feature of the temporal, it is, however, subsumed by the eternal.
Another element of the way time affects us manifests itself in our desire to obtain relief from suffering. We don’t want postponement of this relief–we want it in the now. But God asks us to forfeit any thought that we have a “right” to immediacy of relief. What He promises us is achieved through waiting.
That’s because revelation transforms contextual intelligence to analog intelligence. Whereas contextual thinking would cast about seeking alleviation of pain or ways to “solve” the problem of suffering, analog intelligence would diligently seek the explanations and relief offered by Scripture. (Many of our temporal problems, in fact, are exacerbated by our attempting to create meaning solely within the parameters of the context, and then acting on those fragmented meanings.)
Any postponements a Christian would experience, therefore, would be in his or her circumstances, not in the understanding of those circumstances–answers provided by analog understanding. These informed, plenary understanding would not ignore empirical evidence–the reality of temporal suffering–but would instead by God’s power subsume it.
In 1 Peter 1:1:5-6, Peter conveys God’s genuine concern for their suffering. However, His superior power and ability to shield them is a precious gift they can only accept by believing and acting upon that same understanding He has of their situations. Because He knows the outcome of their suffering, He can ask them to rejoice.
Elsewhere in Scripture: 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 is a perfect example of someone who made a conscious decision, in the fact of irrefutable empiric suffering, to see his situation analogically. In this passage, Paul emphasizes that he doesn’t want his brothers in the Lord to be uninformed about the cold, hard realities of his own suffering. In fact, he believed in his heart that the “pressures” he faced were above his own ability to endure and that he would actually die. But–he realized a purpose for his suffering, and trusted in the ontology of the unseen–even above his own suffering and his own assessments of his context.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION:
- Does being shielded prevent suffering?
- In what ways do many people–even Christians–demonstrate that they believe that the eternal and the temporal are co-equal, each in its own sphere?
- Give at least five Scriptural examples of people who felt the pressure of the temporal, and how they responded. (At least one should be an example of someone who yielded to the temporal.)
- How does creating unity between the external world and common sense shatter the unity between the external world and revelation?
- How does the idea of ontology resolve the issue of contradiction between the promises of God and your own personal circumstances?
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