Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome, so good to have your company today. You can connect with Bleeding Daylight through social media. Links and other episodes are at bleedingdaylight.net. Is our theology found wanting during the difficulties of life or can suffering lead us to a richer understanding of God?
Today's guest and his family faced prolonged suffering, leading them to the realisation that God is far bigger than they could have imagined. I'm sitting down today with David Libby, a man whose life has been testament to the transformative power of faith in the face of adversity. As a husband and father, David navigated the complexities of chronic illness and its relentless toll on his loved ones to discover a profound understanding of God's sovereignty.
In his book, A Different World, God's Sovereignty in the Face of Suffering, David shares a narrative of resilience, offering wisdom forged in the fires of affliction and a journey that illuminates the path from doubt to unwavering faith. I'm so pleased that he is joining me on Bleeding Daylight today. David, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Rodney. I'm very, very glad to be here. I appreciate the opportunity very much.
The family life that you shared with your wife and daughters seems almost idyllic. Can you tell me a little bit of how life looked back in those days? Life was very pleasant for all of us. We loved each other, loved the Lord, and we really enjoyed life. We did the things that we'd love to do. We were very adventurous by nature. My wife's illness first, and then the daughters interrupted all of that. You were more or less living on the land to some degree, weren't you?
Tell me about what were you surrounded by there? How was life for you in those days? Well, we did live largely off the land, and we still do now, as a matter of fact. We live in a very rural part of the United States. We're surrounded by forests, and the state of Maine in the northeast corner of the United States has an abundance of rivers and streams and lakes, good fishing. We did a lot of hunting and still do.
My wife does an awful lot of canning, gardening, homesteading, raising our own products. We still live that same way, and we actually buy very little from the store. We do a lot of foraging for wild edible plants and mushrooms and this sort of thing, all stuff that God has provided for us to enjoy. When were the first signs that things weren't as they should be? When was it that you started to see illness creep into the family? As early as about a year after marriage, I would say.
So even before the children were born, my wife began to struggle with chronic illness, and it was at times really quite bearable, and other times it was rather debilitating, and then it got progressively worse. The two girls that we had, still have by God's gracious providence, both grown now and both married, but they grew up really kind of often taking care of a mother who would ordinarily be taking care of them.
They were really quite healthy until mid-teens, 15, 16 years of age, and then their health completely fell apart as well. Did you discover what was causing this illness? We did eventually. It took some time, and I think a big part of the reason why it took a long time was because of political corruption, insurance companies paying medical bills and that sort of thing. So guidelines are written for treatment, and the guidelines are written for even things like diagnosis.
The problem was a very politically incorrect disease, I think a disease that insurance companies wanted to ignore, sweep under the rug, a disease that you may have heard of called Lyme disease. It's a tick-borne illness. In our adventures in the woods, we were all bitten by literally hundreds of ticks, and we suspected this might have been the cause from the beginning, but we later learned the testing mechanisms that are used are very inadequate, and it just went undiagnosed for years and years.
Another piece of the puzzle is my wife and both daughters, we didn't know this until some years later, but they both have a genetic mutation that contributed a great deal to the toxic brew of illness, if we could put it that way. Does that mean that you stayed well, or did this disease touch you as well? The disease did touch me as well. I was quite ill with it twice, but when I treated it, when I got a diagnosis and treated it, it was really quite easy for me to treat.
You mentioned that even from the start, you and your family were serving the Lord, you had a faith in Jesus. What was going through your mind at this time? Because for many people, there's this thought that if we're following the Lord, if we're doing what's right, then God will protect us from all these things. And yet we know that even throughout scripture, that's not the case, that people who are following Jesus, people who are faithful to God, still encounter trouble.
So what was going on for you at that time, as far as faith is concerned? Well, yeah, that's a great question. I did go into this with a very strong faith in the God of the Bible, in the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in scripture. I was well aware of the fact that God does not promise us a life of ease and comfort here. The Bible often describes the Christian road as the hard road, where to expect persecution, narrow is the way that leads to salvation, narrow and difficult.
In Peter's epistle, he says, don't be surprised when a fiery trial comes upon you as if something was strange were happening to you. So I went into it well aware of this. I was never taken in by the health and wealth, prosperity message. I don't want to call it prosperity gospel. But nevertheless, when things really got bad and they got really, really, really bad, it was quite a test for my faith. I have to admit that. The nature of the test perhaps looks something like this.
I know God has promised us trials and afflictions in this life. God's word makes that very clear. But I also know that he could take them away in an instant. He is a sovereign God. When they go on and on and on for years, and the intensity continues to increase, and we're pushed to the point where we just really don't think we can make it one more day, perhaps even another hour. Why? Why is he not taking this away?
I've spoken to many people who have gone through their own trials, through their own illnesses, and this certainly was your trial, but it wasn't you in the main part that was ill. What does that do for trials that you're walking through when you're pleading to God for the sake of people that you love and you're seeing others having to go through this illness? There must be a sense of helplessness and falling upon God and saying, what needs to happen, Lord, for you to act? Yeah, yeah.
That's a very, very good question. That was exactly my experience for a good many years, a feeling of helplessness. I used to tell my girls that I wish I could take this illness upon myself, and I really meant it. It is a feeling of absolute utter helplessness to have people you love dearly suffering and suffering and suffering and being unable to do anything about it.
Perhaps if I were the one suffering, then it would be easier for me to heed what we're told in James chapter one, for example, to count it all joy. I'm telling my kids, count it all joy, and they're saying, well, you're not the one who's having seizures and in severe pain and all the other things that went along with it. Maybe for those who aren't really familiar with Lyme disease, you can just give us a thumbnail sketch. What are the symptoms?
What was it that your wife and daughters were having to deal with at this time? The typical Lyme disease symptoms are described as being like flu-like symptoms, like influenza, bad headaches, joint pain. That's what I experienced. I experienced a lot of weakness, fatigue. I've always been very, very physically fit. I've worked physically all my life, been very strong, but even so, there was a time when I had to take a break walking up the stairs.
I couldn't make it all the way up without stopping and resting. Like I said, it was easy for me to treat. Those are my symptoms, and those are typical Lyme symptoms. Beyond that, my girls experienced neurological problems, severe seizures, and sometimes it was multiple times per day, uncontrollable muscle gyrations, twisting. I'd watch my girls' bodies twist into positions I didn't think the human body could twist into.
Mental illness came along with this, hallucinations, severe, severe, severe pain. My wife at one time was debilitated and couldn't leave bed for long periods of time, couldn't walk, severe vertigo. She had a sensation. She said it felt like her entire body was filled with shards of broken glass, just pain from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet.
Then on top of all that, my youngest daughter ended up with a symptom that we've heard called sound sensitivity, but it went way beyond sensitivity. It got to the point where any little sound would actually cause seizures. It would cause physical pain. She ended up having to wear noise-canceling headphones all the time. Even so, we had to put foam around all the water pump in the cellar and anything that makes any kind of noise.
There were times when it was really bad where we would have to stop eating with ceramic plates and silverware. We'd have to use paper plates so that the fork wouldn't make any sound on the plate. Times when it got so bad that she was clustered away for days at a time in a soundproof closet, it really got bad for quite a while.
How long did that really bad situation continue from once it started to get to that point where it was absolutely debilitating, how long did that last before the treatments that they were receiving actually started to help the situation? Roughly 10 years. That wasn't every single day. They were in really bad shape every day, but the really bad stuff maybe was 15 to 20 days a month.
I know that when illness goes on for a certain length of time, you start to think, well, this is never going to get better. You start to lose all hope. How did you find hope in the midst of that? How did you find the hope that Jesus offers in the scriptures in the midst of this trial? First of all, it's worth pointing out that you're exactly right. In my book, the first chapter is titled, We Live in a Different World, and it tells our story.
The second chapter gives some hallmarks of our world, and one of them is a sense of temporal hopelessness. We get to a point where we've pleaded with God for healing, and we've pursued every medical treatment that we can think of. We've spared no expense, and it's only gotten worse. At some point, we lose hope that it's ever going to get better in this life. The temporal hopelessness is not an ultimate hopelessness. That's where the hope comes in.
We actually found ourselves at some point leaning on the Lord a whole lot more. Our hope becomes otherworldly. We begin to look not for hope in this life, but for hope in the life to come. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul said that his momentary light afflictions were, I'm paraphrasing, making an advance payment to the eternal weight of glory that awaited him in the life to come.
If you look at the list of afflictions that Paul endured, they were anything but momentary and light from a human perspective. The hope comes in a paradigm shift in perspective from this life to the life to come. We also begin to see that our focus even here in this life has been wrong. Even though we had a head knowledge to the contrary, we realize that our practical outworking of our Christianity has been human-focused, where in fact, it should be theocentric.
We have to commit ourselves into the loving care of a sovereign God who knows better than we do how our lives should be laid out for us. Most of the time, even those of us who call ourselves Christ followers, those of us who are following Christ, we know that there's an eternity awaits. But so often in life, we don't live as if eternity is real. And then you're faced with something like this, and you must come to this idea that this life is temporary.
Even if things don't improve in this life, I've got an entire eternity where things will be perfected. How much did it change your thinking and your family's thinking from being this world-based to this idea of eternity? A hundred percent paradigm shift. Let me give you an example of how radical that paradigm shift can be.
My daughter, youngest daughter Bethany, the one who suffered the most out of all three of them, used to tell people that one great comfort that she has in this life is that every second that passes is one second they will never have to pass again. For her, that was a good thought, a very comforting thought. And she wasn't being cynical or sarcastic, but she would tell that to Christians who haven't suffered, and they would be offended by it. They'd say, well, how can you say that?
That sounds so grim, and can't you be more cheerful than that? But that just shows the radical difference in thinking that can be brought to bear by a life of intense suffering. And of course, it brings up the age-old question, especially for those who are trying to disprove Christianity, often trot out that question, how can there be a good God when there is suffering?
And especially here, there would be people that would be looking on from the outside, and we see this in the book of Job as well. Even those who count themselves as friends would be looking on from the outside and saying, there's something wrong with this picture. They wouldn't see it as you're seeing it as a sovereign God and an eternal perspective. So what do you say to that question when people ask you how can a good God allow suffering? Yeah, excellent.
That's actually where my book does more than tell our story. It actually takes a fairly deep dive into the difficult philosophical and theological questions starting there. A contemporary of Darwin, naturalist and atheist philosopher Ernst Haeckel coined a brand new phrase for his response to what we call the teleological argument. The world appears to be designed, therefore it must have a designer. And he offered what he called the disteleological argument.
If there is a designer who is all good and all powerful, then why are there so many mistakes? You know, a perfect God would not make mistakes. And that's the God that you guys believe in, you Christians, you believe in a God who cannot make mistakes. So why are there so many mistakes? So that's a question that this book takes a deep dive into.
And the first place where I would go with that is somewhere very different from a great deal of Christianity, at least here in the United States, where people appeal to things like free will argument. Now, I do believe very strongly that man has free will, but I don't believe that offers a suitable answer to Ernst Haeckel's teleological argument. Or they look other places, you know, God doesn't want you to suffer and, you know, perhaps you don't have enough faith.
And so anyway, there are a lot of inadequate answers. I would argue the correct answer we find is that God hasn't made any mistakes. We find suffering in this life because God cursed this world because of human rebellion against him. So the illustration I use in the book, imagine Adam at, you know, 600 years of age, you know, he lived to be 900 something, and he's working out one of his crop fields under the blazing hot midday sun.
And young, you know, 24-year-old atheist philosopher comes along and watches him work and says, Adam, I hear you believe in a perfect God, a God who cannot make mistakes, but you're pulling all these thorns and weeds out of your garden and working, you know, by the sweat of your brow, you're suffering. Doesn't that disprove the existence of this God? I would expect Adam to say something like, well, no, of course not, you fool. God's the one who put these weeds here.
God cursed this creation because of human rebellion against him. So we don't suffer because of any mistakes that God has made. So that doesn't answer all the questions, right? You know, we still can push back against that answer, you know, why didn't God create a world where a fall into sin would be impossible? Again, I do believe strongly in free will, but I don't believe that that provides a suitable answer.
God could have created a world where our wills would only be inclined toward the good, as they will be in heaven. We will have free will in heaven, but yet we will not sin. As hard as this is for people to accept, I think that, in part, God created a world in which there is suffering, in which there is a fall into sin. By the way, we can't blame God for man's fall into sin. We cannot go there.
We need to hold on to both sides of a concurrent relationship between God's absolute sovereignty and man's responsibility.
I think it could be argued that God has given us the reality that we have, complete with suffering and complete with evil, because he's glorified in demonstration of his justice, his perfect justice, and the demonstration of his grace and mercy, which would be impossible if there were no occasion for grace and mercy, if there were no occasion for an outpouring of his justice, as hard as that is for us to hear. Even that doesn't answer the question, though, does it?
Because we could say, well, why couldn't God give us the epistemic capacity, if I could put it that way, to know these attributes just as well without experiencing them? We can always push back against these answers.
So, the answer that I've arrived at in my years of thinking and praying is actually found in Romans chapter 9 and also in the book of Job, and that is that with all our pushing back against these answers, we arrive at a place where we have to accept what reality is, even if we don't comprehend why it is that way, and we need to trust that it's safely held in the hands of a sovereign God who loves his people, and he is God and I'm not. In other words, that's the answer they gave Job.
Job wanted answers, and I've heard people say that, well, God didn't answer the Hawaii questions because Job couldn't understand the answer, and I don't think that's true, because I've read the first two chapters, and I understand the answer. But at the end of the book, when God finally spoke to Job, his answer was, I'm God and you're not, and that's where we find ourselves with an apprehension of what is, even without a comprehension of why it is.
What we can apprehend is that he is a good God, he's a loving God, and he's a sovereign God. As you're working through this, as you're studying, and you're praying, and asking God to enlighten you to what this is all about, it's not just some theoretical search, it's not just some theological study, but actually this is absolutely grounded in seeing suffering happening around you at that time.
What difference do you believe that made to your search for truth in the scriptures over these sorts of topics? It made a huge difference. I searched these subjects out some before all the suffering, as a Sunday school teacher at church and that sort of thing, as an academic exercise, but all of a sudden, I found myself on ground zero, where I had to have these answers. I had to ask these questions. I couldn't not ask them. My own daughter was asking them and asking me.
I was at a place where it wasn't just theoretical, it was personal. But I can tell you this, it did increase all of our trust and faith in God, as difficult as it is for atheists to understand that. It also gives us great opportunities to glorify God in ways that we wouldn't otherwise. It's almost like God's looking us in the face and saying, will you still trust me now? If we can say, yes, Lord, we will, then we've glorified him in ways that we wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
That's an interesting point, because we see people that react to trials, who react to difficulties in one of two ways. This is people who are following Jesus. Sometimes they will just say, well, this no longer makes any sense. And we've seen people that will abandon the faith during those times. But what you're saying is, you've taken the opportunity to press into God in these times, to ask the difficult questions.
And I guess that's part of the key, too, is that we serve a God who is open to the difficult questions. How often do you think that we've sold God short, that we've just given easy answers, and then when the difficult times come, we don't actually believe that there's an answer there, unless we press in? I think that happens all the time. I love the church. I love the church as both an organism and an organisation.
But I see a lot of problems with the organisation here in the United States, at least. But I see a really shallow Christianity. I talked to a man once who I hadn't seen in some years, and I asked him how he was doing, and he said, well, to be honest with you, Dave, I have this back problem now that's coming up, and it's really quite painful. And he said, honestly, it's really shaking my faith in Christ. And I thought, you've got to be kidding.
God has promised us trials and afflictions, and if your faith is so me-focused, self-focused, this world-focused, that a backache shakes your faith, has that kind of winnowing effect, I hate to see what would happen when the faith of the people in this country really, really is tested. In a conversation like this, we're only just scratching the surface of some of the things that you've discovered during this journey, and some of the things that you've put into the book.
Again, it's called A Different World, God's Sovereignty in the Face of Suffering. Who is going to benefit from reading this book? Because there's a lot more to it than we've been able to discuss today. Who do you think is going to benefit from reading a book like this? When I wrote it, I wrote it for two reasons, because I love to write, and because I really felt compelled to, without thinking much about who the audience would be.
When I published it, the people who were helping me publish it and market it wanted me to isolate a target audience, and they and I are kind of coming from different worlds in a different sense. They're looking at, how can I make him a best-selling author and make lots of money? And I'm thinking, how can I most glorify God? When I begin to think about that, I think the best answer I can give is kind of a twofold audience or a twofold benefit, perhaps.
That would be to people who don't know the Lord. I've had some conversations with an atheist podcaster, and I have conversations with unbelievers all the time. I want them to know that there's a lot more to the Christian faith, a lot more to biblical worldview than what they see in pop culture. Pop culture presents a very shallow view of God, a very small God, in many cases a false God, not always, but in many cases.
So I would like unbelievers to see that we serve a very, very big God, a very magnificent God, a transcendent God. I guess it's the same message to unbelievers and to believers. I would like the people who profess Christ to understand a couple of things. First of all, that the God that they profess to serve is a very big, a very magnificent God, a God who does not promise them ease and comfort in this life. It promises them much more than that, actually.
When we compare what I believe to be a sound biblical worldview, which has to include a doctrine of suffering, I suppose listeners might hear us and think, well, you know, you think life is all suffering. No, no, no, certainly not. There are wonderful times and happy times and pleasant times in this life, but a biblical worldview has to include a doctrine of suffering. People who hear that might think, well, is it really worth it then? Absolutely.
Of course it is, because this life is not all that there is. It can actually enrich this life, even, but we look beyond this life, and citing 2 Corinthians 4, we learn that not only will God sustain us through our trials here, not only will he be glorified in them, but he actually is storing up for us an incomparably grand weight of glory, and our sufferings here, I believe, contribute to that. I believe 2 Corinthians 4 teaches that.
That would be, I guess in a nutshell, the message I would like to present to both unbelievers and believers. I guess there would be believers who would have asked the questions about suffering in the past and have received those answers, as you mentioned before, that are just not satisfying, that are very easy to push back on, and wanting to delve into something a little bit deeper. That's what your book will provide them as well, isn't it? That's my intention, yeah.
I guess the book walks the reader through the same struggle that I went through over a 10-year period. I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find the book, because I think it would be a great encouragement for people who are wanting to think more deeply on these issues. We'll make it certainly a place where people can find the details. David, it's been wonderful to chat to you.
What would be the words that you would leave with people who are currently going through their own trials and feeling like those trials are not going to end? I would say if that person is not a follower of Jesus Christ, then you need to be. You need to make a subtle decision that you will follow Jesus Christ no matter what. If you do, if you truly do, then I believe that you will find the comfort that surpasses all understanding, as Scripture says, here in this life.
But beyond that, don't look to this life for your ultimate comfort. Look to this life as the proving grounds, the testing grounds, where you actually can serve the Lord in ways that would make the world wonder, make the world baffle the world. How can these people be serving this God? For example, in the 1st century and 2nd century, it was said that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. Christians were dragged into the Colosseum and murdered in front of jeering crowds.
A lot of people in the crowd said, wow, how can they have this faith? I want what they have. If you're suffering and you don't have Jesus Christ, you need him. That is your ultimate need. To the believer, you need to trust in the Lord who you profess to trust in. It is not easy. It's not easy to be in the fires of affliction and remain faithful and trust in the God who, with a thought, could take you out of those trials. But you need to.
You need to try to come to a place where you thank him for the trials and afflictions. They're there for a reason. Romans 8.28 means what it says, that he works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purposes. So, lean into him. Lean into him and trust in him. Read the rest of Romans 8. He does love his people. He loves his people deeply. He suffered not only with us, but he suffered for us in ways that we can't imagine.
David, I want to thank you so much for sharing some of your own story, but also for being able to point towards the answers that are there in scripture. Thank you for your time today on Bleeding Daylight. Yes, thank you, Rodney, for the opportunity. It's been a pleasure and many blessings to you and to this podcast. Keep fighting the good fight. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight. Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
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