‘Curse God and Die’ Satan’s Favorite Response to Suffering

Suffering, you should know by now, is most unpredictable. Most assuredly it can harden the heart — pushing out the very possibility of a kind, powerful, all-knowing God. Or (as you better hope is not your case) it can be the very thing used by the Enemy to rob our knives and forks of their roast.

Have you not glanced over the apostle’s shoulder lately? Not all suffering ends up advancing our cause.

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3–5)

Who means for suffering to encourage such a horrid thing as endurance, nephew? Do we mean for suffering to produce in them — and I struggle to even write the word — hope? The punctured lungs, the groans and pains, at every turn, threaten to terribly backfire.

The Enemy knows this well enough, and for all his talk, he is as underhanded as any devil. Often, we think we have set the perfect trap until we discover (too late) that he had tampered with our afflictions and temptations to fit his designs. Making them squeal is pleasurable, watching them squirm under torments make us howl and snort, but it amounts to a mere play if they escape to the Enemy and further enact his dreadful purposes. This, you must ensure, does not happen with your man.

Adding Iniquity to Injury

Have done, at once, with your prepubescent squeaks and premature gloating. The game is afoot, and the Enemy means to have him as surely as we do.

First, make his suffering personal.

The question of “How could a good God allow bad things to happen?” is not nearly as useful a question as “How could God allow this bad thing to happen to me?” This, of course, is the precise question to ask. The Enemy parades himself as the “personal God” at every turn; well, then, let him give his personal defence to the charges.

Where was this personal God during his surgery? Give no cover to the Enemy on this point. Press your man, as we have pressed for centuries: Of all people to face this loss, this pain, this nightmare — why me? Casually point out to your man that his “loving God,” his “refuge,” plays terrible favourites. None of the Christians he knows is facing such “lifelong complications” from such an improbable miscue.

Perish any consideration that the Enemy is attempting, at any rate, to twist our bed of thorns into an eternal crown of glory. Hide the Enemy’s lies that such afflictions are precisely measured for their eternal good or in any way purposeful.

Second, attend every stab.

Never overlook the power of the small inconveniences and stings of discomfort. You must be always on standby for your patient — ready to nurse every flicker of pain toward self-pity, anger, or delectable despair. When he goes to reply to that email one-handed, or has to ask his wife for help to put on his socks, or feels the residual irritations and distresses that will accompany him to the grave — be ready to sow bitterness and pour salt on the wound. No crack, never forget, is too small to exploit.

As you attend to his every moan, understand you will not be alone. The Enemy stands by them, always at their beck and call, like a drooling terrier, ready to remind them of his lies and calm them with his presence. In his embarrassing commitment to his fictions, his Spirit stands by to whisper to them. We can’t overhear most of it, but undoubtedly it has to do with Scripture telling them something like he “lovingly” designs their aches, pains, diseases, and deformities in this world, and to persuade them that he is their true comfort and that this is not their true home. Fight whisper with a whisper to keep the dogs from returning to their vomit.

Third, hide Tomorrow from him.

Finally, conceal any fictions about a Tomorrow that will make all sufferings “untrue.” Of such a Day that beaten, bruised, and bloodied apostle made consistent (and irritating) appeals to, calling the summation of his manifold (and mouthwatering) sufferings as nothing — nothing! — not even worth comparing to that Day of an “eternal weight of glory” which lies ahead (2 Corinthians 4:17) — a “glory” our Father Below weighed and found greatly wanting.

Curse God and Die

Affliction, nephew, is an uncertain flame, certainly not one to be trifled with. Job and his most useful wife prove a great illustration. Crushed with the fatal blows to property and household, this “upright” man tried to make our Father the fool, shaming us all by responding to murder, devastation, and destruction in such a servile and grovelling way: “Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped” (Job 1:20).

But not all responded in kind. Job’s wife, whom our Master most mercifully and wisely preserved, responded most excellently: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Curse God and die — I couldn’t have said it any better.

Here lies the battlefield. Not the inflicting of affliction, but the infecting of the soul.