The Haiti earthquake and ‘where is God?’

Seeing people being pulled from the rubble in Haiti again generates the understandable scream ‘so where is God?’.  If there were one clear and simple answer to why God lets people suffer you could bottle it and make a fortune. But supposing, just supposing, there is an answer God would love to give us – yet there is no way we could ever understand.

Our Understanding is Limited

Suppose even if God did sit down with us over a cup of coffee to explain it all, he would have to use vocabulary we never learned and mathematical formulas we could never comprehend. Suppose the answers that God wants to give are way beyond our ability to understand?

Of all the traumas to have befallen my children, the one that haunts me most concerns my third son, Aran, when he was about four years old. Running across our backyard at frenetic speed, he tripped. Head and bench collided, badly tearing the corner of Aran’s eyelid.

The necessary stitches required a local anesthetic, but the injection did not allow him to look the other way. The result was an agonizing ten minutes while I physically held down the son I loved for the essential treatment to take place.

There, wrapped in my arms and doggedly fighting, Aran’s very best interests were being served. But, from his fearful and confused perspective, I was contributing to his pain. All he could say was “Daddy” as we both cried together. And by that he meant, “Daddy, why?” I longed to explain. But there was no way he could understand.

Think of it this way: every normal child reaches the “Why?” stage. Why this? Why that? What’s it for? What does it do? How does it work? Why? Why? Why? And time and again the adult on the receiving end of the barrage has the answer to hand—but the child’s vocabulary, intellect and experience deny it the capacity to understand the answer.

Could that be how it is on some of the issues of suffering? That God would love to let us in on the answers but we don’t have the capacity to deal with them?

Is All “Bad” Really “Bad”?

There’s also something else to wrap our minds round. It’s the thought that not everything we see as “bad” truly is “bad” when it comes to the grand scale of things.

I don’t want to trivialize the suffering of millions or of any individual. But allow me to draw on my own experience, along with that of Rosemary, my wife. Our family trudged through some long dark days with her cancer and then several years of a deep depressive illness. Yet because of all we went through we now see ourselves as far richer and more complete people. Strange to say but we wouldn’t have wanted to miss it.

What I’m driving at is that millions of people, including Rosemary and me, are richer and more complete as the result of the pain and suffering that exists in the world. Indeed, what a shallow existence we would be consigned to without adversity to overcome, opportunities for the human spirit to soar, the means for people to become truly rich on the inside through triumphing against all the odds.

I’m not saying that wars, earthquakes, sickness, and the like are “good.” I’m saying we should not be blind to the positive impact suffering can have. I’ve seen it personally in some of the world’s poorest communities and in the lives of those closest to me.

Let’s face it; the most valuable and genuinely likeable people are often those who have suffered. And the most bland and empty are usually those who have sailed through life unscathed. Which suggests there might be more to living and growing old with pain and hardship than to do so in absolute comfort and perpetual sunshine.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

Finally, if we want God to give account of the bad that’s here, it is only fair to insist he gets “blamed” for the good. We need to see the whole canvas and not just the seemingly grotesque black area that is part of it

On that canvas, do we see all the bravery and self-sacrifice seen in response to 9/11? Or the outpouring of passionate and sacrificial response to the tsunami that hit the South Asian coast a few Christmases ago? And those amazing acts of generosity and self-sacrifice that happen every hour of the day on every square mile of the globe? Let’s be sure to blame God for all this and everything like it.

On that canvas too, God has painted his love for us in the richest of colors. He has committed the most lavishly outrageous act of self-sacrifice that can be imagined.

The God who stands accused of indifference to our pain actually loves his creation so much he was willing to cause himself the greatest pain ever endured—because that’s what happened when he sent Jesus. Far from enjoying the spectacle of us suffering, he entered our world and suffered with us.

Any attempt to make sense of pain and suffering has to deal with what we know about God just as much as what we know about suffering. And what we know is that he loves us—with extravagant abundance.

There’s a story told—I don’t know where it originally came from—of the time when God came to judge all the people who every lived. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups stood their ground.

“What does God know of all that the human race had been forced to endure?” they argued. “God leads a pretty sheltered life.” And before he could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they endured. God should be sentenced to live on Earth—as a man!

“Let him be born a Jew. Let people think him illegitimate. Let him live in a country occupied and ruled by a cruel, callous government. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be beaten and tortured. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone.

“Then let him die.”

When the sentence had been pronounced there was a long silence. No one uttered a word. No one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.^[i]

Far from being removed and remote from this world of pain, God has chosen to grasp it firmly to his heart. And with that thought in mind, let me take you back again to my son Aran and his eye.

As I held his squirming frame while the emergency staff stitched his eye, I gained a clearer perspective of how God must feel.

Here was I, a loving father, moved to tears by the pain of the one held in my embrace. In that moment it came to me—that, in the same way I held my son, God wants us to be fully engulfed in his loving embrace.

In fact, if we could see pain and suffering from God’s perspective, perhaps we might even discover that we are not the only ones crying. His eyes are also wet with tears.

Adapted from chapter 10 my book with Joseph Steinberg – The Book of Y.

See http://www.ycourse.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd4g8tVIqNE&feature=player_embedded

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