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The girl I thought I was going to marry
recently left me, and it really hurts. Now I wonder if I was to
blame. But even more, it makes me afraid to date anyone
else. How can I know if someone can be trusted, that she won’t
leave…even after we’re married?
You’ve just asked one of the toughest questions there is.
What about pain? How do we get over it? Why does God let it
happen? Is there any way we can prevent more of it in the future?
Before
I address your specific question, I need to say something about pain in
general. Many people see pain as being part of evil. If
this is true, then God’s job, and our job, is to remove as much pain as
possible from this world. When Jesus taught us to pray, “Deliver
us from evil,” these folks would say He was teaching us to ask God to
deliver us from suffering.
But there’s a big problem with this
way of looking at things: it doesn’t really match up with what the
Bible teaches. Paul told the Colossians, “I now rejoice in my
sufferings” (Colossians 1:24). Peter agrees, “Rejoice to the
extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings” (I Peter 4:13).
James puts it this way, “Count it all joy when you fall into various
trials” (1:2).
If suffering were evil, this wouldn’t make any sense.
There
is, of course, a connection between evil and suffering: evil causes a
lot of suffering. Your girl left partly because you did things
wrong and partly because she did things wrong. I don’t know
anything about the particulars of your situation, but I’ll bet there
was some false advertising that got you two together in the first
place, then probably there was some self-centeredness and lust stirred
into the mix, and finally, there might have been fear and unforgiveness
and other such brokenness that made the whole thing seem (to her) not
worth the effort.
So, what’s going to make the next relationship any different?
Well, you could be a little more honest and a little less selfish and a little more self-controlled and a little more forgiving…
But what if that’s not enough?
I
hate to say this, but I can almost guarantee…it won’t be. Not in
this world. Not with the unrealistic expectations we have of our
husbands and wives. Not with the upsidedownness of what we’re
taught about manhood and womanhood. And most of all, not if we go
at life believing God wants us, more than anything, to be free of pain.
Wait a minute. Am I saying God wants us to suffer?
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