There are a lot of little heresies that have crept into the language register of the modern church; innocuous-sounding phrases which almost reflect a biblical perspective but subtly subvert it. Some of them are inaccurate but harmless enough – I'm not sure it matters hugely to God if we name the wrong member of the Trinity during a particular prayer – but some are much more dangerous. And then there are other phrases, the perpetration of which can have absolutely devastating consequences.
There's a well-known verse in 1 Corinthians 10, (v13) where Paul tells his readers that "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear." It's a reminder of God's grace, that, as the next line tells us, "he will provide a way out" when we're faced with serious temptation. It's actually quite tough talking from Paul – he's telling us that we really don't have an excuse when we give in to our sinful desires.
Yet somehow, through a mix of poor exegesis and the prevalence of a kind of self-help gospel in the modern church, that verse has become seriously misquoted; turned out of shape and repurposed as something quite different. Something dangerous and unhelpful.
The new version goes something like this: "remember, God won't give you more than you can handle."
Sounds similar, right? On the face of it, it's basically the same idea. But once you remove the word 'temptation' from this equation, you immediately rob the verse of its true meaning. Instead, we mis-apply this verse to everything we might have to endure – not just temptation.
That means we might, in some bumbling, well-meaning way, quote this phrase to someone who is facing a difficult challenge: let's say financial uncertainty, or even a worrying medical scan. To them this phrase might offer some kind of comfort, or alternatively have the opposite effect: making them worry that because God has installed them with some great and as-yet-unexplored capacity for suffering, things are about to get really bad for them.
But when you think about it, the implications are even more horrific than that. What does this phrase, which sounds so much like a Bible verse, mean to someone who has lost a child in tragic circumstances, or who has seen their spouse leave suddenly? What does it say to the victim of domestic violence, or of any abuse for that matter? What does his say to the millions fleeing war-torn countries? What, honestly does it say to any of us about the nature and character of God?
It's a subtle shift from the original Bible verse, but the idea that God won't give you more than you can bear is heresy, pure and simple.
It's high time we eradicate this dangerous, damaging phrase from the modern church. Suffering is a complex and difficult enough subject for us to understand as it is, without throwing in the unbiblical idea that God is somehow dishing it out to us on the basis of how resilient He thinks we are.
Instead, when we encounter suffering in those around us, let's refrain from easy answers. We're called to take the much harder, much more Christ-like route of true compassion: walking alongside the broken, holding them up, listening and praying with them. God hasn't promised that He won't give people more than they can handle, but He has built a church than can help them to handle life even at its darkest. Let's be that church, not a vacuous dispenser of inaccurate self-help.
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders.
