I’ll file this one under “rant”. I’m just going to type about something that’s been prevalent, annoyingly so, on my mind for the past 6 months.
When my son, Logan, was in the cardiac ICU unit of Boston’s Children’s hospital, I took part in dozens of conversations with the parents, relatives, and friends of children who were Logan’s neighbors in the ICU. Conversations that I would consider to be life changing. When people talk who’ve spent the previous night sitting up by the bedside of a child uttering some variation of the same prayer over and over again — often the single word “please” — the act of conversation takes on an entirely new dynamic. Pleasantries and platitudes no longer suffice — “cutting to the chase”, or “getting to the heart of the matter”, seems much more important in a place where time all together stands still. Aside from seeking a gleam of hope in the stories of other patients, I also found myself searching for a way caused by the situation.
Even though we saw nothing short of a miracle happen in Logan’s recovery (the doctor’s words, not mine), one conversation still stands out to me: In referring to the literal need for a child’s cardiac ICU he stated, “I’m so glad these places exists, but as much as I possible I like to pretend they don’t.”
That statement struck a cord with me because for most of my life this is exactly how I’ve viewed the topic of suffering — a topic not limited to this single experience with my son; although I can’t think of any other instance in my life when I was more afraid. I could reword it into a mechanism that could dismiss all suffering from life: “I’m glad there are people out there to help with the suffering, but as much as possible I like to pretend no one is suffering.”
This statement could carry you through a life when you’ve nothing to suffer through, but the moment you place your own skin in the game you can no longer afford the luxurious comfort of intentional ignorance. It crumbles under it’s own weight. Furthermore; as a Christian, this needs to take on an additional significance. Not only am I required to be mindful of suffering in general, but also I’m told to trust in deliverance from it. This again is a platitude when nothing is staked on it, but puts you to the test when the time comes to “practice what you preach”. As C.S. Lewis once put it; “I thought I was fully trusting the rope until it mattered whether or not it would bear me.“(1)
In the past few years it seems my family and I have encountered one personal hardship after another. From my own cancer diagnosis, to that of my Aunt’s and Grandfather; From my nephew’s muscular dystrophy diagnosis to my youngest son’s developmental delay; from almost losing both my father and my son in one month’s time; there has been no shortage of a very real, very personal, heartache for my family and me. Phrases like “this is just for a season” and “when things are back to normal” have been spoken as a means of unanswerable comfort at family gatherings for almost a third of my life now. I’m waiting for something — a miracle, a scientific break through, a full night’s sleep, a moment of peace — that has yet to reveal itself. In it’s absence, my faith has taken enough hits where I can longer count the cracks in my armor. My faith has been testing, and if I’m being honest with myself, it was found lacking.
Reality looked at steadily is unbearable.
[...]
Sooner of later I must face the question in simple language. What reason have we, except for our desperate wishes, to believe that God is — by any standard that we can conceive — good? Doesn’t all the Prima Facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite?
In light of my life’s experiences so far, how am I supposed to account for this? How am I supposed to believe in a God who declares himself good, and yet continuously allows affliction on the people he claims to love so much? I’d cry out in anger if I thought it would do any good. Where is the God who knows the plans for me? Plans not to harm me but to prosper me and give me a hope and future? (2) Where is the God who stepped out of time and space so that I could have life and have it more abundantly? (3) Where is the promised peace? Peace, not that the world gives, but that was supposed to surpass all understanding? (4) Where is the fulfilment of these promises?
I’m left with three possible conclusions. Either (A) There is no God. (B) There is a God, but he is either distinctively not good and, in fact, may very well be cruel. Or, the most likely option, (C) I’ve been out of step with God for so long that I can no longer “see the forest through the trees”.
If I believe that struggle has a purpose, than suffering must have an answer and the answer to suffering is found in Christ. In stepping down into humanity God himself personally responded to anguish. The mere act of the incarnate made it possible for God to do the one thing that God was incapably of, surrendering his will — after all, before the person of Christ, who did God have to surrender His will to? By living a life full of the same social encounters (parties, social gatherings) that we belong to, dealing with the very same issues of suffering and loss we face (the death of his friends, his own trial and persecution), dealing with the exact temptations we face (his 40 days in the desert) and even dealing with his own absence of God the Father (My God My God why have you forsaken me?) he provided the blueprint model for how man is supposed to live.
Having not spared even himself from any of life’s circumstances that we should face, what right do I have to present to him an ignominious attitude in which I feel I shouldn’t have to deal with own suffering?
When I lash out at God and ask him for the plans of my future, plans not to harm me but to prosper me; his answer is that his definition of prosperity is different than mine. When I ask for my abundant life that was promised me, his answer is that interpretation of an abundant life is different than mine. When I ask for peace, HIS peace, he reminds me that the person who spoke those words died violently after a sham of a trial, after a turbulent ministry, at a very young age. Obviously his idea of peace is not the same as mine.
My faith, I fear, has suffered a slow fate of misunderstanding. My idea of what faith should look like, and God’s idea were two very distinct and different ideas. My faith was made up of more imagination than anything else; believing in a God I wanted to believe in rather than seeking him out for who he knows himself to be. This needs to change.
These ideas are simple to pen; but I have no idea what they are to look like lived out.
(1) C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
(2) Jeremiah 29:11
(3) John 10:10
(4) John 14:27
(5) Matthew 27:46 a
Yes, His ways are not our ways. Very difficult to remember sometimes and even harder to live.