Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to ask away. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Ask Away. If anyone here is a first time listener, then welcome. We're so glad to have you checking out the podcast and we hope that if you have any burning questions about Christianity that you'll send them in to us. Vince and I would just absolutely love to hear from you and to know what is on your hearts. Now, last week, Vince and I were chatting about whether God is giving us the silent treatment, and we're going to be picking up part two of that conversation actually on the next episode of Ask Away. But before we get further into that topic, this week we wanted to share with you a talk that Vince gave at Creation Fest in Pennsylvania a few years ago on the topic of why would a loving God allow suffering? 

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[00:01:25] That may be an age old question, but it never actually gets old; does it? Not when suffering is an ever present reality either in your own life or in the lives of people that you love. And it's for this reason that I'm so thankful Vince chose to take this question seriously by focusing on it for his doctoral research. And so I really do hope that his reflections are a source of comfort to you wherever you are today, in whatever situations you're personally wrestling with. And I just also want to invite you-- we love getting prayer requests from you guys. There's nothing we love more than the opportunity to pray for you. So if there is some particular suffering in your life that you could just really use more prayer for, then please do write in; we would love to take the time to pray for you. And we consider that a serious honor. But for now, let me hand over. And here's Vince. 

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Vince Vitale [00:02:25] I'm going to dive into the topic of If God, Why Suffering? A sobering topic, a challenging topic, but a really important one. And if it's all right, I'd like to start by just reading you a couple of ancient prayers. I'm standing my ground, God, shouting for help at my knees every morning, on my knees each day break. Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear? Why do you make yourself absent? For as long as I remember, I've been hurting. I've taken the worst you can hand out and I've had it. I'm bleeding black and blue. The only friend I have left is darkness. I feel worn down. God, you have wasted me totally. You just stand there and let wicked people do what they want with me. Now my face is blotched red from weeping. Look at the shadows under my eyes. Even though I've never hurt a soul and my prayers are sincere. I personally find it so encouraging that those prayers are in the Bible. In fact, those prayers from Psalms and from Job, they're actually from some of the heroes of the Bible. And one of the first things that I want to say is that one of the reasons I believe I can trust the Christian God in the face of suffering is because he takes it seriously. I think nowhere is suffering taken more seriously than in the Bible. 

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[00:03:51] And I want to say this morning that if you're here and in a venue this large there are going to be many people here who are going through something severe right now. And it may be that all you can muster up in the direction of God is frustration. That is not a sign of lack of faith. If being frustrated, if even experiencing forsakenness this with respect to God is a lack of faith, then Jesus had a lack of faith when he cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And he didn't. And so one of the beauties of the Christian faith as we approach this question is that we don't have to hide our feelings from God. We can bring to him our raw, honest, messy, emotional prayers as we go through things. We don't need to let suffering push us away from God. We can allow it to push us towards God. And that's my prayer for us this morning. When I started college, I personally didn't think much of the Christian faith, and I didn't think it had answers to these sorts of questions. I was studying philosophy at Princeton University. If I'm honest, I thought Christianity was for people who didn't think hard enough. And I set out to read the Bible. I was challenged to and I began reading the New Testament for the first time. I was trying to disprove it. And to be honest, I would cross things out and I would add things. 

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[00:05:11] And when I disagreed with something, I would actually write a big BS in the margin of my Bible. And people would look at me, Christians would sometimes come over and they'd look over my shoulder and they'd say, "Vince, why do you have a big BS in the margin of your Bible?" And I'd say, "That verse makes for a great Bible study." That was my starting point. Things changed because I continued to read the scriptures and I absolutely fell in love with the person of Jesus. And I said, there is no one more worth following than this. But initially I had objections. I had big objections, and the problem of suffering was one of the biggest ones. How could there be a loving God if the world is so full of evil and suffering? I think it's a fair question. God is supposed to be all powerful. If he's all powerful, he has enough power to stop suffering. He's supposed to be all loving. If he's all loving, he would desire to stop suffering. And yet our world is filled with all sorts of horrendous, evil and suffering. Now, if you or I stood by and watched serious suffering when we could stop it, other people would rightly call us evil. So how then can I stand up here and call God loving? 

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[00:06:25] Some of my reflections on this topic began with a conversation I had with my Aunt Regina over Christmas a number of years ago. She spoke with me about how difficult it was to see her son Charles, my cousin, who I've always been very close with, suffer from a severe mental illness and the suffering that that caused. And at the time, overeager, perhaps, in my newfound faith at the time, more interested in the question than the questioner, I began to respond by spouting some of my abstract philosophical explanations for why God might allow suffering such as Charles's. And my Aunt Regina she listened very graciously, very patiently, and then she turned to me and she said, "But Vince that doesn't speak to me as a mother." Explanations were not what my aunt needed in that moment. And Jesus understood this better than I did. When Jesus's good friend Lazarus died, Jesus had waited a couple of days before he went to see him and by the time he got there Lazarus was already dead. And Lazarus's sisters Mary and Martha, if you read between the lines there in John 11, it sounds like they're not that impressed and they're saying, "Jesus, why didn't you come earlier? If you had been here, our brother would still be alive. What do you have to say for yourself?" 

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[00:07:42] And I believe Jesus being who he was, surely he could have given them a response. He could have given them an explanation. But he knew it wasn't the time for that. And what we get is the shortest verse in the entire Bible, Jesus wept. The wording there implies that he wept bitterly. It's the same wording used for when a horse rears back in anger. Jesus sobbed. He wept bitterly at the death of his friend. I believe that our God weeps real tears for the suffering of this world. That real physical tears welled up in his eyes and dripped down his face and fell into the soil that we suffer on. And that is one of the reasons why I can trust him. A God who wept tears is a God worth trusting. To find a first response to this challenge of suffering, I need to say something about free will because the Bible starts with a story of people who were created free, and it suggests that so much of the suffering that we see and experience in this life comes down to the misuse of free will. Now, maybe that sounds like an exaggeration. It used to sound like an exaggeration to me. Not so much anymore. 

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[00:08:58] There was a boy named Euwin [sp] that I used to fight with as a teenager. He wasn't a very nice kid, and neither was I. And I can remember taking every opportunity I could to put him down. The very same free will that God gave me to help him up, I used it to push him down. A number of years ago, I found out that Euwin had taken his life. And at one point the Bible says for the wages of sin is death. And I had probably read that verse hundreds of times before I heard that news and never had it really hit home. And I had to begin asking myself certain questions. Would he have taken his life had I been kind to him? Would he have taken his life if I had used that free will to help him up rather than to push him down? And I didn't know the answers to those questions. Sometimes when I try to explain the Christian concept of sin to people, they want to tell me that I'm exaggerating, that really it's not that dramatic. Really, I'm a pretty good person. It's not like I've killed anyone. And the reality is it's a lot harder for me to answer that question than you might think. And what if God shone his light not only on the rippling effects of my unkindness to Euwin but on the rippling effects of all of my unkindness throughout the years? 

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[00:10:16] I think that if we're going to honestly ask this question, if we're going to honestly ask the question, God, why suffering? We need to be willing to ask the question not only of God, but also of ourselves. We need to be humble enough to respond as G.K. Chesterton did when he was asked by a newspaper to respond to the question, "What's wrong with the world?" And he wrote in a very short article. He wrote in, "Dear sirs, I am. Sincerely yours, G.K. Chesterton." The next response I'd like to share with you, it starts with the following assumption. We're not that smart. Sometimes I forget what I'm saying right in the middle of saying it. Sometimes I forget what I'm saying right in the middle of saying it. Alright. It took a while; few people got it. Always a risky one but sometimes you just need to go for it. Yesterday 1 a.m., I'm standing at the rental car counter in the airport without my license because I've forgotten it and I'm trying to rent a car. I'm not that smart. One of the assumptions that's smuggled into the thought that suffering disproves the existence of God is this assumption. If God has good reasons for allowing suffering, we, you and me, should know what those reasons are. I want to question that. Why think that? 

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[00:11:43] When I take my dog Buster [sp] to the vet, Buster doesn't understand why he needs to experience the suffering of a needle. And even if I sit buster down on the couch and I say, "Buster, it's really important for you to experience this suffering because it's going to immunize you from this terrible disease," I don't get very far. And it's not because of some lack of ability on my part. It's not that I'm not a good enough communicator. Buster simply isn't the sort of being who can understand why I sometimes do some of the things that I do. And you can see the analogy. My ways are higher than Buster's ways. Should we really then be surprised if sometimes God's ways are higher than our ways? It's not a new idea. We find it in the Bible. From my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth. So are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Or as God inquired of Job, where were you? I love this line. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me if you understand who marked off its dimensions. Surely you know. 

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[00:12:55] Personally, my experience of universe creation is zero. I have created zero universes and so I least want to be a bit cautious and a bit slow before I think that I'm in a position to lecture God about how he should have created the universe. Do we have a full understanding of why God allows each and every piece of suffering? No, of course not. But if God is as big as Christians claim he is, if we are as finite as we claim that we are, that's exactly what we should expect to find. And if it's exactly what we should expect to find, if God does exist, then it can't be strong evidence that He doesn't exist. Moral of the story. Don't ever let someone make you feel like your faith is irrational because you don't understand everything about the mind of God. You're not supposed to understand everything about the mind of God. That's why it's the mind of God. I have a couple more thoughts that I'm eager to share with you, and I'd like to do so by telling you a few of my favorite stories. First, a true story. My mom and dad, they met when they were teenagers. They both worked in the same supermarket. My mom as a cashier, my dad stocking the shelves. And my mom said she would call for price checks when she didn't need them so she'd get to flirt with my dad. She says he had great shoulders. 

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[00:14:17] Anyway, on their first date they went to a black tie event in New York City on New Year's Eve and they fell in love. Then on their second date, they were standing on the Brooklyn Bridge and my dad noticed a ring on my mom's finger. So he asked about it and she said, that's just some ring one of my old boyfriends gave to me. I just wear it because I think it looks nice. My dad said, yeah, it is nice. Let me see it. And so my mom took off the ring. She handed it to my dad, and my dad hurled it off the bridge and he watched it sink to the bottom of the East River. He said, "You're with me now. You won't be needing that anymore." And my mom loved it. I think that was the clinching moment for them. Now, how is this relevant to the problem of suffering? I promise it's relevant. It's typical to think of the challenge of suffering like this. We picture ourselves in this world with all of its suffering. Then we picture ourselves in a very different world with far less suffering or with no suffering. And then we wonder to ourselves, well, surely God should have created me in the other world, in this world, with no suffering or with far less suffering. That's a completely reasonable thought. But I think there's a question that we forget to ask. 

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[00:15:45] We forget to ask the question would it still be you and me as the individuals that we are and the people that we love if God had allowed that very different world to exist rather than the world that we live in? You see, it was a pretty risky move my dad made when he hurled my mom's ring off the Brooklyn Bridge. Now she loved it, but what if she hadn't? What if she had concluded this guy is nuts. I better run back with the old boyfriend instead. What would that have meant for me? Now, I don't know who that old boyfriend was, but let's suppose just hypothetically-- and in fact, my dad still tries to get my mom to tell him who it was 50 years later, and she still flatly refuses to say. Well, let's just suppose just hypothetically, it's about the right generation. Let's suppose that Mom's old boyfriend had been Sylvester Stallone. Now, you have to admit, in some ways, having Stallone as a dad rather than my actual dad there'd be some good things about that. I doubt I'd have to worry about getting bullied at school if my dad was both Rocky and Rambo. However, there is a problem with wishing that things had worked out between my mom and Sylvester. And here's the problem. I never would have existed. Maybe some other child would have existed, and maybe that child wouldn't have had to worry about being bullied at school. 

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[00:17:16] But part of what makes me who I am, the individual that I am, is my beginning. The parents that I have, the sperm and egg that I came from. The combination of genes. That's true of me. I'm sure my mom and Sylvester would have had some very nice kids, but I'm not so sure that I would have been one of them. We often, very understandably, wish that we could just take some piece of suffering out of this world while keeping everything else the same. But I'm not so sure that it works that way. It's something as small as the throwing of a ring off of a bridge can change who comes to exist. Imagine how radically who comes to exist would have been changed if God miraculously removed all vulnerability to suffering. Sometimes we understandably, very understandably, wish for a very different world. But I wonder if sometimes, without realizing it, we are actually wishing ourselves and those that we love right out of existence. And here's the thing. I don't think God likes that idea. In fact, I think one of the things that God values most about this world, even though I think he hates the suffering within it, is that it is a world that allowed for you to come to exist. 

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[00:18:34] I believe he chose you before the foundation of the world. I believe he knew you before you were born. I believe he knit you together in the womb. I believe he desired you and the person sitting next to you and every person that you see walking by the street. Now, sometimes when I share that idea with people, they want to say, why me? Why us? Why would God choose to create us when he could have created some very different creatures who maybe would have been far superior, maybe would have been much less prone to suffering. And it's a good question. Actually, it's a biblical question. Psalm 8: "What are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them. And I think there's a one word answer to this question. It is my favorite word in the world, and it is a word that is only true of the Christian God, and that is the word grace. Unmerited love. When Jo and I were first dating, there was a moment she was quite blinded by love at this point and she said to me one time, she said, "Vince, I don't deserve you." And I looked at her and I said, "No, you don't." Not a good idea. Not recommended. 

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[00:19:51] Thankfully, I didn't stop there. I said, "No, you don't. And I don't deserve you either." Isn't it wonderful? How could we ever deserve another person as our very own? Surely that is way beyond anything that any of us could ever deserve. The best forms of love are not about what we earn or merit or deserve. They are about grace. Unmerited love. And I like that type of love. That's the type of love that means you don't always need to be looking over your shoulder or around the corner wondering if someone more worthy of love than you is going to come along. That's a love that is secure and therefore it's a love that you can stop competing for and you can just enjoy. I wonder what the honest answer of your heart is to that question. Do you compete for love or do you enjoy it? What if, even before the foundation of the world, God loved us with grace. With love that is a gift. With love that is exactly the same on your best day and on your very worst day. With love that you cannot be separated from. With love that you cannot lose no matter what. Completely unconditional. 

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[00:21:06] The love of a parent standing looking down at a newborn child. That child cannot do anything to earn the parents love and yet that love could not be more extravagant. The question why do you love your child? It doesn't even make sense to the parent. What do you mean why do I love my child? That's my child. I made them. I created them. They're in my image. They have my nose. I'm talking about the love of a parent who sees a lost son far off on the horizon. Luke 15, and this father who sees that son, the text says, still far off. And this is the son who had done everything wrong. A son who had demanded his inheritance early and then run off and done everything with it that you're not supposed to do. He got everything wrong. And yet when this father sees his son still far off, this Middle Eastern man hikes up his robe, exposes his legs-- it would have been completely shameful in that culture-- and he takes off running like an embarrassing fool towards his son. I've often wondered what the son thought when he saw his father sprinting towards him. He probably thought it was more likely he was going to get hit than that he was going to be embraced and welcomed home. But this father sprints to his son and he throws himself on his son and he showers him with kisses and he showers him with love. 

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[00:22:29] And the son tries to ask for forgiveness. And the father won't even let the son get it out of his mouth. And he immediately gives the son the best robe. It would have been the father's own robe. He put sandals on his feet. He gives the son a ring, a signet ring of the family to say you are back in the family. And then he calls home to his family and he says, kill the best animal we have. We are going to throw the biggest party that you've ever seen. The son would have known that what is supposed to happen in that situation when a Jewish boy lost his inheritance to foreigners, is that he was supposed to be brought back into the community, put in the middle, the village circled around him and yelled at him, "You are cut off from your people." And instead we have the father love of God who sprints to him and embraces him and kisses him and welcomes in all. This son of mine was lost and now he is found. That type of love, unconditional, unmerited. It is only found one place in the heart of Jesus. In the faith of the Christian faith. What if God loves us like that? Not with love that is meant to be earned, but love that is simply meant to be returned. 

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[00:23:42] My family personally has had quite a bit of disability in it. And because of that, there's been quite a bit of suffering that has come with that. Now, some people would say that because of his disability and the suffering that it caused, it would have been better if my cousin Charles never existed. After all, there would be less suffering in the world. The world would be a better place overall. I can't tell you how strongly I disagree with that statement. It's because I knew my cousin Charles intimately that his suffering was so frustrating, but it's also because I knew him intimately that I could understand why God would value a world that would allow for him to exist. Because I could understand why God would love him so much. A world in which he could bring my cousin Charles into existence and call him into relationship with himself and transform his destiny so that he would be headed for eternal right relationship with God for all time. Now returning to my parent’s story, it's important to note that when choosing whether to have me, it wasn't just potential suffering in my life they had to consider. They also had to consider what it would cost them to have me and to raise me. 

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[00:24:59] Love requires sacrifice. And so my parents had me and then they sacrificed countless hours of sleep to care for me. Many of you can relate. In fact, when I was an infant, apparently I wouldn't go to sleep unless my mom was holding my hand. And so rather than do what you probably should do and let me cry it out, my mom pulled a mattress into my room and she slept night after night on this uncomfortable mattress with her hand stretched up into my crib. Now, eventually, we got past that stage. And then when I was about six years old I was out playing football with my best friend, my next door neighbor's front lawn. I was getting knocked around pretty good. I was playing with some older kids and I started crying. And I went running home to my mom, who was standing on the front porch. And I was yelling, "I'm not tough enough. I'm not tough enough." And there's mom on the front porch where this happened. She's sporting the classic 80s onesie, and I'm right there in front of her and I'm crying and I'm saying I'm not tough enough. So what did my mom do? Well, my mom did what any loving mother of a six year old or seven year old son would do. 

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[00:26:11] She positioned herself like this. She got in quite an athletic stance. She hung her nose out in the air. She looked at me lovingly and then she said, "Punch me in the nose. You are tough enough. Punch me in the nose." And I just looked at her like she was crazy. And indeed she was. But she persisted. She said, "Punch me in the nose. Punch me in the nose." And true story, I do not know what sort of psychological state I must have been in, but finally I did. I reared back. I gave my mom a straight right hand to the nose. And to my astonishment and to hers, blood actually began trickling out of her nose and down her face. I know what you're thinking. Crazy Italians. But then came the most gorgeous image from my entire childhood. Through this blood that was dripping down my mom's face, came the most dazzling just radiant, joyful smile. And my mom said, "Now get back out there." And she sent me back out into that game, and she went inside to get cleaned up. 

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[00:27:31] Now, you might not know what to make of that story. Understandably so. What a bizarre thing for my mom to do. What an unthinkable, messy, bloody thing for her to do. But I also think in at least one sense, what an extravagant display of love. My mom chose to bring me into this world. And when she did that, she knew that there would be suffering. But that did not make her evil. Why not? Because when the suffering came and my eyes filled with tears, she bent down into that suffering with me even though that meant suffering at the hands of her own child. And that is a picture of Jesus on the cross where God did something unthinkable and messy and bloody. Where God stepped down into our suffering with us, even though that meant suffering at the hands of those that he had created. Incredible love. The night before Jesus died, as he wrestled with what he knew the next day would bring, he said to his friends, he said, "My heart is sorrowful even to death." I think it's one of the most incredible verses in the entirety of the Bible. The God of the universe, the creator of all things, saying, "My heart is sorrowful even to death.". 

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[00:29:06] No matter what you have been through, if you have ever experienced deep depression, crippling anxiety, whatever it is that you have been through, there is nothing you can experience in this life that Jesus does not understand. Ironically, it may be the famous atheist Friedrich Nietzsche who put it best. He said, "The Gods justified human life by living it themselves. The only satisfactory response to the problem of suffering ever invented." Remarkably, Nietzsche is actually talking about the ancient Greeks here, and he never makes the connection to Christianity. But I think the connection is clear. At the cross, we see the absolute uniqueness of the Christian response to suffering. In Islam, the idea of God's suffering, that's nonsense. It's thought to make God weak. In Buddhism, to reach divinity is precisely to move beyond the possibility of suffering, to detach yourself from anything or anyone that would cause suffering. Now, contrast that with Jesus Christ who did everything that he possibly could to connect with our suffering, to attach himself to our suffering, and to suffer with us, and to bear with us and to see us through it. That is a God of love, and therefore that is a God that we can trust. 

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[00:30:28] Now, so far I've been considering whether or not God can be good and loving despite the suffering of the world, and I've claimed that he can. But as I begin to draw to a close, I also want to say that that's not the only problem of suffering. There's also the challenge of how we're going to deal with suffering, and that is a challenge for every one of us, regardless of what we do or don't believe about God. A while back, I saw a commercial and it depicted a baby being born. And then in the next 30s, this baby flew through the air. And as it did, it fast forwarded through the child's entire life into adolescence and then adulthood and then beginning to get older and then elderly. And then at the end of the commercial, this old man crashed down into a grave. Dead. And then the screen went black. And words appeared across the screen. And they said, "Life is short. Play more Xbox." And I responded like you did. I laughed. I thought that's really funny. 

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[00:31:32] And then I thought, wait a minute, it's all so devastating. Life is short and it's all headed towards injustice and death and there's nothing we can do about it, so just try to distract yourself and just spend more time on Facebook and Xbox? And I thought to myself, really? I thought, is that the best that we've got? My cousin Charles, he died a few years ago. He went to dinner with my aunt Regina. He started choking on a piece of chicken. They couldn't get him to start breathing again and two minutes later, he passed away. That's how fragile life can be. Life is short. Play more Xbox. Is that really the best that we have to offer to my aunt Regina in the face of that loss? Christianity offers such a better hope. One of my students a couple of years ago named Ariel, she was diagnosed with a rare condition. Her brain was prone to bleeding. She was told you probably only have a couple of years left to live. 23 years old. And she told me that a couple of days after that diagnosis, she found herself standing in front of the mirror and she was testing the limited mobility she had on her right side. And the questions that popped into her mind were, is this the healthiest I'm ever going to be? Is this the strongest I'm ever going to be? Is this the prettiest I'm ever going to be? 

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[00:32:58] And then she told me of the amazing peacefulness and joy that came over her as she remembered the answer to those questions. No, absolutely not. There will come a time where her body will be able to do far more than it has ever been able to do. I remembered in that moment that she loved to snowboard. And so I asked her, "Do you think there will be snowboarding in heaven?" And I wish you could have been there to see how unhesitatingly and how confidently she responded. "Absolutely. And soccer, too." And I wish you could have seen the smile on her face as she said it. Life is short play more Xbox, or the words of Jesus, "Come to me all of you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. You will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Some people think that the problem of suffering should push us away from God. I think for me it's precisely because I feel the problem of suffering so severely that I am led to trust a God who can do something about it. I believe that before time God chose my cousin Charles because he wanted to enter into a relationship with him. I believe that in time he loved my cousin Charles enough to come and suffer with him. 

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[00:34:13] I believe that the end of time, God will set things right, that I will see my cousin again. I will see him in a place where there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Why? Because God himself will wipe away the tears. And I wonder if some of us this morning just need to hear that for ourselves. I wonder if some of you need to hear this morning that before time God chose you individually. Not just the world, not anyone else, but you. And in time with whatever you're going through right now, God loves you enough to come and suffer alongside you. And at the end of time, God is going to set things right. The Bible says in Revelation 21, "It will be Jesus himself who will wipe away the tears." There will come a point where Jesus's physical hands will be on your face and he will wipe the tears from your eyes. I wonder if some of us need to hear that for ourselves this morning. Why don't we all just close our eyes and all I want is that if that was for you, and if you're going through something right now and you know I need to hear that from myself and I need a gift from God to actually believe in his goodness, I just ask you to just put your hand on your heart. 

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[00:35:28] If you want to believe in the goodness of God, in the face of suffering, in the face of suffering going on in your life, and you're struggling to do so, just put your hand on your heart and I'd love to pray for you specifically. Lord, what a joy it is to stand here this morning and know that I'm standing in the presence of a God of the only God who loves not only me, but every single person that hears my voice right now so much that you would come and die for them. There is no greater love than that to lay down one's life for one's friend. And you did that for every one of us. I pray right now a special blessing on every person who is going through something difficult. Every person who is suffering, every person who is even struggling to pray, the person who can't even formulate words in your directions. God, would you take this prayer and would you use it to their benefit. Would they know your presence with them. Would they know that you chose them distinctly and individually out of love. Would they know that you love them so much you were willing to die for them. Would they know that there is going to come a day where you are going to see them through whatever it is they're going through and that you yourself will take your hands and put them on their face and wipe away every tear. God, we worship you and praise you because that is the God that you are and we trust you in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

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