Does He Care?

What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him? (Psalms 8:4)

So the sisters sent word to Him, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick."

Martha then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You."

Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw Him, and fell at His feet, saying to Him, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.

Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" (John 11:3, 21-22, 32-33, 40)

It is starting to become even more clear to me now. It is this mystery that has baffled me for so many years, this insistence on a belief that seemed to be so elusive to me. I was often very frustrated by repeated injunctions that I had to believe or I could not succeed in being a Christian. Yet when I tried to figure out just what it was I was supposed to believe the list seemed always very slippery at best, very subject to the varied opinions of whomever it was that was teaching.

So one of the things I have devoted myself to over the past few years is a journey to find out the truth about this issue of belief. As I have stated a number of times, the reason I am immersing myself in the book of John is primarily to discover for myself just what it means to believe in Jesus. Since John seemed to have the best grasp of this concept and wrote about it more than most anyone of the Bible writers, I figured that if I spent enough time and effort and research that sooner of later it would start to make sense, both to my mind and more importantly to my heart where real belief has to take root.

As I have meditated on each occurrence where this issue is brought up (which is pretty much every story in the book of John), I begin to grasp a little more of what Jesus really meant when He talked about belief. And as I have been meditating on this story involving Martha and Mary it is becoming even more clear. As I have been increasingly realizing for some time, saving belief must have as its primary focus the good intentions toward us and the fairness of God.

If I compare this story to some other stories in the gospels that clearly demonstrate this focal point of our problem with believing in Jesus, it is easier to see what is going on.

But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me." (Luke 10:40)

Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?" And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And He said to them, "Why are you afraid? How is it that you have no faith?" (Mark 4:38-40)

In the original Greek there is just one root word that in English we translate into several words like faith, belief and trust. They are all one and the same thing as far as heaven is concerned. To have faith in God is to trust Him implicitly and to trust Him is not something based on sheer imagination or some feeling that is conjured up but is always based on evidence and experience. This is one of the most important things to know about faith/belief. In addition, the original culture understood this faith as something that was naturally acted upon, not just a claim without corresponding outworkings in the life and behavior.

The core issue involved when Jesus asks me to believe is whether or not He truly cares about me. Does He notice my pain, my frustrations, my situation, the condition of my heart and most importantly does it make any difference to Him? That is the bottom line that every being in the universe needs and wants to know and especially those of us who live on this deceived planet full of sin. Does God really care about us enough to be willing to do something to help us and save us?

Martha herself had voiced a similar question in her confrontation when it seemed that Jesus was not showing any sympathy for her heavy burden of working to show Him and His disciples hospitality. Jesus was allowing and even encouraging her sister to seemingly shirk off all responsibility to help her sister with the preparations for the meal she was trying to fix for them and in her mind this seemed to indicate that He didn't really care about her. Was He playing favorites with Mary? Was Mary more attractive and thus more valuable to Jesus than Martha? Most men seemed to think so which was one reason Mary had had such a colorful life with men. Did Jesus really care about Martha's problems?

Martha's sense of self-worth was exposed in her exasperated words to Jesus. In a burst of honesty uncharacteristic of many people and especially women in that culture, Martha openly questioned whether Jesus was really being consistent with the things He taught others about how God feels about them. If God was so caring and loving and valued everyone so much, then why was Jesus letting Martha do all the work while Mary just sat around inappropriately hanging out with the men listening to Jesus teach. The culture they lived in prohibited women from sitting at the feet of such teachers and especially in the presence of male students. What was Jesus' problem anyway?

In Martha's heart she could not reconcile what Jesus claimed about a caring God and the way she perceived she was being treated in her present circumstances. If Jesus truly cared about her He would surely try to enforce at least to some extent the traditions of their culture by insisting that Mary get up and help Martha finish preparations as she was expected to do. But instead of complying with cultural expectations and Martha's demands, Jesus gently rebuked her perspective and insisted that Mary was indeed making the right choice and it was Martha who was confused about her priorities.

Does Jesus actually care about us? And if so, what does that look like in our daily lives? How does that translate into our culture and our circumstances? How can we know that He really cares when it seems that He doesn't bring the relief that we crave when we want it most? Why so His priorities seem so different than ours?

The disciples too had voiced very similar words when it seemed that Jesus was ignoring their desperate situation in a boat one day. While they found themselves fighting for their lives in the middle of a violent storm that threatened to sink their fishing boat in the middle of the lake, Jesus was sleeping soundly on the tackle in the back of the boat like nothing was going on. How could anyone sleep through such commotion? Why weren't His priorities more in line with theirs, as in – like – helping us to bail water before we all drown?!

What I find interesting is the way in which they voiced their cries for help to Him. Do You not care? And that is really the bottom-line question of all of us when it comes right down to it. Our deepest gut-level question that demands to be answered in nearly every situation is our intense desire to have assurance that the One who made us actually cares enough about us to intervene when we are in need or are hurting. If all of life could be condensed down to one question, this would be the essence of it.

It is not enough to retort with religious platitudes in response to this question. Those are nothing more than insults in the face of real-life problems and painfully difficult situations. Sin is torturing us to death and insists that God does not care about us. The beliefs of the world permeated with Satan's lies always assume that God cannot be trusted to be consistent, that He is fickle at best, that unless we depend on ourselves or each other there is no hope. We live in a world where the answer to this question about God is always in doubt. And yet our hearts still long to feel that the supreme being in charge of everything might actually be caring and willing to intervene in our behalf.

Yet so often apparent evidence seems to lead us in the opposite direction. For the disciples, finding Jesus ignoring their plight by sleeping blissfully while they are working so hard to save themselves seems very uncaring. For Martha, seeing Jesus allowing her adult sister to shirk her responsibilities in the kitchen leaving even more work for Martha seemed to be evidence that Jesus didn't really care for her as much as for her sister. Even the Psalmist presents this issue in the form of a question: what does God really think about humans? Does He really care?

In the case of Martha and Mary in this story this issue is implicit in the identical questions they both voiced when they first met Him. “Jesus, if you really cared about us You would have come when we first called for You. Why did You delay so long that our brother died? Do you really care about us?”

Do You care about us? Do You care enough to intervene to help us when we need You?

God! Don't You care that we are hurting, that we are being abused, are being exploited and victimized while You seem to just look on in apathy? Why don't you rescue us when we cry out to you the first time?

Do You really care like You claim to care? Where are You God when so many bad things are happening in our lives and nothing seems to slow them down or stop them?

Job experienced these feelings very intensely and had a lot of things to say about it.

David cried out to God in the Psalms wondering where God was when things weren't going well.

People all throughout history have been crying out and questioning whether God really cares as much as He claims to care. And the question still remains agitating in our own hearts. Does God really care about us enough to make a significant difference in our lives personally?

What is Jesus' response?

Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?

So the primary focus of belief must be about this issue of whether God really cares about us or not. And if I think about it, what does anything else much matter if this issue is not addressed. If God doesn't care enough then what difference does everything else make? If God doesn't care enough then we need to turn elsewhere for comfort, for rescue, for help. And that is exactly what the devil wants me to believe.

Jesus says that I need to face head-on this disturbing question in my own heart if I want to truly see God's glory. If I am willing to make choices to believe in spite of my circumstances then a door is opened through which God's glory can flow into my life and everything can be transformed. But the pivotal issue underlying everything is what I decide to believe about the heart of God towards me. The most important question for me and for each of us is how we will judge God's claim that He cares about us.

Does Jesus really care? Really? All the time?