August 5, 2022 Show with Dr. Mark Talbot on “Suffering & the Christian Life”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It's iron sharpens iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us. Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage We are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation To make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours. And we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions, and now here's your host Chris Arnzen.

Good Afternoon. Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Lake City, Florida. And the rest of humanity. Who are living on the planet earth. Listening via live streaming at iron sharpens iron radio .com. This is Chris Arnzen your host of iron sharpens iron radio.

Wishing you all a happy Friday on this fifth day of August 2022. And I have a guest on my program today that came as a result of the Enthusiastic urging of my former pastor Mike Gadosz. Who many of you have heard interviewed on this program and whose ads you hear every day for?

Mike's publishing ministry. Solid ground Christian books. He contacted me recently and said you've got to get dr. Mark Talbot on your program to discuss suffering and I take Mike's recommendations. Very seriously, and I highly value his discernment.

So I immediately contacted dr. Talbot, and he immediately responded favorably. Thank God, and we have our interview today on suffering and the Christian life. Dr. Mark Talbot is an author and associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois and Today's discussion on suffering and the Christian life is basically going to be based upon Dr. Talbot's books on suffering.

They are a two-volume set when the stars disappear. Help and hope from stories of suffering in Scripture and also volume two. Give me understanding that I may live Situating our suffering with God's redemptive plan and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to our intrepid sign radio.

Dr. Mark Talbot. Well please tell us about Your post as associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College. Fantastic. And how else do you approach? So that the public may benefit from it your. Your wisdom on the issue of suffering other than of course the books that we mentioned.

Do you have a podcast anything like that. Now how exactly would they begin to.

Listen to or watch. I'm not sure if there's video involved as well, but how would they? Be able to benefit our listeners from this podcast, how can they hook up with it? Great. Now we have a tradition here on Iron Trump design radio whenever we interview a first-time guest.

We have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony including. What kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in if any? What kind of providential Circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And I'd love to hear your story.

Salvation Testimony and Early Christian Formation

Attending a Presbyterian Church the first which was in Bellingham Washington grew up from the time I was seven north of Seattle. My dad was an engineer at Boeing and When I went on this retreat when I was 12, I was Starting to be afraid of some of the temptations and the fellow who wrote my heart Christ's home Was speaking that weekend and when he offered an invitation I accepted it First year or so after that.

I was pretty serious about my faith. I met a fellow who was part of the Navigators and he had me he was in the And the Navy and he had me memorizing scripture, but then I found that I seemed to Become more and more distracted by.

Just kind of the typical things that one can get distracted by as a teenager. And in fact what happened Chris was that? When I was 17 one week after The end of the school year. I was on a Tarzan like rope swing.

It went very fast. You could only stay on it If you were sitting on a seat that it had two of us had swung out over a goalie it started. In a tree there was about eight feet of dirt and then there was a cliff.

It swung out over a goalie a third guy was going to jump on when we came back. He waited till the rope hesitated. That meant that I caught him with one hand and held on to the rope with the other we got out to the far end Of the swing I realized I was going to that he and I were going to fall and I thought if I fall on him I'll kill him.

So I shoved him one way and I went off. I used to say the distance was 50 feet. I can't really be sure how far it was, but it was it was a long drop. When we hit the ground it was dusk. I held him down because I knew he had to be hurt and After I got him calm down I thought that my legs were in this little creek and I wasn't feeling anything.

I had broken my back and that I damaged my spinal column. And here's the interesting thing. I Have found myself Especially from my sophomore year on Really concerned about my lack of discipline. I was a wild kid at school.

I Had race go-karts and quarter midgets. I was driving cars at breakneck speed speeds down country roads. I was just worried about what was going to happen to me when I thought of going to college. I knew I could get in because I knew I was bright but I figured I wouldn't last a year because I wouldn't work hard enough and When I hit the ground and realized what had happened to me off this swing.

Immediately I had a sense that God loved me and that this in fact was his way. Keeping me close to himself all of the distractions that had been bothering me for years just dropped away. And so that was the start of my really really serious Christian experience a year three months later I went to Seattle Pacific College at the time Pacific University Dave McKenna was the new president.

He took a great interest in me and then Frank Klein came my Sophomore year. Cliff McGrath as Dean of Students came my junior year and the three of them gave me hundreds of hours. I had students who were regularly coming to me for counsel and comfort because I walked with one to two canes and My walking was really awkward and I think that students just felt I'd have to be concerned about them.

Those fellows taught me how to informally counsel others as a Christian. And God's Word just became my meat and drink. It was more important to me than anything else as I was finishing college. Elvin Trueblood came.

He could speak for an hour without a note and without breaking a sentence and I found out later I had been set up that Dave McKenna had told him that when you have a tall guy I was six four when you have a tall guy limp up to you and ask what he should do now.

So after a year as a youth pastor, that was the course that I pursued and.

Calling to Christian Education and Academic Philosophy

When did you realize that you had a calling in your life?

To enter into education, especially in the Christian realm. I think that the academic realm and particularly in philosophy Only grew on me as I was in graduate school. I first went to st University for a couple of years and then took some time off ended up going back to University of Pennsylvania to finish my PhD.

And it was while I was at st Louis you that I got this sense that my place is going to be as a Christian academic. Well, great.

Well, I am glad that you are serving as an ambassador for Christ there at Wheaton College. Glad that God is using you to Help prepare the young men to be basset ambassadors themselves In the name of Christ in this dark world.

And.

I'm assuming that your experience Falling off of that Tarzan rope and breaking your back has something to do with drawing you to Want to not only reach the body of Christ, but to reach everybody. With biblical truth about suffering and.

First of all, let me ask has there been substantial Permanent damage from that fall. I am fact and paraplegic. Oh, I did not know that.

Well, I've got to introduce you if you do not already know him to Justin Peters.

You.

Don't know Justin. No, I don't. Oh, he is a remarkable evangelist who is also a paraplegic as a result of a childhood illness actually he was born with cerebral palsy and Most of the time rides around on a scooter and he has become a world-renowned beloved figure Conference speaker and evangelist and He has been on my program a number of times and he actually was one of my speakers for the iron trip and Zion radio biannual pastors luncheon and I would love to have the two of you get to know each other you might Who knows may be able to team up for conferences and things like that.

I and another brother. Who is I? Think he may be a quadriplegic Kevin Olson who is an author I interviewed very recently as well on his book. But I will keep in touch with you about those matters well as I said before The issue at hand the subject that we are discussing suffering and the Christian life the contents of our conversation Will be predominantly Coming from the two volume work that you have written on the subject volume one when the stars disappear help and hope from stories of suffering in Scripture and Volume to give me understanding that I may live Situating our suffering within God's redemptive plan.

I want to read a glowing Commendation for somebody who may be the most world-renowned figure in the church. Who speaks on this subject? Johnny Erickson Tata Founder of Johnny and friends international Disability Center and she wrote Mark Talbot gives the reader a remarkable study of suffering saints and how their mistakes and victories teach us lessons of endurance.

I highly recommend this stellar discussion of true Bible stories that will inspire and refresh your heart and Reading that reminds me that I have got to try to get Johnny on the program. Throughout the years I've tried and every time I Attempted to invite her on the program.

There was always a schedule conflict. So I'm hoping that I'm successful in Getting her on the program soon. Also the volume to work has been Endorsed by someone who has been a guest on this program. Tim Challey's author of seasons of sorrow.

Tim writes one of the greatest difficulties about enduring a time of suffering or sorrow is that it so often seems purposeless the path to peace is to set our suffering in the context of a wider story that God's telling in And through us a story that Mark Talbot describes so well in the pages of this precious book.

Very powerful words from someone like Tim Challey's. Well, I Am looking forward to our discussion personally. Although I have never suffered physically to any Great extent at all in my life never had a serious disease never had a disability I have I have had my share of suffering when it comes to Experiencing the death of loved ones which started with my mother in 1995 with whom I was extremely close.

Who died of pancreatic cancer? Then the second experience was my dad Passing in 1998 three years later from a heart attack and then.

In.

2010 I experienced the excruciating loss of my precious late wife Julie who Passed of a heart attack. Even though it's been 12 years it still Brings about very deep pain in my heart and mind with varying levels of intensity, yeah, and So I Know that I will be benefiting greatly from this conversation and from your books which I just recent I think crossway For shipping those out to us.

Well, let's start with some initial thoughts that you may have on suffering that you know falls within the spectrum of every reason why a person suffers. It could be the loss of a loved one as I've experienced.

It could be Even divorce. It could be the breaking up of an engagement with younger people. It could be the breaking up of a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. It could be all kinds of reasons that let us down being fired from a job being overlooked for a promotion that was Very much being counted upon because of a growing family and more bills to pay.

There could be a host of reasons and then of course The one that you have experienced among others, I'm sure but the physical. Physical suffering that people experience whether it is Those that are actually dying of cancer or some other terminal ailment and they know it or they have experienced the disability like you have that has Disabled them for perhaps even decades or perhaps it's a new experience for someone who has just recently become disabled.

Why don't you start off the conversation with an introduction to suffering?

The General Story of Suffering and the Bible's Witness

One of the things that I tried to do in the second book was come up with a characterization of suffering that would cover all of the kind and interestingly enough You just don't find people trying to do that.

What I can we suffer whenever we go through and of course that can cover physical suffering. It can cover just the kind of mild suffering that each of us has at the end of a hard day's work. We need to cover all of those because and it's within the framework of trying to think of why?

Scripture says there is any human suffering and why God just doesn't take it away that we start to Deal with what I call the general story first book when the stars disappear is about People's personal stories with regard to suffering and when Johnny made her remark about these stories from Scripture.

The three main stories that I cover are the ones of Naomi and Job and Jeremiah. One thing I've found over the years is that in our culture at least Christians don't think that scripture is going to tell them much about their suffering.

They don't recognize that scripture has a great deal to say about suffering and so what I tried to do in the book was I Tried to tell the story of Naomi to the point where as she gets back to Bethlehem and her friends ask Is this Naomi.

It's not clear to us whether or not that means that she was so Transfigured by her grief of losing her husband and her two sons that they couldn't recognize her if it was a kind of delighted. Is this Naomi in any case?

She said don't call me Naomi, which means pleasant. Call me Mara, which means bitter. I want to stop my Exposition of her story in chapter 2 right there when she's in the depth of her suffering and you'll remember that Job said things such as My eye will never again see good.

So I cover him up to the place where he is most deeply involved in his suffering with Jeremiah as You'd know it's in chapter 20 that After he has been tortured by pasher the fellow who was in charge of the pimple that he ends up blurting out to God.

What are near blasphemies and saying look you have deceived me with regard to what this ministry was going to be. So what I do is in the second chapter of the first book. I try to stop right there so that people recognize Just how deeply scripture acknowledges suffering.

Then I have a chapter called breathing lessons, which is on the laments in the psalms and How we breathe in order to keep ourselves from feeling as if we're drowning in the fourth chapter. There were only four chapters in each of these books.

In the fourth chapter I picked back up on Naomi's story and Job's story and Jeremiah's story and what I'm trying to do there is I'm trying to show that for Naomi and for Job. They were just wrong and thinking that their lives would never be pleasant again or that they'd never see good again.

The end of both of their stories is God Restoring them to a certain kind of earthly happiness. Along with the way in which he deepened them spiritually now interestingly enough for Jeremiah that never happened in Chapter 21, there's a different passion not the one that was in chapter 20.

Jeremiah from chapter 21 on remains faithful in speaking God's Word, but his life never got better and in fact the If you take the first 20 chapters of Jeremiah to be more or less chronological from 21 on it's not Chronological and it reads in fact as the sorts of survival narratives that you get from people who have been tortured.

So what I was trying to do in the first volume was make clear that God Understands whatever kind of suffering we have and he has spoken about All of the kinds of suffering in Scripture. You may remember Chris that when Sandy Hook Happened that there were Pastors on some of the national networks on television.

Who were so shaken by the number of children and adults who had been killed? I think it was 26 that they were obviously questioning God's goodness or their faith. It's really interesting that the slaughter of the innocence that Herod instituted when the wise men didn't come back the same way to him to tell him where Jesus was that the Innocence the children that he slaughtered were roughly the same number as We've had at Sandy Hook and that tells us that Haven't gotten out of his.

I have a friendship with a couple.

In fact, I Involved them in a conference years ago on the very issue of suffering. Probably 20 years ago Chuck and Sharon betters a Pastor and his wife they tragically lost their son in an automobile accident and earth shattering and really Powerfully Affected their lives, especially initially Where they did have this this tragic questioning of their faith.

They had believed the right things doctrinally about God's providence and His sovereign orchestration over all things that occur in heaven and on earth, but when it actually entered into their own lives there was a period of questioning God's love for them questioning God for In their minds at that point being merciless.

Yeah.

In your experience you seem to have immediately come to the conclusion that your accident was a sign of God's love for you, but In your experience since you deal with the subjects so frequently publicly and your interaction with Christians.

Is that a common thing especially for seasoned? Christians even Pastors even people who are doctrinally sound and believe the right things on paper, but When the rubber meets the road in their own lives they have that period of.

Doubt lost one of my as being more or less blank checks where if they prayed hard enough. They thought God would Deliver their son. He was deeply depressed and I think almost always. For most of us it's when we first experience really really intense suffering that we Find that our faith is in some sense on the line.

There's a woman named Joyce Sackett who wrote a book. I think about 25 years ago called. Goodbye, Janine. She lived in Colorado Springs had memorized Hundreds of scripture passages because she was a navigator.

She was outside working or got in her garden early in the morning. She felt some uneasiness when she came back in the house she found out that I think Janine was 18 had hung herself in her bedroom and It was interesting that for Joyce She knew enough scripture and enough of the Psalms.

That she was able to keep her faith in place. But it took many years before she could work it through enough to be able to articulate The fact that God was Was with her he present redemptive sense through all of that sort of thing for me.

The harder experiences were not so much my accident. It was the fact that I had a hard time finishing my dissertation. I had gone to teach at Calvin College and I was having a horrible time finishing my dissertation.

I ended up deeply depressed. What I found was that the only thing that could allow me to get through a day Was to get up in the morning and read scripture or really? Deeply scripturally based theology for an hour and then pray it was the only thing that gave me enough Hope then to turn to my classroom at the dissertation.

But that was for me the experience. It was really hard you you'll remember Chris that in a grief observed See us. Lewis talked about how hard it was when he lost his wife and he says, you know I should have known all this.

I've spoken about this stuff for years. But when it happens to you, you suddenly find that it's different than How you think about it before it happens to you, yeah.

Pastoral Care, Suicide, and the Reality of Christian Doubt

We have to go to our first break right now. And by the way, you mentioned suicide a couple of times there. I'm hoping that my dear friends Charlie and Terry Liebert are listening. Charlie And his wife just experienced an enormous tragedy in their family their adult son.

Who was involved in the military? He committed suicide. And left behind a wife and children. And Charlie has actually written a book about this. How he has responded as a Christian. And he's gonna be my guest next week on Tuesday the 9th of August so everybody listening can mark your calendars, but I hope Charlie and his wife Terry are listening now and And if not, God willing to the recording will bless them.

What we're going to our first break. As I said, if you have a question for Mark Talbot our email address is Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. Chris ar n ze n at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least your city and state of residence in your country of read the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal that's Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're gonna be right back with Mark Talbot and suffering and the Christian faith right after these minutes.

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And please mention this is very important mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnson of iron sharpens iron radio. We're now back with our guest Mark Talbot, dr. Mark Talbot who not only hosts a podcast when the stars disappear Probing human suffering and applying truth to life's most crucial questions.

He is the author of a two-volume work on Suffering and the curse that we are really gleaning from today. To have the content for our discussion, and if you have a question of your own our email address is Chris Arnson at gmail .com.

Chris a are n z en at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter and I could readily understand there being many people Who have situations that have caused their suffering?

That they do not want to make public especially they don't want to reveal their own Identity about it, so feel free to request to remain anonymous. But if you are just asking a general question, please give us your first name at least city and state and country residence.

We do have Ted from Moundville, Alabama Who says your guest mentioned that he wrote his dissertation on David Hume and where he went wrong with his philosophy? Which immediately struck me as a fascinating topic for a Christian philosopher.

So I'd like to ask where did David Hume go wrong. I suspect that a considerable wrong turn on dr Hume's part was rejecting the gospel, but what else can you tell us?

Good question, but I ended up cognitive naturalist now. I'm sorry to give you all these big terms. But what that means is that he thought that our minds were set up in such a way that they Generally tracked the way that the world is.

But you couldn't give arguments that would prove he was not completely off base with regard to his cognitive Naturalism, but I think that cognitive naturalism should actually lead to belief in God. And so at one point I wrote a piece called is it natural to believe in God? working off Romans chapter 1 of course versus 18 through 23 and Concluding that in fact, we will believe in God unless Something has gone wrong with us.

And of course something's gone wrong with every human being to some degree or another sin affects us all but it is natural to believe in God. God has Left his witness in the world as it said in Acts 14.

The problem for Hume was that he was just not willing even to consider the possibility that God answered the world's reliability.

Well Ted guess what you have won the two-volume work on Christian or suffering in the Christian life. By our guest today. Dr. Mark Talbot. Volume 1 being when the stars Disappear help and hope from stories of suffering in Scripture and volume 2 being give me understanding that I may live Situating our suffering within God's redemptive plan.

Make sure you get to us your full mailing address in Moundville Alabama and keep listening to the program and spreading word about the program down south and beyond. Perhaps you could also Just unpack the titles you have chosen.

And the significance of those actual phrases when the stars disappear and give me understanding that I may live.

728 was journeying to Rome to remember that of course he ended up in an absolutely horrible storm at sea. Lighten the boat by throwing virtually everything overboard they were worried about. Running to ground in the middle of the Mediterranean.

There's a sandbar. If they had run into that they would have all perished and everyone had lost all hope when God appeared to Paul at night in a dream and Said that as long as everyone stayed on board as long as everyone stayed on board he would in fact appear in Rome to Caesar and everyone else would be safe.

And so my Initial picture here Chris is that suffering this goes along with what we were saying at the beginning of the program. Suffering and particularly what we could consider to be profound suffering Generally means that we lose our orientation and we quite often find ourselves then Questioning.