What Robinson Crusoe Teaches Us About Adversity

Adversity is a fact of life. Everyone at every level of society experiences adversity, and indeed, if they have not, they just haven't lived long enough. The fictional Robinson Crusoe, a character and story developed by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719 tells his shipwrecked alone on a deserted island for many years and how Crusoe moved from cursing God to worshipping and praising God for the same circumstances. What Defoe is doing in this classic of English literature is teaching us about the sovereignty of God. How we deal with adversity will say a lot about what we understand about the God of the Bible and His work in this world. Accident and mistake are not in his vocabulary. He is a "No-Oops" God. Sovereignty is a wonderful, liberating, and comforting attribute of our Heavenly Father, the God of the Universe. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers. #Sovereignty #God #RobinsonCrusoe #Adversity

Transcript

Have you experienced adversity, trials, or tribulations in your life? Have you ever hit the wall?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #178 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Everyone experiences adversity. It’s a part of life no one escapes. In fact, if you haven’t experienced adversity, you haven’t lived long enough. 

Something unpleasant happens, often unexpected, and we suffer. Sometimes it's a mild inconvenience like a flat tire, a toothache, a stubbed toe.  Sometimes adversity is more severe like an illness or the death of a loved one. Or the car engine coughs rather than purrs, the furnace breaks down in January, we lose a job, Fido goes to his reward. Things don't work out the way we hoped or planned—instead, we experience trials and tribulations. 

Robinson Crusoe learned the hard way about adversity. Remember him? At age 18 he foolishly ignored his father's advice, pursued a prodigal drunken sailor's life, aimlessly bounced around the world for a few years, and eventually was shipwrecked alone on a deserted island for what turned out to be 28 years.

Crusoe blamed God—cursed him, actually—for his predicament and lived in bitterness and despondency. Much later he began reading one of the Bibles he’d rescued earlier from the derelict ship. In time, his spiritual eyes were opened, and he accepted Christ. Eventually, he evangelized "Man Friday," the native friend he’d rescued from cannibals. When Robinson Crusoe was finally delivered at age 53, he exuberantly praised God for putting him on the island. 

To say the least this is an amazing change of heart. Crusoe goes from cursing God to worshipping God for the same predicament. It took years, new insight into God’s character, and a realistic assessment of his own attitudes, but in the end, Crusoe realized God’s seemingly cruel intervention in his life was actually a providential act of divine love and mercy. Crusoe knew that, left to his own vices, he likely would’ve died young, alone, and un-mourned in a bar fight in some far-off port. In the words of Scripture, he would have “squandered his wealth [and wasted his life] in wild living” (Lk. 15:13).   

But God had protected Robinson Crusoe from himself. What he considered affliction or adversity, God considered protection and blessing.

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is a classic of English literature that upon publication immediately became what today we’d call a bestseller, and it’s never been out of print since. The book helped earn Defoe the honorary sobriquet “Father of the English Novel.”  

But Defoe was about more than fame and fortune. Defoe developed the fictional Crusoe character to help illustrate the sovereignty of God. Sovereignty, or ultimate knowledge, authority, and power, is the belief God holds everything in His hands.

In the Old Testament, Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery with evil intent. Yet God used these misguided brothers to accomplish his purposes. He placed Joseph in high Egyptian office so Joseph could later save those very brothers from famine—“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20). Joseph’s adversity demonstrates that not all of our trials are due to personal sin (Jm. 1). 

Job, too, experienced overwhelming adversity, none of it due to his disobedience. While it's possible to bring adversity upon ourselves by ignoring God's commands, it's also possible that many of the problems we face in our lives come upon us because we live in a fallen sinful world (Rom. 1).

With all that happens in this capricious fallen world God is never surprised. He's never taken off-guard. He's never the victim of circumstances. “Accident” and “mistake” are not words in God’s vocabulary. Indeed, the phrase “divine mistake” is an oxymoron. As the sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal God of the universe it is impossible for God to make a mistake. In point of fact, the reality of the Sovereign God and the concepts of “accident” or “error” are mutually exclusive ideas. So, for God there are no “oops.”

The doctrine of the sovereignty of God—this “No-Oops” God—is one of the most comforting teachings of Scripture. God is in control not only of creation but also of his creatures, and he never takes a misstep.

The world is a confusing mix of good and evil, beauty and ugliness. Acts of human courage and nobility coexist with unbelievable human cruelty and debauchery. It's what the Bible calls the "wheat and the weeds" (Matt. 13:24-30). In the face of this moral mixture, Christians sometimes wonder, "Is God on our side?"  

Abraham Lincoln struggled with this question in his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. He said, "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained...Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other...The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes...Shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? So shall it be said 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

God works His purposes with both the wheat and the weeds. Christians will not always "win" or be blessed. Businesses owned by Christians will not always succeed. Life will not always seem "fair." Yet God will work all things, including adversities, together for good (Rom. 8:28).

Not only acts of good but acts of evil are within God’s universal and permissive will—his sovereignty. God does not cause evil. He is not the source of evil. Satan is the source, along with the evil heart of humankind. But even evil men or women committing evil acts do not catch God off-guard and do not unsettle Him in any way. Sovereignty isn’t a part-time attribute. 

Consider this passage from the Psalms: “God reigns over the nations: God is seated on his holy throne. The nobles of the nations assemble, as the people of the God of Abraham. For the kings of the earth belong to God. He is greatly exalted” (47:8-9).

Psalm 52 is too long to quote. Just think about these phrases: “Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man…Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin” (52:1, 5).

No mass killer, no deranged gunman, no suicide bomber, no hijacker, no evildoer, no strongman, no terrorist, not even Satan himself can operate beyond the limits of God’s sovereignty.  

While we are finite and cannot anticipate, much less eliminate, all risk, God is omnipotent and has us in the palm of his hands. While we may hear of random violence, nothing is ever random in the omniscient eyes of God. While we do not understand exactly how God exercises his disposition over evil in the world, knowing that he does is an immense solace. While we may at times be understandably fearful in a maniacal world, we need not live in fear. God knows when we rise up and when we lay down. We belong to the Lord, and so does history itself. 

While we'll not always understand our adversity much less the soul-wrenching adversity of the complex world in which we live, we trust the Lord. He never leaves us nor forsakes us (Heb. 13:5).  

Like Robinson Crusoe we must learn to understand all things, especially adversity, from the perspective of a Christian worldview. 

God is near, and he's in control. God is sovereign. What a fantastic, liberating, comforting truth.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube Channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.