In August 1972, my wife, Pat, and I were married. When we first considered marriage, we knew that Pat’s mom was ill; she had been living in a hospital for many years with what we believed was some kind of mental disorder. Before Pat and I got married, we visited various doctors and asked about the likelihood that this would affect Pat. Everyone told us that there was no cause for worry. Some years later, when we began to think about starting a family, we checked again to see if there was any reason for concern about passing on a disease to a child, and the answer, again, was “No.” Then, in the late 1980s, Pat began to experience a periodic twitching in her shoulder. When it grew worse, she visited a neurologist. He told her that she had Huntington’s Disease—a genetically-controlled disease, which prematurely destroys certain brain cells. The result is slow physical and mental deterioration and, ultimately, death. Pat did have her mother’s disease.

I was shocked and, even after a second opinion confirmed the diagnosis, disbelieving. I felt hopeless. I would have to watch my wife, whom I dearly love, slowly deteriorate and die. Even then, it still wouldn’t be over—the same thing could happen to each of our three children. I felt abandoned. God was the only person who could do anything about this, and it seemed as though he had led us into the situation rather than keeping us from it. Although I had spent much time in my life up to this point thinking about the theological problem of evil (I wrote my doctoral dissertation on it), I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. How could this happen to us when we had given our lives in service to the Lord? I knew that believers aren’t guaranteed exemption from problems, but I never expected something like this. I was angry that God had allowed this to happen.

As time passed, two passages of Scripture in particular seemed to address some of the most significant questions I had, questions that were disrupting my relationship with God.

Ecclesiastes 7: God Hides Our Future

Before we were engaged to be married, Pat and I tried to learn about Pat’s mother’s illness. Even though there were people who had that information, we were never told. It seemed that God had kept the information hidden from us. But why?

As I wrestled with that question, my attention was directed to a passage in Ecclesiastes. The passage reads, “Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future” (Eccl 7:13-14, NIV).

The author of Ecclesiastes emphasizes the sovereign power of God. By means of the rhetorical question (“Who can straighten what he has made crooked?”), I think the writer intends to teach us that no one can overturn what God does, regardless of what it is. Adversity and prosperity alike are under God’s hand (v. 14); we must simply submit to God’s providence.

The writer then tells us to be happy in the good days. Why? Perhaps because some people will allow themselves only so much prosperity before they begin to worry about the future, thinking that we can only have just so many good things happen before we are due for something really bad. Of course, no one really knows what will come next, so all this worrying about future evil accomplishes nothing. And even if what comes next in our life is suffering and we know that in advance, how can we change what God has planned? So why lose the enjoyment of the present in worrying about an uncertain future over which we have no control? The writer tells us to be happy when things go well.

The writer says that in evil days we should “consider.” He doesn’t need to tell us to be sad—that comes naturally. Instead, we should consider. We should think about what has happened, about the alternation of good and bad in our lives, and realize that no one knows when either will come. In fact, what appears to be good may turn out to be evil, and vice versa. Things aren’t always what they seem.

But what we should most consider is that God has made both good and bad times and that he pieces them together in our lives in such a way that we won’t know what will happen next.

Is this really what the passage says? Indeed it is, for the writer says that God puts together the events of our lives in such a way that “a man cannot discover anything about his future”; that is, God structures our personal histories in ways that conceal the future. Why does God hide the future from us? I wrestled with that question, and there was only one answer that made sense to me (though it isn’t stated in the text). If we don’t know what will happen in the future, our only option is just to trust the Lord for whatever comes next. We may want to change what God will do, but verse 13 reminds us that we can’t.

The teaching of this passage was very important for us. Even though Pat and I married in 1972, we didn’t learn until 1987 the diagnosis of her disease. In 1967, Pat’s mother was admitted to a mental hospital, and within her first two months there, the diagnosis of Huntington’s Disease was entered into her medical chart. That information remained hidden for twenty years while Pat and I married and had three children. Why did God hide that information from us? If we had known it, we would have made different choices.

You can see why this passage in Ecclesiastes hit home so strongly. God had hidden the future from us so that we would make choices that wound up bringing us significant suffering. For a very long time that troubled me. But a proper understanding of Ecclesiastes 7 has helped me to see that God’s hiding the truth about Pat was neither manipulative nor evil, but compassionate. If I had known this information, different decisions would likely have been made about marriage and children. But how impoverished my life would be without my wife and children!

In most cases God compassionately reveals the details of our futures moment by moment, and that is enough. In November 1987, Pat’s diagnosis gave me a view of the future that just about destroyed me. Since then, I’ve been content to learn about the future one day at a time. As Scripture says, “Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt 6:34). I don’t need to know tomorrow’s evil because I don’t yet have tomorrow’s grace.

Matthew 20: God’s Grace and Justice

The passage in Ecclesiastes comforted me; however, I continued to wrestle with what seemed to be the basic unfairness of our situation. Put simply, why was this happening to us? Wasn’t it unjust of God to ask us to bear this burden, especially when others don’t have to deal with such tragedy?

I found myself reading Jesus’ parable about the landowner and the workers in his vineyard. What the parable teaches about justice and grace has greatly helped to dissipate my anger toward God. As recorded in Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus says it illustrates how he handles things in the kingdom of heaven (v. 1).

It also shows the difference between grace and justice. Grace is unmerited favor—receiving something good that was neither earned nor owed. Justice is the bestowal to each person of what they deserve and have earned.

In this story a landowner went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. The landowner agreed to pay those workers a denarius for a whole day of work, then sent them off to work (v. 2). According to verses 3-5, he hired additional workers throughout the day. In each instance, he told them to go into the vineyard and work and promised that he would pay them whatever was right. Only with the first group of workers did he specify a payment amount.

At the end of the day, the landowner told his steward to pay the workers, starting with those hired last and ending with those hired first. He gave those hired last a denarius each. When those hired first saw this, they must have expected a bonanza. After all, those who had worked the whole day should get more, or so they reasoned. But the steward paid those hired first the exact same amount paid to everyone else, a denarius (v. 10).

The workers hired first were furious! They had done most of the work, and yet they received no more pay than those hired just about an hour before quitting time. The workers hired first were in effect complaining that the landowner had treated them unjustly. Justice requires that each one be paid exactly what he had earned, merited, deserved—nothing less and certainly nothing more.

In verse 15, the landowner asked them a crucial question. Didn’t he have the right to do whatever he wanted with his money? If he wanted to pay those hired later in the day exactly what he paid those hired first, didn’t he have a right to do that?

The landowner decided to pay those hired later in the day more than what they’d earned. He was more than just with them—he decided to be gracious. Was that wrong? Of course not. Whatever was owed he paid, but out of the goodness of his heart in some cases he gave well beyond anything that was owed. That’s not justice or injustice! It’s grace!

What’s wrong with giving some people exactly what they deserve (justice), while granting to others more than they deserve (grace)? After all, whose grace is it anyway?

I had felt as though God was treating us unfairly by asking us to shoulder this burden. But I came to see that he isn’t obligated to keep me from my trials just because he spares others those afflictions. He never obligated himself to give me such grace, so there is no injustice in what he has done (or not done). In fact, grace is never owed—that’s why it’s grace, not justice! God has the right to do with his own grace what he chooses.

Moreover, we must all be careful not to assume that because God has withheld a particular grace from us that he has withheld all grace. There are too many examples in my life of God’s unmerited favor to think that. Not least among those undeserved blessings are the wonderful wife and children he has given me.

Continuing to Respond

More than a decade and a half after we received the diagnosis of Pat’s condition, the disease has relentlessly taken its toll on her body and mind. As time passed, I realized that I had a choice to make. Either I could let the tragedy destroy me, accomplishing little of benefit for anyone, including myself, or I could choose to trust God in spite of what was happening. Along the way, I focused on answers I could find, like those above, that helped to satisfy the emotional and intellectual dimensions of my struggle, and yet I realized that I couldn’t wait until all those answers arrived to continue on with life and ministry.

While there are still many things about our circumstance that I don’t know or fully understand, I do know some things with certainty. I know that throughout eternity I’ll be thanking God for the wife and family he gave me and for the ministry he has allowed us to have in spite of (and even because of) the many hardships. I am so thankful that God is patient with us and always there with his comfort and care.

John S. Feinberg (ThM ’72), PhD, is chair of the Biblical and Systematic Theology Department and professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has been at Trinity since 1983. This article was adapted from Dr. Feinberg’s book, Where is God?: A Personal Story of Finding God in Grief and Suffering (Broadman & Holman, 2004). To purchase this book, call Trinity Bookstore at 800.456.7323. Dr. Feinberg’s other books include The Many Faces of Evil (Zondervan, 1994), Ethics for a Brave New World (Crossway, 1993), and No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Crossway, 2001). His areas of expertise include evil and suffering, ethics, divorce and remarriage, biblical prophecy, contemporary theology and philosophy, salvation, and apologetics.

© 2007 by Trinity International University. For reprint information, email trinmag@tiu.edu.