Found By God
There are really good reasons not to believe in God. Actually, there are lots of them. But there is one that pulls and tugs at my heart. It waits and rears its head each time I open the paper. It flashes across the television screen at 6:30 every night. It calls out and forces me to my knees. It is the reason that many have left no room for God or left the church or left no hope of possibility for anything other than what can be understood or rationed or reasoned. It is the reason that aching souls around the world cry out in pain and the reason that human beings throughout history have joined the Psalmist’ song and Jesus’ cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This reason is suffering; it is the presence and the seemingly relentless nature of suffering in the world. We live in a world where more than 15 million children have been orphaned as a result of AIDS. We live in a world where 5 million people are left homeless by an earthquake. We live in a world where our hearts grieve when our families crumble and our lives are shattered by unexpected deaths and profound losses that make an eternal mark on who we are. We carry deep and abiding wounds simply because we are alive. This is as true for us as it was for those who sought God so long ago. In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God...” And yet this seems not to be the case. I have watched time and time again as faithful people, people who have loved God with all their heart have suffered and withered. I have watched as they tried to make sense of why this was happening and what God had in mind for them. I have watched as they searched and waited and listened.
I once sat for hours with a young man as his elderly father lay dying. I didn’t know him well, but I knew how much he loved his dad. And slowly He had faithfully walked with his dad through each part of the aging process, ensuring that he had received the best care possible and that he had done everything in his power to ensure that his father’s wishes were met. We talked for an hour and then another hour and then another hour passed. And slowly he started to share with me how his son had died when he was just coming into his own, when he was in the peek of his twenties. He shared how he had turned away from his church, how painful, how deep and wide the wound in his heart continued to be. As I sat there, I shared what I have felt for some time. “I don’t think everything happens for a reason,” I said. Silence covered the hospital room. He looked up. “You don’t?” His face brightened and he shared about the time following the death of his son. He shared how painful it was for him to hear his pastor, his church family, his friends, everyone tell him that his loss, his pain, his suffering beyond comprehension was somehow a part of God’s plan. They kept saying, “Everything happens for a reason.” He couldn’t hear it even one more time. It was too much to bear, and so he left his community of faith and his God in the dust. And frankly, I don’t blame him. Despite its starring role in American pop religion, this oft repeated theology is painful. And how can we as people of faith sing and pray and dance of our God of love, our God who is good and holy and gracious, if our God has plans for us that include nearly life-ending suffering?
Jewish and Christian theologians throughout history have wrestled with this very question. Technically speaking, this struggle is called, theodicy, or the rational defense of God even in the presence of evil and suffering. The argument about God and suffering goes something like this. “If God is perfectly good and omnipotent, why then does evil exist? That is, if God is perfectly good; it appears that God would not want to have evil in the creation and would want to have creatures suffer. And if God is omnipotent, then it seems God is able to create a world in which no evil exists. Yet evil does in fact exist.” So, we are left holding the question and wondering where God is and who God is in a world such as ours.
In speech entitled, “God’s Love to Fallen Man”, John Wesley writes, “How innumerable are the benefits which God conveys to the children of men through the channel of sufferings, so that it might well be said, “What are termed afflictions in the language of men are in the language of God styled blessings.” Indeed, had there been no suffering in the world, a considerable part of religion, yea, and in some respects, the most excellent part, could have had no place therein: since the very existence of it depends on our suffering: so that had there been no pain it could have had no being. Upon this foundation, even our suffering, it is evident all our passive graces are built; yea, the noblest of all Christian graces, love enduring all things.” He goes on, “What room could there be for trust in God if there was no such thing as pain or danger?” And of course Wesley is not alone. For centuries, writers and philosophers and theologians have tried to hold two truths together. We have tried to assert both that God is good and all powerful, but yet somehow allows suffering to exist in the world.
Most famously, Rabbi Harold Kushner tackled this deep dilemma in his popular book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Speaking about the death of his son, Rabbi Kushner writes, “I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron’s life and death than I would ever have been without it. And I would give up all of those gains in a second if I could have my son back. If I could choose, I would forgo all of the spiritual growth and depth which has come my way because of our experience, and be what I was fifteen years ago, an average rabbi, an indifferent counselor, helping people and unable to help others, and the father of a bright happy boy. But I cannot choose.
And the truth is of course that none of us can. But I believe that God is good, I believe this to the depths of my soul, to the tips of my toes, to the ends of the earth- God is good. And because I believe that God is good, I am left with just a few options. Because if God is good and true and the very essence of love it is not possible for God to allow suffering. And if God is all powerful then God would have the power to end it. For me, the only way that I can stand firmly in my conviction that God is good, that God hurts with us, that God shares the actual experience of pain and damaged cells and the loss of hope, is if God cannot prevent the pain that comes our way. This theological perspective is a radical challenge to some because it limits God’s power. It means that God cannot be present in the world in coercive ways but primarily in persuasive ways, through pushing and pulling and prodding us. In this view, “God’s primary role is to draw us to be more active in preventing suffering because God has no hands but ours.” This is not unlike the role of a parent. A parent’s own being is connected to her child. A mother takes each possible step to nurture and nourish her child, watching her and guiding her, equipping her to face the world. And yet a mother cannot possibly prevent all of the pain that could come her child’s way. God is constantly, with each moment and each breath doing everything within divine power to prevent suffering but I believe God cannot stop it or at least not those events that would require coercion. For some, this is enough to let go of God, some of us need a God that has all possible power and might, but for me I would rather rest my life and my heart in a God who is the very power of love. I do not believe that God allows children to die of cancer or chooses to let millions die of starvation. I do not believe that the same God who healed the sick and gave sight to the blind and spent time with the forgotten would let any of this happen. When confronted with the inequality of the world and the crisis of poverty in homelessness, we let ourselves off the hook by continuing to assert that such despair is a part of God’s plan.
Paul writes that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Maybe Paul should have flipped his words around. He certainly got confused at times. Maybe he meant to say, “We know that God uses all things to work together with us for good according to His purpose.” God searches and watches and waits and finds us. God finds us, wherever we are. And yes, God has a plan for us. God has a plan for each of us and God will make God out of whatever comes our way. God does not cause us to suffer, but God can turn even suffering into something beautiful. I believe God’s plan is not for us to wither; God’s plan is for us to thrive to live fully, God’s plan is to find us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
http://www.avert.org/aidsorphans.htm
Bradley C. Hanson, Introduction to Christian Theology (Augsburg Press, 1997), p. 98.
John Wesley. The World’s Famous Orations. Great Britain: I. (710–1777).1906. “God’s Love to Fallen Man”
Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (Schocken Books, 1981), p. 133.
C. Robert Mesle, Process Theology: A Basic Introduction (Chalice Press, 1993) 20.