Facing Tragedy

Joseph Parker, a great preacher once said to a group of aspiring young ministers, “Preach to the suffering and you will never lack a congregation. There is a broken heart in every pew.” Truly suffering is a universal language. When life hurts and dreams are shattered, we may express our anguish in different ways, but each one of us knows the sting of pain and heartache, disease and disaster, trials and suffering.
As followers of Christ who affirm that God is good, how do we respond when people ask why God allows evil and pain? Many of our answers are mere clichés that not only fail to answer the question in an appropriate manner but fail to bring any sense of healing or comfort to those who are going through pain. Statements like “Time will heal” or “It’s God’s will” are totally misleading. Time does not automatically heal, and not everything that happens is God’s will. If we do not deal with pain in the right way, we end up bitter and frustrated. People need to learn how not to respond to tragedy.

Don’t Rationalize Evil

When we go through any crisis, it is natural to ask the question “Why me?”, but it is risky to answer this within the framework of our finite minds. The Bible itself does not offer any blanket statement that explains all human suffering. Perhaps for the very good reason that it is unexplainable. When we try to explain the suffering caused by evil, we then have to relate it to a meaningful framework within which it makes sense. But the whole point is that evil does not make sense. It is a violation of God’s good created world. When God created the world, evil and suffering were not a part of the original plan. And our attempts to explain evil only end up in explaining it away.
How did Jesus deal with the question “Who is responsible for suffering?” In Luke 13:16, for example, He stated that Satan caused the pain of the woman bound in disease for eighteen years. Yet in the very same chapter Jesus refused to comment on what had caused the suffering of the Galileans, whom Pilate had butchered when they were offering a sacrifice in the temple. Instead Jesus asked the question “Do you think they were worse sinners than other men from Galilee?” He brought up another tragedy of the same period—the death of eighteen men when the tower of Siloam fell— and asked the same question. Jesus did not give any cause and effect theory that explains how a tyrant like Pilate can take lives or why a tower collapsed killing people. Neither can we explain why terrorists are allowed to detonate bombs or why bridges or buildings collapse killing hundreds and thousands of people.
The rush to provide answers has led people to spout utter nonsense to those who are in pain. Their desperation to say anything has caused more harm than any good. Rabbi Harold Kushner’s best seller, When Bad Things Happen To Good People, falls into this category. Demanding an answer for why his son had suffered and died so tragically, he concluded that “God cannot do everything” and that we need to “recognize His limitations.” Kushner concludes his book with this question, “Are you capable of forgiving God even when you have found out that he is not perfect?” What kind of lame God is Kushner talking about? If God is not as powerful as the Bible says He is, then why trust Him with our lives? In his attempt to answer why God allows bad things to happen, Kushner has only raised more questions, which can be answered only by rejecting the biblical revelation of the character of God.
God does not always tell us why bad things happen, because at the end of the day intellectual answers in themselves would do little to help us face our pain. Imagine a child who is taken to the hospital for an injection. After being injected, when the child starts to cry, the parent cannot comfort the child by opening a medical journal and tell the child, “Now look son, this is how the human body works, and you have to take this medicine to build up resistance against the disease.” Would the child respond, by saying, “Oh that makes perfect sense; I think I will stop crying now”? NO! He screams his head off. The only way he can be comforted is when his parents pick him up in their arms and comfort him with soothing words and kisses. More than anything else it is their presence that comforts a child. God may in the same way never explain why we have to go through pain in our life, but what He will do is comfort us by His presence and by His word. The reality of His presence may be shadowed by our pain, the reality of His face might be dulled by our circumstance, but that does change the fact that God is with us as we go through difficulties. “When you pass through the waters I will be with you…” (Isa 43:2).

Don’t Spiritualize Pain.

In South India the Savita Hindu devotees during Chidi Mari festival pierce their backs with hooks and are lifted into the air by a horizontal pole. This pain is endured in the name of devotion for their god. Shia Muslims during Muharram mourn the death of Ali’s two sons by beating their chest and whipping themselves with metal chains, again all in the name of devotion and spirituality. Some times we Christian are also guilty of glorifying pain and equating it with spirituality. Charles Swindoll in his book The Grace Awakening shares a story about an American missionary family who were sent to a place where they did not have access to peanut butter. This family happened to enjoy peanut butter a great deal. And so they made arrangements with some friends in the States to send them peanut butter every now and then, so that they could just enjoy something that they liked a lot. The problem was they didn’t know until they started receiving the supply of peanut butter that fellow missionaries on the field considered it a mark of spirituality to go without things like peanut butter. They equated “bearing the cross” with being deprived of peanut butter. This family was pressured in leaving the mission field because they refused to live a sacrificial life of not giving up peanut butter— a sacrifice dictated by their fellow workers.
I know of Christians who refuse to take medical help in the name of faith. For them taking medicines would amount to not having faith in God. They would rather endure the sickness than turn to medicines. Paul said that Christians “Rejoice in suffering”
(Rom 5: 3) But rejoicing in suffering does not mean that we take pleasure in our pain; rather it lies in the fact that by God’s providence we are not crushed by our difficulties “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed…”(2 Cor 4:8), but we are made strong by His love. (Rom 5:5). The Bible’s spotlight is then on the end result, the use God can make of suffering in our lives, and not on suffering itself. The Christian world view does not glorify pain or suffering for suffering’s sake, but recognizes the sovereignty of God, who is able to use pain and suffering for our ultimate good. Goodness is neither inherent in pain nor automatically emerges from it. Rather the sovereign Lord is able to work through, our suffering and go beyond it, in spite of all the negative things in our lives. This is the basis for Paul’s affirmation when he said “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”. (8:28)
To spiritualize pain is nothing less than committing idolatry because we focus on our pain and not on God who is able to use this pain to mould us in the image of His Son Jesus Christ.

Don’t Trivialize Grief.

Some Christians are of the view that it is inappropriate for Christians, to mourn or to grieve in the face of tragedy. They think that grieving and mourning are meant for unbelievers who have no hope of eternal life, or it is meant for those who don’t trust in God. According to them expressing grief, disappointment or frustration signifies a lack of faith.
People, who hold this view, have not read the Bible carefully. The Psalms are filled with prayers that openly express anguish, anger, confusion, fear and depression. Job protested his integrity and innocence to heaven. His rage is directed against God who seems indifferent not only to his plight but also to the suffering of all innocent victims (Job 24:2-5, 12) Jesus himself never tried to hide His pain; He stood outside Lazarus’s tomb and cried (Jn 11:35) He looked over Jerusalem and wept because of the destruction that was coming (Luke 19:41). In the garden of Gethsemane He was troubled by what lay ahead of Him, on the cross He cried “My God My God why have you forsaken me” (Matt 27:46). Jesus never projected a macho-image of Himself trying to portray that nothing affected Him; Jesus also did not rebuke those who came to Him with their doubts or their troubles. When Jesus arrived in Bethany four days after Lazarus had dead, Mary on meeting Jesus, confronted Him with these words “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” In effect what she was saying was “My brother is dead because You were not here when we needed You.” Jesus did not rebuke her for her outburst nor does He condemn her as one who does not have faith. So paradoxically, it is those who suppress their doubts under a litany of jolly choruses who may well be guilty of unbelief: for they refuse to believe that God can handle their rage. Jesus during His ministry on earth taught us to relate to God as our father. And so if we as His children can’t turn to Him in time of our suffering and say, “Father this hurts…,” where in world can we turn to?

The Only Answer

The best answer we can have in the face of tragedy is not to rationalize it or spiritualize it, or trivialize it, but to face it with the confidence that our High Priest knows our weaknesses. He knows what it is to be broken, what it means to be betrayed and to suffer in this fallen world. As followers of Christ we are not immune from the tragedies of this world, just as He was not. But we are given grace upon grace to go through the most demanding times. Annie Johnston Flint lived most of her life in pain, she had cancer, and suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Her body was so badly twisted and deformed that she was totally incapacitated. In one of her best known poems she writes, “He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater, He sendeth more strength when the labours increase; to added affliction, he addeth his mercy, to multiplied trials His multiplied peace.” The answer to suffering is more relational than it is propositional. Those who know God personally and understand the cross are better able to find help in times of crisis than those who merely tackle their problems philosophically. Jesus is the central piece of suffering’s puzzle. It is only when we fit Him into the right place, the rest of the puzzle no matter how complex and mysterious begins to make sense.

Rev. Paras Tayade