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People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath

come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a

man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended

to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods

of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to

ask.

Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron as Pastor Tim answers your sincere

questions.

Here's Pastor Tim.

On this episode of Bible Bashed, we'll be answering the question, what is the difference between godly sorrow and being a pathetic crybaby?

Now over the years as I've sought to give a biblical answer to depression, no matter how hard I try, people frequently hear

me to be criticizing all sadness, when in fact what I'm actually doing is I'm criticizing a specific

response to sorrow or sadness.

I'm criticizing the type of situation where an individual so fully gives himself over to sorrow

to the point where they are characterized by a hopeless kind of despair and they're refusing to handle the

basic issues of life.

So far from criticizing all sadness, what I'm doing is I'm criticizing a response to sadness, and in that way

depression is this label that we have used to describe a kind of

response to sorrow or sadness that essentially involves abdicating

one's personal responsibilities.

And so depression is the excuse that people give in order to not handle their life and handle

their life in the way that God wants them to handle it.

Now as people have heard me make this kind of distinction, one of the questions they may ask

is if they realize I'm not criticizing all sorrow, and I do have a category for godly sorrow, one of the things that

people often want me to do is spell out, well what exactly is that sorrow?

So what does godly sorrow look like?

And the way that we're going to try to answer this kind of question that I've received is by trying to distinguish

between godly sorrow and being a pathetic crybaby.

Now we used to live in the kind of society that had a category for a pathetic crybaby.

So we had a category for a kind of individual who was sad and who

had despair, but then when you look at that person on the outside, you can realize that this sadness that they

have is inappropriate in certain ways or irresponsible in certain ways or dramatic in certain ways.

We used to have a category for the kind of individual who would give themselves over to sadness in a way that was somewhat

inappropriate.

And then we had mechanisms in our society of social shaming where we would discourage that kind of

situation from happening.

And so we used to have a category for a pathetic crybaby.

But as our society has basically advanced in its rebellion, one of the things that's happened is that

now we consider any emotion that a person experiences to be

fundamentally off limits towards criticism.

So whatever a person feels, like we're told in our society, we have to validate.

We have to validate people's feelings.

And we no longer live in the type of society which seems to understand that there are inappropriate kind of

feelings that a person can have.

One of the things that we have done in our society is basically demanded that everyone's

feelings be validated and not only validated, but considered a triumphant act

of bravery for them to express.

And so if a person gives himself over to inappropriate sadness or sorrow, we are told to view

that as a triumphant act of bravery and a remarkable act of courage, despite the fact

that this used to be the kind of thing that we would consider to be a negative

expression of emotions.

And so one of the things that we want to do today is try to distinguish between godless sorrow and being a pathetic crybaby.

How do we distinguish between these two?

Now, as you think about what the Bible says on this issue, there's a variety of passages which might come to

mind which basically describe the difference between what might be described as godly sorrow

and worldly sorrow or godly grief and worldly grief.

And I'm just going to give you a few characteristics that you're going to find in those passages, and I'm going to do that in a series of contrast.

And so one of the things that you want to realize is that godly sorrow is going to be typically filled with hope

and joy.

Godly sorrow is going to basically strengthen one's relationship with God.

Godly sorrow is going to want to learn the lessons that God is teaching the individual

through a difficult providence, whereas worldly sorrow is going to be hopeless.

Instead of being hopeful, it's going to be hopeless.

Instead of having the goal to glorify God, it's going to basically be an expression of self -pity.

Instead of strengthening one's relationship with God, worldly sorrow is going to attack or lash out

against God's character.

And then worldly sorrow is going to be, instead of learning the lessons that God wants us to learn through difficult

situations, worldly sorrow is going to basically surrender responsibility, and it's going to ultimately lead to

death.

So you have this category of godly sorrow, and you have this category of worldly sorrow.

And so one of the things to realize is, as you read the Bible, James tells us to count it all

joy when we fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of our faith produces steadfastness, and we're told to let

steadfastness have its full effect, that we may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

The godly person, when they face a difficult trial or situation, they're going to have the

ultimate goal of glorifying God in the midst of that, and then they know that the way to glorify God in the midst of a difficult

circumstance is going to be to ask the questions, How is God using this difficult circumstance to make me

more like Him?

Now, the person who is basically turning towards self -pity, and doesn't have the goal of

glorifying God, but basically just has the goal of expressing their emotions and expressing their sorrow in a bit of a

mitigated way, they're going to look at a difficult circumstance, and they're going to use that as an occasion to attack God's

character.

I mean, they're essentially going to use that as a situation to engage in self -pity.

Why me?

Why did God allow this to happen?

No one loves me, and no one treats me well.

And everyone's mean to me, and I don't deserve this.

And God seems to be absent or silent in the midst of all this, and how could God

do this to me?

And so, with a hopeless, self -pitying kind of sadness, essentially what's going to

happen is you're going to have a person who is engaged in self -pity, who's in a full -throttled way embracing

despair and hopelessness.

They're not going to see any redemptive value or benefit in the sadness that they're experiencing or the

difficult situation that they're experiencing.

They basically feel like there's going to be entitlement there.

They're going to feel like God has done them something wrong, and that they're not going to be able to see any good thing that can come

out of that.

And the ultimate path to this self -pitying, hopeless, despairing kind of sadness, it's just if you just

embrace that in a full -hearted way, one of the things that's going to happen is it's going to lead to despair and despondency, and

ultimately it can turn crippling, and it can manifest itself in what we describe as despair at that point.

Whereas a godly sorrow is going to be a kind of sorrow that is actually sorrowful.

So you don't want to describe a godly sorrow in a way that it has no sorrow, but it's going to be a sorrow that is going to

be mitigated with a variety of other factors.

So a person who's engaged in godly sorrow is going to see the world the way it actually is.

We are in the situation we're in because we are sinners.

We are in the situation we're in because we have inherited guilt from our first father, Adam, and

functionally is appointed unto man, wants to die, and after that to judgment.

God has basically introduced certain difficulties in human beings' life,

not because we are good people who don't deserve it and he's just as sad about it as us, but we are members of

a fallen race, and there are penalties for sin that we are going to experience.

Even if we become Christians, we are ultimately not going to, unless the Lord returns,

escape the snare of death.

All of us are going to die at some point.

We're all going to experience sickness and pain and death and suffering.

And so the person who experiences godly sorrow will look at a difficult providence, and

they're going to understand that this is a deserved act of God's providence

that has happened, and it's going to ultimately point their minds to their fallen state, that we are sinners, that we've rebelled

against God, and then it's going to have hope.

It's going to look for the solution that Jesus provides for sin in the gospel.

It's going to look at what Jesus has done.

He's delivered us from the penalty of sin and power of sin, and one day he's going to fix every problem.

So one day he's going to destroy this last enemy, death.

One day he's going to wipe every tear.

But in the meantime, when difficult situations arise, the godly person is going to grieve them, and

they're going to connect that with a doctrine of sin, and they're not going to reject the

purposes that God has for allowing this difficulty and pain and suffering.

In fact, one of the things that they're going to do is they're going to be asking the question in the moment, how is this difficult circumstance going to make

me more like God?

And if they actually want to obey God more than they want to breathe, if they actually want to honor

God more than they want to breathe, if they actually want to be made more like God than they want to just have happy

circumstances that they're going to enjoy, they're not going to resist the lessons that they'll learn from a difficult

situation.

And so with these difficult situations, there's a variety of difficult situations where a godly person will actually have

sorrow and actually have tears and actually experience suffering, but it won't be a hopeless, self

-pitying kind of suffering that's going to attack God's character and ultimately

lead them to surrender responsibilities.

Now the idea of a pathetic crybaby was a distinct category of worldly sorrow where a

man would respond to a situation that was a relatively minor inconvenience or

a relatively trivial matter in a way that was completely out of proportion to what was actually happening in the moment.

And so this idea of calling someone a pathetic crybaby, it was typically reserved for someone who was being

dramatic, who was taking something trivial and magnifying it.

So the type of thing where someone said something mean to you and you're reduced to a blubbering mess or

some difficult situation has happened to you and you're laying on the ground curled up in a ball moaning, that would be the

kind of category that we would have in mind to where it would be a relatively minor inconvenience or

a relatively trivial matter where a man has not learned emotional control enough to deal with

just the normal tough issues of life.

And this is a form of social shaming where a man would essentially look at another man and he would say, quit being a pathetic

crybaby.

And that was the semantic equivalent of that man looking at the other man and saying, hey, you need to man up.

Now the point of that was largely edifying.

It wasn't just a matter of bullying or shaming the victim or anything else like we think about today.

It was largely a matter of attempting to edify the other individual and tell him that he is engaging in

the type of behavior that is inappropriate for his gender.

And so one of the things that's happened is that we've lost the ability to do this because we're living in a society

now that has essentially made all masculine forms of communication to be fundamentally

perceived as acts of violence.

And so one of the things that we need to do as we think about a subject like this is we need to learn how to distinguish what you might

describe as godly sorrow and then worldly sorrow and then being a pathetic crybaby.

And I would think that it would do our society well to once again reclaim this social

shaming that would help us to help men to learn how to be men.

This has been another installment of Iron Sharpening Iron.

As always, if you would like to have your question included in one of these midweek episodes, email us at

biblebashedpodcast at gmail .com.

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Now go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually

offended by your every move.