Why Ask Why?

"Why do you question Me? Question those who have heard what I spoke to them; they know what I said."

"If I have spoken wrongly, testify of the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike Me?" (John 18:21, 23)

One of the most intense questions that so often emerges when a crisis strikes is the 'why' question. We are all familiar with them of course and likely find ourselves asking them either openly or secretly deep in our hearts. But the 'why' questions are unavoidable if we are in touch with reality and have any sense of fairness in our souls.

I have been thinking about this for some time and am coming to believe that every 'why' question can be traced back to a single root – is God really fair or not? I know that many would deny that their questions may have anything at all to do with God, but I am convinced that if examined long enough and honestly enough that every question along this line eventually ends up inferring that the ultimate Originator of everything is to blame for all the pain, suffering, confusion and evil that we experience.

Ever since our psyche was infected with lies about God that resulted in what we call our sinful nature, we feel compelled to ask the 'why' questions. We may piously avoid verbalizing them or we might suppress them for a time, but I sense that deep inside, our natural reaction to look for someone to blame for the unfairness, injustice and tragedies that we are exposed to is unavoidable. This was the reaction of our first original parents when God showed up to sort things out after they sinned. Both of them immediately began to blame someone else for their problems and nothing has changed much since then. Now our distorted idea of justice assumes that someone must be blamed and punished for all the bad things going on while at the same time we naturally try to avoid any personal responsibility for our own part in all this dysfunction.

We gravitate in this direction because our hearts are certain that God must be at least somewhat like what He has been represented to be by His enemy; as stern, harsh, severe, waiting to punish violators of His rules and eager to blame us for our problems. We are afraid of the accusations and threats we are sure emanate from His throne against all who don't cooperate with His way of doing things, so we instantly try to shift the attention somewhere else to avoid the expected punishments. We are also very doubtful about how forgiving He really is because we have been led to believe that He takes great offense over our mistakes and violations of His laws and holds onto those offenses until we do enough repentance, confession and/or any other number of requirements to induce Him to let go of the grudges we are sure He is holding against us. But all of these opinions are actually a mirage, foreign to what is really going on from the perspective of heaven.

Jesus had no such delusions about God's heart towards humanity. Jesus had a clear view of the real truth of how God feels towards sinners and He reflected that consistently all throughout His life on earth in all His dealings with those with whom He came in contact. The clearest demonstration of this attitude of God towards sinners took place in the events that transpired just before His death on the cross. The verses above occurred while Jesus was being confronted by an extremely corrupt high priest during His illegal trial in which justice of any kind was markedly absent. Yet these 'why' questions Jesus posed did not reflect the same motives that would likely be present if we found ourselves in those sorts of circumstances. When Jesus asked 'why', He had something distinctly different in mind than what motivates most of our 'why' questions. But that will be hard to grasp until we first challenge our assumptions about how Jesus was feeling during these experiences of ill-treatment and extreme abuse.

It is all too easy to project our own natural reactions into this story when we read of how Jesus acted under injustice. But to do so is to guarantee false conclusions about what the cross of Jesus truly revealed. It is impossible to understand this revelation of God's true character and feelings towards sinners as long as we project sinner's motives and perspectives into the story and assume that Jesus had similar reactions to what we would have. Only as we come to separate our natural impulses and reactions from what Jesus was actually feeling – motives consistent with all the rest of His life and all of His teachings about the Kingdom of Heaven – can we begin to discern better what was really going on in this story. But when we do begin to discern the truth here, it in turn will enormously change both the way we see God as well as the way we see our own circumstances that prompt us to ask 'why'.

As I have already pointed out, we ask our 'why' questions generally from intense questions about the fairness of God when everything is obviously unfair. Our 'why' questions also involve wondering why God does not utilize some of His infinite power to prevent or stop suffering, pain, evil and injustice. Our mistaken beliefs about justice based on the dualistic system we inherited from the Tree of Good and Evil has led us not so much to question why evil people suffer – we assume that is generally fair; but we very much question why apparently good people or innocent victims seem to go unaided, undefended and unprotected from horrible evils, abuse, exploitation, suffering and tragic deaths. At times like this we can't help but wonder why a professedly 'good God' doesn't stand up and simply use His advantage of superior force to alter situations so 'justice' can prevail.

As my understanding of the real definition of 'justice' and many other word concepts have dramatically altered over recent years, so too has my ability to see the cross radically different than ever before. Now I am beginning to see things completely different taking place in this exposé of the real truth about God and what is going on with sin like I have never seen before. Now I better appreciate why the most innocent Person in the history of mankind willingly allowed the most wicked and evil men and even demons to assault and exploit Him with anything and everything they could invent to try to induce Jesus to even for a moment feel resentful or want revenge.

I am starting to believe that one of the most important passages in the entire Bible is the observation by Peter that more explicitly explains the real issues at the cross that humanity has missed for centuries. It is the key that unlocks the real truth of the revelation of God's character that Jesus came to reveal and that Satan has done everything to obscure. It exposes the real truth about what transpired between God's goodness and Satan's evil as they faced off at the cross of Christ.

Christ never committed any sin. He never spoke deceitfully. Although he was abused, he never tried to get even, when he suffered, he threatened no retaliation, but left everything to the one who judges fairly.

One of the main issues exposed at the cross was to address the very questions we can't help but feel every time we encounter injustice and insane evil. Our questions about God's fairness and His seeming unwillingness to tap into His supreme power to intervene in the behalf of victims are met at the cross. But if we don't comprehend why Jesus did what He did there, or why He asked His own 'why' questions, we will remain confused about the stupendous answers inherent in the revelation of the cross. As long as we in the slightest way assume that God was somehow complicit in the evil Jesus suffered, we remain infected with the lies of the enemy and continue to block the truth of the cross from entering our own hearts. Only as we begin to grasp what Peter saw so clearly, the truth that radically transformed Peter himself, can we begin to experience the real power of the gospel.

So if Jesus was not asking 'why' in the same way we would likely express it under similar circumstances, what was going on in Him heart when He confronted those abusing Him with His direct questions as to why they were treating Him the way they were?

When Jesus asked Caiaphas His 'why' question and when He then asked the the officer who struck Him on the face 'why' he had hit Him, Jesus was not asking in a spirit of resentment as we often so easily assume. Keeping Peter's comment clearly in mind as we read this will prove to be extremely instructive. Yet I have not been able to see this until very recently and only then because for many years God has been cleaning out myriads of lies in my own thinking about what really took place at the cross as well as revealing to my heart the real truth about how He feels about me. As the dark cloud of deception and misinformation about God is slowly dissipating, I am beginning to see startling truths emerging from the fog that are life-changing and exciting. Now I long to see much more truth, for the real truth about God is so dramatic that it has power to neutralize all my fear and to answer all the questions that have defied answers for most of my life.

As I now see Jesus being consistent in these circumstances with His attitude from all of His previous ministry, I can begin to discern that His 'why' question to Caiaphas came from a motive of deep desire to awaken a different spirit within that wicked high priest in one last attempt to draw him back from horrific natural consequences that he would be sure to experience if he proceeded on the path he was traveling by the decisions he was making. Caiaphas still had opportunity to change direction and be saved from being complicit in high treason against the King of the Universe by murdering the Son of God. Jesus wanted to save this man from Satan's grasp just as much as He wanted to save Mary and everyone else. It was in this context that Jesus asked him to examine his motives and methods.

Likewise, when the officer struck Jesus in the face for allegedly disrespecting the high priest, Jesus question highlighted the fact that all of the proceedings taking place there were completely illegitimate as far as justice was concerned. It is totally unfair to punish anyone without cause, and the supposed cause for slapping Jesus in the face was a complete fabrication in the minds of jealous men hungry for power and with no concern for justice. Jesus was pointing out that they needed to reconsider their course of action. He was exposing the stark contrast between His humble, truthful demeanor and their flagrant violations of all standards of behavior and justice.

Jesus also wanted to inject an awareness of true reality into the midst of what was quickly becoming surreal in this mock trial. They were attempting to find a way to kill Jesus without having their own corruption exposed. Yet in every advancing step the pure innocence of Jesus in contrast to their own vile characters was only becoming more and more obvious. Justice demanded that a person being accused be given the right to have a number of witnesses give first-hand testimony to corroborate or dispute the charges against them. But in this case the hatred of His enemies was so intense that they were willing to resort to any deception or fraud to accomplish their diabolical passion to exterminate the witness of Jesus in God's favor.

Yet in spite of all this glaring injustice, Jesus never failed to keep acting like Himself; He never resorted to deception or self-defense as they sought to force Him to do. Instead, Jesus knew that all of this was meant to expose all the lies of the enemy as the real truth about God's good character was to be exposed amidst the deepest darkness produced by Satan's fraudulent system.

God's system of operating in contrast to Satan's counterfeit system was represented in Eden by the Tree of Life. When the two systems faced off in the most titanic battle for legitimacy during these hours leading up to the cross, Jesus again represented God's system as only life-giving as the ultimate Light-bearer. Ironically His arch-enemy leading that fierce attack against Him in this grand miscarriage of justice had formerly been known as Lucifer, the Light-bearer in heaven. There is indication that Christ and Lucifer shared very similar positions covering the very throne of the Highest before Lucifer parted ways from Christ and turned myriads of angels sour against the loving government of the Father.

Lucifer's growing intense jealousy of Christ in heaven becomes dramatically exposed as they face off once again in the most dramatic event in all of history. Lucifer's charges over the true nature and character of God came to fruition when he exploited his advantage over Jesus as a human being. This caused Satan, the great accuser of God and Christ, to insanely attack Jesus by every means possible in a desperate attempt to induce Him to entertain in the slightest way some motive that Satan had insisted was lurking in the heart of God. If Satan could get Jesus as God's representative to indulge even for a moment to embrace any of Satan's motives, he could claim that his charges against God were vindicated and he would leverage this to convince the universe that his accusations were true.

The test on Jesus was far more close and severe than any of us can even begin to imagine. The problem has long been however, that what we have long assumed Jesus was tested over has misled us into actually reinforcing lies of Satan about God rather than exposing the truth about God that Jesus came to reveal. The early Christians had a real appreciation of this core truth which is what gave them such irresistible power as they spread the gospel about God to a hungry, hurting world. But a few hundred years after the cross Satan once again masked over this stunning revelation of God in Jesus with myriads of new lies about Him, so now we are left once again in the deep darkness of misapprehensions and fears about how God feels about sinners.

Gratefully what I am starting to see today is a new leaking out of the intense glory of God as prophesied in the first few verses of Revelation 18. Once again the real truth about God will be fully exposed to a skeptical world embracing lies about Him largely enforced by the dogmas of religion. People everywhere are beginning to awaken to the Holy Spirit's promptings to reexamine the testimony of the Word and are coming alive as they discover that religion has misled them and the real truth of Jesus is far more glorious than they ever dared to imagine.

Seeing this true glory is the effective answer to our 'why' questions, for as we begin to see that God is radically different than what we have always assumed Him to be, our questions are seen as based on invalid assumptions behind our questions. As we see Jesus fully cognizant of His unlimited access to infinite power, yet never using it to force God's will on anyone even in the most desperate of situations to avoid any amount of pain or suffering to Himself, we can begin to see that God will never use His power the way Satan has led us to think He does. Rather, we can begin to see that the real power of God is in His agape love that fiercely protects the freedom of every individual to choose for themselves whom they will follow and obey without any coercion on His part.

Satan never charged that he had more raw power than God. Many suppose that the war between good and evil is over who is the strongest and which side can enforce their ways over the lives of sinners. No, the battle is not over which side has more power to coerce people to follow their way, but rather which system is the right way to live together. Our real choice is between Satan's system based on fear, force, intimidation, laws, deception and self-indulgence or God's self-sacrificing system of perfect agape love, harmony, peace, natural principles and total respect for the right of every being to chose their own way. God's system is superior, but in the meantime it seems to be weak, too mamby-pamby for those addicted to the drug of power. But in these last days it will become clear that though love may be crushed and maligned and discredited more than ever before, love truly is the greatest power.

That is the message of the cross that must be seen undiluted by the lies and insinuations of Satan. It is time to turn away from all other inferences about it involving an offended Deity needing to be appeased. God is love and light and in Him is no darkness at all. When this becomes clear in our hearts, then our 'why' questions can be transformed into humble trust in the only One who is truly fair. Jesus demonstrated this attitude when in the midst of the most extreme unfairness He refused to incriminate His Father but trusted His heart fully even when all the evidence screamed it wasn't so.

He left everything to the one who judges fairly. (1 Peter 2:23)