A Sovereign God in a Suffering World with David LIbby

David's book A Different World
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David's wife, Lisa, and he raised their two daughters, Kayla and Bethany, in rural Maine. 

They hunted, fished, foraged for wild edible plants, went camping in remote and undiscovered places, grew gardens, raised livestock, and preserved their own food.

Lisa was a homeschooling/homesteading mom, and David was a self-employed logger. 
As an unintended consequence of this lifestyle, we were all bitten by dozens of ticks. 

About the time their girls were in their mid-teens the whole family had become desperately ill with Lyme Disease, along with a whole host of complications. 

For years he served in the church, first as a deacon, and then as an elder. 

He has long been a self-taught student of Theology and philosophy and has learned all the correct answers to some of the most difficult questions, and can hold his own as a Christian apologist and Theologian. 

But when his family's health fell apart, he discovered something that the books do not teach: that there is a sharp disconnect between an encyclopedia of head knowledge, and an application of that knowledge in the muddy and bloody trenches. 

It is there that his book was conceived.

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Transcript

[00:03] Jan Johnson: Welcome to Just Talking About Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus.

[00:12] Hello, David, Libby. Nice to have you as a guest today on Just Talking About Jesus.

[00:17] David Libby: Well, thank you, Jan. I'm very glad to be here. And I love to talk about a lot of things like edible mushrooms we were talking about just minutes ago. But my favorite thing to talk about is Jesus.

[00:27] Jan Johnson: Yeah, yeah.

[00:29] David Libby: Who created edible mushrooms.

[00:31] Jan Johnson: Exactly. The creator of all. Isn't that so true?

[00:34] David Libby: Yeah.

[00:35] Jan Johnson: Tell me some of your testimony. What brought you to the Lord? What's your life story? Not your whole life, but.

[00:44] David Libby: Yeah, yeah. Well, I was. I was raised in a distinctly Christian home and grew up in the church.

[00:53] I made a profession of faith at a very young age, but like many people my age who had some very rebellious teenage years, but then returned to the Lord with wholehearted devotion in my early 20s and have never looked back.

[01:09] So my life has been spent following the Lord. Now, a big turning point or a big milestone in my walk with the Lord was, you know, the book that I'd published that, you know, we perhaps will talk about that.

[01:21] The years of very, very serious chronic illness my family went through and times of intense suffering, that. That was a milestone that really tried my commitment to the Lord and I guess tried in the sense of refining more than in the sense of challenging.

[01:41] You know, my. My commitment was radically, radically enhanced, you know, through times of suffering.

[01:47] Jan Johnson: And isn't that the truth? Right.

[01:50] Yeah, all kinds of things. You know, and honestly, if we didn't have anything bad that happened to us and we're just going through life, I mean. Yeah, yeah. I'm a.

[02:00] I'm a believer. I'm. You know, life is good and everything else. It doesn't draw you to your knees and teach you trust, even though you can't see the end of the story.

[02:12] David Libby: Yeah, that is very true. Yeah. Well said. Yeah. I like the way Job put it, you know, when he said, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him? And that's the kind of faith that.

[02:21] That we don't know that we have until we've been in a place of deep suffering. And, you know, and I've noticed that intense suffering tends to kind of have a winnowing effect that, you know, the people who really don't have a commitment to the Lord, you know, the.

[02:38] The frauds and pretenders tend to be driven away, whereas people who really do love the Lord are drawn closer to Him. We rely on him more heavily.

[02:48] And also we can look in Scripture. And we can see that he's promised us trials and tribulations in this life, so why in the world would we see them as reasons to reject Him?

[03:02] This is the world that he's promised us.

[03:04] Jan Johnson: And if he even put his own son through all of those trials, why not us? I mean.

[03:11] David Libby: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, the Lord who was put through the intense trials, not only, you know, not only did he suffer with us, but he suffered for us.

[03:21] You know, more importantly that that same Lord who suffered for us, you know, told us that we will, you know, be in a place where we have to take up our crosses and follow him in that sort of thing.

[03:30] So we should expect suffering in this life.

[03:34] Jan Johnson: But because of all that he went through, he understands everything we go through, correct?

[03:41] David Libby: Yeah, that's what Hebrews tell us. We have a mediator who can sympathize with us.

[03:46] You know, he's been. He's been through it with us and for us, so. Yeah, very well said.

[03:51] Jan Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. So is it okay to talk about what happened to your wife and daughter?

[03:57] David Libby: Certainly, yes, ma'am.

[03:59] Jan Johnson: Share with us.

[04:00] David Libby: Okay. I married my wife, oh, 30 years ago, and she was healthy.

[04:07] And we were the kind of people that, you know, take life by. By the. By storm. And, you know, there was no mountain too steep for us to climb or any thicket too thick.

[04:19] And, you know, we were outdoorsmen.

[04:21] We, you know, hunted, fished, you know, we foraged wild edible plants. And we.

[04:26] We really, you know, I anticipated a life where we would spend a life together, you know, really, you know, working hard and playing hard.

[04:34] And a year after marriage that her health began to decline, so we didn't have much time of really good health.

[04:44] Now, her health wasn't always terrible. There were times when she was debilitated, but it was up and down. But she was never fully well from, you know, about. For about 29 of 30 years.

[04:56] And there were times when her health was very bad. She was hospitalized over and over again. You know, many times I thought that I would be widowed at a fairly, fairly young age.

[05:04] You know, a lot of times I didn't think she would make it.

[05:08] We had two daughters. They grew up really kind of taking care of the mother who would ordinarily be taking care of them. They learned to do the household chores and cook and that sort of thing at a very young age.

[05:22] And then when my girls were, oh, youngest, roughly 15 and oldest 17 or so, they also became very seriously ill.

[05:33] And the symptoms were chronic fatigue, flu, like symptoms, you Know they're sick all the time.

[05:41] Terrible pain throughout their bodies.

[05:44] My wife described it as feeling like she had shards of broken glass all throughout her body.

[05:51] Yeah, Extreme vertigo. There were times when she couldn't walk. She would have to be helped to get around. We never quite put her in a wheelchair, but I expected that we would have to terrible seizures.

[06:04] The girls particularly would have horrible seizures, sometimes lasting for hours. We'd watch their buddies contort and twist in a shapes I didn't know bodies could contort into.

[06:14] And then.

[06:16] Yeah, yeah, for sure. And a lot of bad mental problems, psychotic episodes, hallucinations.

[06:26] And my youngest daughter developed a symptom that the doctors called sound sensitivity. Which is a bit of an understatement. It got so bad that we had the. Via noise canceling headphones and she still, still had trouble.

[06:41] You know, we still would have to be careful how we ate so the fork didn't click the plate, you know, too loudly and that sort of thing. And you know, any noise would cause seizures and.

[06:50] But it was really, really ugly, really bad. She was locked away in a soundproof closet for days at a time. Sometimes we'd have to put the meals outside the door and you know, send a text message and.

[07:01] And the cause of it all back early on. I think now there are better testing mechanisms and it's taken a little more seriously. But at the time it was not where the cause of it all was Lyme disease.

[07:16] A tick borne illness.

[07:18] Yeah. And I also was ill with it, but it was fairly easy for me to treat. It was very difficult for them to treat.

[07:25] And the reason for that was because they all had a genetic mutation that complicated things an awful lot. And among other complications that shut down the, shut down the body's ability to deal with toxins.

[07:38] So. So really it was toxins that were the bigger problem than the lime spirochetes.

[07:43] You know, we're, we're very careful how we eat, we're very careful how we live, but nevertheless we're still, you know, surrounded by toxin, you know, things that are toxic. And you know, we live in a world where much of the consumer products that we use are toxic, but we also live in a world where a lot of natural things are toxic.

[08:03] So if the body isn't able to deal with those toxins, then all kinds of bad things happen. So they're doing a lot better now, but still not well. Yeah, doing an awful lot better now, but still not well.

[08:17] The seizures seem to be a thing of the past and able to function. Yeah, yeah.

[08:22] Jan Johnson: Yeah. So when you went through all of that, that was really hard because you didn't see an end to it. And it kept going on and on and on. And during that, what did that take you to?

[08:35] How, how did that affect your walk with God?

[08:38] David Libby: Well, like we said earlier, it really actually drew me closer to him. Now I had times when I would really be displeased with God, which I little fish to admit.

[08:52] Yeah. You know, that, that really is sin. We don't ever have a reason to be angry with God or displeased with God.

[09:01] Jan Johnson: Anyway at the end. And he says, and God says, and what right do you have to be angry with me?

[09:07] David Libby: Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Jonah had a bit of a bad attitude there. But, but Job too, you know, Job, he, his suffering was intense. And adding to his suffering, you know, was the fact that he had, you know, friends who were there to comfort him.

[09:25] And they weren't comforting him, they were accusing of unrepentant sin, which was not true. And, but even he ended up with a bad attitude toward God. And at the end, you know, God had to correct him.

[09:35] You know, who is this who, who made.

[09:38] Jan Johnson: Who made the sky? Who made.

[09:40] David Libby: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, where were you and I? Right. You know, who is this who darkens counsel without knowledge? Exactly. So it is, it is human, you know, so, you know, we are depraved by nature, so our response isn't always what it should be.

[09:58] So I had my, had my moments, but on the whole, it really drew me closer to the Lord. I love the Lord now more than ever before. And, and I kind of get a kick out of the atheists, some of whom I've had interactions with, who point to all the suffering in this life as proof that there must not be a good, benevolent and all powerful God.

[10:22] But the God of the Bible promises us these things. So what they're doing really is they're looking around at the world around them and they're seeing exactly the kind of world that God promised us and saying, hey, that proves there is no God.

[10:34] And that's really kind of a, you know, I don't mean to be mean, but kind of a dumb argument.

[10:39] Jan Johnson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it all points back. But it is, you know, I don't know, it's just natural to say, why, why is this happening? You know, and, and I think sometimes it's hard to balance out what is it that, you know, you know, that God is in control of things, but does that mean he makes everything happen?

[11:01] He did make Some things happen in the Old Testament, you know, what. But does that mean that what's happening to me is what he made happen or, you know, trying to balance that out?

[11:11] What are your thoughts on that?

[11:13] David Libby: Well, yeah, that's a very, very good one. And that is a very deep subject. That's a very deep well. And I do address that in the book.

[11:22] So how do we, you know, reconcile God's absolute sovereignty with our responsibility, man's free will and that sort of thing? And it's, it's, it's. I think.

[11:36] I think the reconciliation of all that is something that is outside of our reach. If I could be honest. I think God's word teaches very clearly that God is a sovereign God, which means that nothing happens outside of his decree.

[11:52] But yet we are responsible. He's not the author of sin. Know, we are. You know, that's our, you know, sin is our fault, not his.

[12:00] And, you know, the fact that, I guess, you know, the fact that God is ordained from before the foundation of the earth that we'd be having this conversation doesn't mean that we're not also freely choosing to do so.

[12:11] And, you know, how does this all work out? How do we reconcile all of this? And I think that we can.

[12:18] First of all, we can see fairly clear clearly that it's not irrational, but it's something that I don't think any of us can entirely wrap our brains around.

[12:27] So, you know, we have to accept. We have to accept what evidently is. Even though we can't understand it.

[12:33] Jan Johnson: Yeah. His ways are not our ways.

[12:36] David Libby: Right, right.

[12:37] Jan Johnson: And, you know, really, there's so many things in the Bible that just were put there for everybody because everybody goes through things. You know, everybody's got some kind of hardship somewhere along their life.

[12:51] There's psalms and there's stories and there's, you know, things to work yourself through and there's promises and there's all those things to hold on to that, you know, how many people in.

[13:04] Were crying through and had sleepless nights and prayed for things or weren't aware that God was working in the background and their lives. And, you know, and that's what.

[13:17] David Libby: Yeah.

[13:18] Jan Johnson: Thing about the Bible is that it's all times, all people, all places, you know.

[13:23] David Libby: Yeah, very true. Yeah, very, very true. And, you know, in the Bible, often we get a kind of a little glimpse behind the scenes. Well, we mentioned the, we mentioned Job.

[13:32] You know, that's a wonderful prime example at the end of the Book of Job, you know, he had all these why questions, which you know, we would naturally have.

[13:42] And at the end, you know, as you said, Jan, God didn't answer the white question. He just said, you know, who are you to question me? I'm God and you're not.

[13:51] Where were you when I created the universe and so forth?

[13:56] But yet the reader of the book of Job, you and I can read it, and we get a glimpse behind the scenes. We can read the first two chapters, and we can see what happened.

[14:03] We can see the exchange between God and Satan.

[14:06] Job wasn't suffering because he'd sinned. He suffering because he was. Because he was good. He was being tested. So, you know, I guess. I guess the point is we don't know what's happening behind the scenes.

[14:16] And we do serve a God who we can trust. He is God and we are not.

[14:20] Jan Johnson: Yeah, yeah. And it's until we get to heaven that we might not ever find out, you know?

[14:26] David Libby: Right, Very true.

[14:27] Jan Johnson: Was. And what was going to. Going to happen so many things in our lives. So tell us a little bit about your book.

[14:34] David Libby: Okay. The book briefly tells our story in more detail than I gave early on in your podcast here, but kind of briefly. And then it dives into seeking to answer some of the difficult philosophical, theological questions that are prompted by a life of suffering.

[14:53] And it kind of starts out with what the atheist, naturalist and philosopher named Ernst Haeckel coined the dys. Teleological argument.

[15:07] Christians have posited what they call a teleological argument, which I think is a good argument that, you know, when you look at the world, you see evidence of purpose. That's what teleology means.

[15:17] It appears to be designed. You know, people often use a watch analogy. If you're walking through the woods and you find a pocket watch on the forest floor, you don't pick it up and say, hey, look, what blind chance did.

[15:27] You know, through millions of years, these particles all came together and formed this. This, you know, functioning watch. And you pick it up and you say, wow, somebody lost a watch.

[15:36] And, you know, somebody obviously made it. So we look at the.

[15:39] At the world around us, you know, the force you find the watch lying in, and we see far more complexity than we see in the watch itself. So, you know, why wouldn't we assume that there's a designer for the world as well?

[15:51] Well, then Ernest Haeckel came along and he. He actually didn't invent this argument. He, you know, he borrowed it from elsewhere. I know David Hume, 100 years before Hackel, used the very same argument in his book Dialogues Concerning Natural religion.

[16:04] But the argument goes, if there's any merit to this teleological argument, if the world has a designer, it cannot be the God of the Bible, because the God of the Bible is all good.

[16:15] He's benevolent, and he's also all powerful. And this means he does not and cannot make mistakes.

[16:21] But look around at the world, it's full of mistakes. There's all kinds of suffering. How do you explain the mosquito or the tick?

[16:27] So my answer to that is, well, no, there are no mistakes.

[16:30] Read Genesis 3. God cursed his creation because of man's rebellion against him. And so the things that you look at and you think our mistakes really aren't suffering is by design.

[16:41] Mosquitoes do what God designed them to do. It's part of his curse. We can look at it this way, little illustration I used in the book.

[16:50] If you can imagine Adam after the fall and after he's been removed from the Garden of Eden, and God told him that thorns and thistles will grow up in your crop fields and you will eke out a living by the sweat of your brow because of your sin.

[17:05] Imagine he's out working under the oppressive midday sun by the sweat of his brow with some of his sons and servants. And along comes the, you know, 22 year old atheist philosopher and he says, hey, Adam, I heard you believe in a perfect God, but there are weeds in your garden and you're suffering.

[17:22] Doesn't that prove that such a God would not exist? You know, Adam would say, well, no, you idiot.

[17:27] God put these weeds here in my garden. You know, read Genesis 3. So my answer to Haeckel and David, human being, well, no, these things are not mistakes. The world is as it is by God's decree.

[17:38] Well, it doesn't answer all of our questions. It just pushes the answer a little farther back. Right. You know, we could then ask, well, why, you know, if God is a sovereign God, why did he not put us in a world where we would not fall under sin and there'd be no need for a curse?

[17:54] And the most common answer was the free will answer, which I find some fault with. I think there are. I think God could have given us the same free will that we would have in heaven, you know, where we will not choose to sin.

[18:05] But yet he didn't. He gave us the ability to choose to rebel. And there are other ways that we could answer the challenge. Why did God ordain this reality that he did.

[18:19] And I think ultimately there are good answers in Scripture. He ordained a reality which was fallen to sin.

[18:26] Suffering and that sort of thing. For his own glory, he's able to display his glorious justice and his mercy and his grace to us because there's been a fall under sin.

[18:37] He gave him the occasion to demonstrate love in a way that he would not have been able to if there had been no need for an atonement. He would not have had the occasion to demonstrate this amazing act of love for us.

[18:50] But we can push back against that, too. We can say, why couldn't he have created us with the capacity to know his love and to love him in return just as well without having to have it on display in that way?

[19:00] And, you know, there are always ways we can push back against these answers until we get to the end of the line, which is like we talked about earlier, the end of the book of Job, that is that he is God and I'm not.

[19:11] And this is the. You know, this is the reality that he's created. This is the reality that we have.

[19:15] You know, and at some point we have to accept that, even if we don't comprehend why. And, you know, he's God and I'm not, and I trust him and I love Him.

[19:25] That's. That's where. That's the end of the line for me.

[19:28] Jan Johnson: Yeah. Bottom line.

[19:29] David Libby: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the book.

[19:33] Jan Johnson: Yeah. The trust is such a huge, huge thing to.

[19:40] David Libby: Yep.

[19:40] Jan Johnson: Get your mind around and to actually practice.

[19:44] David Libby: For sure. Yeah, for sure. Yep, yep. Yeah, yeah. It sure is. You know, we can also look at how it's a privilege to.

[19:53] To suffer. In one sense, it gives us the occasion to glorify God in ways that we wouldn't have otherwise. You know, he sanctifies us, refines us through trials and afflictions.

[20:02] And so, you know, there's a lot in God's word that answers a lot of our why questions and gives us a lot of comfort. You know, there is purpose behind our suffering.

[20:11] You know, God's word makes that very clear.

[20:14] You know, our momentary light afflictions are storing up for us an incomparable weight of glory in the life to come.

[20:21] Jan Johnson: Yeah. And it's like, really?

[20:25] Yeah, well. And, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about, you know, God created everything, which means he created the angels, and.

[20:34] And Satan was a fallen angel. You know, I mean, angels had free will, obviously, Right?

[20:40] David Libby: They sure did. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we. We obviously do, too. So.

[20:46] Jan Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. I am glad that we have free will. You know, I mean, who isn't glad that they have free will?

[20:55] David Libby: Right, right. For sure. Yeah. When I said earlier that I find fault with a free will answer to theological argument. You know, don't misunderstand. I'm not saying we don't have free will.

[21:05] My point is, my point is it doesn't adequately explain away problem.

[21:09] You know, God could have given us a free will that would only choose to do what's right. You could have given us the good sense to only choose what's right along with that free will.

[21:18] But we do have free will for sure. And that does account for our fall under sin. You know, me and chose to sin and Adam chose to sin and we've all heartily joined his rebellion.

[21:29] Every one of us, you know, chooses to sin. So.

[21:32] Jan Johnson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, we are almost out of time. Tell us where we can find your book.

[21:39] David Libby: Okay.

[21:41] I'm not a tech savvy person at all, so the best I can tell you, and people tell me it's really easy to find is, you know, right now it's on Amazon.

[21:48] Jan Johnson: Okay.

[21:48] David Libby: I'm hoping it'll be available elsewhere very soon, but right now Amazon's best, best place to get it. And if you, I'm told if you look up my name, David Libby, in the title of the book A Different World, that it was really easy to find.

[22:01] So, so that's the best I can tell you. Amazon, David Libby, A Different World.

[22:07] Jan Johnson: All right, well, I'll put a link in the show notes for that as well. What, what else would you like to leave with our listeners?

[22:14] David Libby: I guess I'd like to leave them with.

[22:18] If I could leave them. If I could leave them with two things depending on who the listeners are. If, if listeners are unbelievers who are not following Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, then I would urge you to remedy that.

[22:35] You are a sinner in the hands of a just and holy God.

[22:39] And no matter how good this life is, it's not going to matter when you stand before God. No matter how bad this life is, it's not going to matter when you stand before God.

[22:48] So if you're, if you're not a believer, go ahead and ask the hard questions.

[22:55] Look for answers.

[22:57] But I've done that and I'm fully convinced that the Christian worldview is absolutely, objectively true. And you need to embrace the Lord Jesus as your Lord and your Savior.

[23:09] If you are a believer in your suffering, then be encouraged. This is only temporary, even if it goes on for years and it is storing up for you an eternal weight of glory in the life to come.

[23:18] God's word tells us so very clearly.

[23:21] Don't. Yeah.

[23:22] Suffering is no evidence that he does not love you.

[23:26] He loved Job deeply, and Job suffered.

[23:29] The Lord Jesus suffered, not only with us, but for us. So if you are a believer, then hang in there. Trust in the Lord.

[23:37] Serve him with a whole heart. And it's going to pay off. You know, you're stirring up an eternal weight of glory in the life to come.

[23:45] Jan Johnson: Good words.

[23:47] David Libby: Well, thank you, Jan.

[23:48] Jan Johnson: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.