A few years ago, my wife and I had neighbors who had two
lovely daughters. We belonged to the same local swim club, and we became
friendly with them socially. One day we learned that the neighbor wife
was pregnant.
The baby was delivered uneventfully, but was immediately
seen to be very handicapped. While this handicap was not life-threatening
clearly this baby's future life would be very limited. People who knew
the baby's talented older sisters were stunned and worried for this family.
When my wife and I called on them to express our
sympathy and support, their minister happened to be there. The dad was
tearful and angry ---- "Why us, to have a handicapped child," he
demanded, "considering our lifetime of religious and highly moral
behavior. This is so unfair!"
He continued, "Many of us were taught an image of God
as an all-wise, all-powerful parent figure who would treat us as our earthly
parents did, or even better. If we were obedient and deserving, He would
reward us. He would discipline us, reluctantly but firmly if we got out of
line. He would protect us from being hurt or from hurting ourselves, and would
see to it that we got what we deserved in life. But that does not explain
the unfair distribution of suffering we see in the world.
Then the minister spoke up:
"There's a problem in giving sympathy to others by
arguing there must be a purpose for such heart-break. When we are just
meaning to help the sufferer or to explain the suffering, the
"purpose" line of approach is meant primarily to defend God.
It is to use words and ideas to transform bad into good and pain into
privilege. We are thinking that God is a loving parent who controls what
happens to us, and on the basis of that belief adjust and interpret the facts
to fit our assumptions."
"Don't you think there needs to be some clear
connection between the fault in us and the punishment by God. A parent
who disciplines a child for doing something wrong, but never tells him what he
is being punished for, is hardly a model of responsible parenthood."
"Many of our responses to tragedy have at least one
thing in common. They all assume that God is the cause of our suffering,
and they try to understand why God would want us to suffer. Is it for our
own good to get us back on the 'path', or is it a punishment we deserve, or
could it be that God does not care what happens to us? Some answers lead
us to blame ourselves in order to spare God's reputation. Others ask us
to deny reality or to repress our true feelings. We are left either
hating ourselves for deserving such a fate, or hating God for sending it to us
when we did not deserve it."
"There may be another approach. Maybe God does
not cause our suffering. Maybe it happens for some reason other than the
will of God. Could it be that God does not cause the bad things
that happen to us? Could it be that He does not decide which families
shall give birth to a handicapped child, but that he stands ready to help us
cope with our tragedies if we could only get beyond the feelings of guilt and
anger that separate us from Him? Could it be that 'How could God do this
to me?' is really the wrong question for us to ask."
Belief in a world to come where the innocent are compensated
for their suffering can help people endure the unfairness of life in this world,
without losing faith. But it can also be an excuse for not being troubled
or outraged by injustice around us, and not using our God-given intelligence to
try to do something about it. In the face of tragedy, how hard is it for
us to ask God for help in our coping with the tragedy?
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult
Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage your personal spiritual growth
this spring at CPC.
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