How would you counsel someone who is angry at God for creating them?

I suppose the kind of situation in mind here is, perhaps, someone with a terrible deformity or disability, or maybe just someone like Job. The suffering has gone on so long that they think, "It would have been better had I not been born, because my life is just one relentless pain."

1) And I would try to do the obvious—and everybody knows what to do here, it's just how do you do it. What you want is to help them trust the wisdom and the power of God, that he does all things well, including you. They don't feel that right now, it doesn't look like that right now. And so the battle is, How can you help them trust him?

And one way would be to point them to heaven. That's the way Joni Eareckson Tada fights the fight of faith. She writes a great book on heaven, points to heaven repeatedly, and commends Randy Alcorn's book on heaven.

And the idea is, "I'm going to get to spend millions and millions of years with the best body that I could have ever had, in relationship to the best person who ever was, and with the best use of his creation that could have ever been used. And I have to suffer maybe 50, 60, 70, 80 years in order to get there? Such a deal." But you have to have a massive confidence in heaven and God to get you there. That's the first thing.

2) Secondly, I would just direct people to the cross and say, "Here's the place where God signed in the blood of his Son the covenant that pledges his love for you. If you don't see it here and you can't feel it here, I'm probably not going to be able to show it to you." And say, "He sent his Son to die so that all the horrors of your life could be turned for good."

"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not with him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32), meaning, "This right here is going to turn out as an 'all things for your good.'"

3) And a third thing I would say is that we should love them and accept them and spend time with them, so that we represent God as one who is saying, "Right now with your disability or your suffering or whatever is making you feel like you shouldn't have been created, we think you should've been created, because we want to be with you. We want to treat you as a person. We want to enjoy you." Whoa! What a massive impact that has in embodying God's love when we come to people.