A reader writes in, "Recently I have been struggling with the idea of how much God really effects situations in peoples life and how much happens just because it if free will. Let me explain. People pray to get a new job, they get the job and say "god answered my prayers". Did he really act as a puppetmaster for this believer's life or did they just simply get the job? My son was diagnsed with type one diabetes and when there was still a doubt as to whether he had it I was told by my church that God is the great physician and he can cure any ailment. I prayed for weeks and God didn't cure my son. So should I think well God has the power to snap and the ailment will dissapear? Why doesn't he if he is so merciful? And what about the people at chuch that claim a miracle every time they beat cancer? Did "the great physician" touch them with his curing hands or was it just the chemotherapy? My sister-in-law lost a baby recently, she was on the fence as a believer before this and after my father-in-laws speech about how God did this for a reason she now gets angry anytime someone mentions God. Does God really kill babies for a reason, or thousands of people in disasters like Katrina (as my co-worker and others suggest)? I am beginning to believe that God doesn't have a hand in our lives like so many people believe. "
The question here is one of the most common questions in all religion - it is known as Theodicy, or the justice of God. The basic gist is, "If God is good , why do bad things happen to good people and good things to bad?" There are two ways to approach this question. One is theoretical, the other pastoral.
Theoretically, the reason why bad things can continue to happen to good people is due to free will. This doctrine holds that despite the belief that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, our lives and fates are not predetermined. God, who is love, created us in God's image to reflect that love. In order to love truly, we must be able to choose not to love. A belief in free will means that our moral actions do have some consequence for our relationship with God and that we are not simply puppets dancing on God's strings. This is the reason why we generally believe that God does not do an awful lot of Red-Sea-Dividing miracles. That kind of miracle destroys the ability to disbelieve and therefore compromises free will.
Patorally, this simply does not work. I can't say to you, "God won't cure your son's diabetes because he wants to protect free will." The answer of any good father would be, "**** free will! Cure my son!" It would probably be my answer in that situation. When we confront real, human suffering, philisophical arguments do not hold water. When confronted with human suffering, all I can do is say, "I really don't understand either. If I were in God's shoes (David Almighty?) I wounldn't want this to happen, " and then simply be with the person in pain as a presence. Never, ever say to someone who has lost a loved one, "It must have been God's will," or, "He's with God now." Such platitudes are to comfort the one who says them, not the one hurting. They can only cause more religious problems down the pike and, in my experience, never comfort the one who has had the loss. They are insipid and usually selfish.
There must be some greater reason for human suffering that we as limited human beings can't understand. However, I am not convinced that suffering is "God's will." A lot of problems we experience have to do with environmental or social problems that we as a human race have created. The person experiencing the problem may be guiltless - but as a race we are guilty. However, some problems can only be placed, at least as far as we can see it, on God's choices in the creation. In such cases, anger towards God is an appropriate response.
We spend so much time trying not to be angry towards God, as if God was some sort of bizarre abusive parent, just waiting to smack us if we step out of line. But God is love, and as anyone can tell you who has been in a long term relationship, anger is an integral part of love. We only get angry over things we truly care about. The psalms are full of the psalmist railing against God. The prophets constantly accuse God. The disciples are constantly confused and angry with the things Jesus tells them that they don't want to hear. Relationship with God is a two-way street that requires honest conversation. We should let God know when we are happy and when we are angry. When my wife had her second miscarriage in a row last year, I expressed my emotions here. God does not want platitudes. God wants the fruit of free will, which is honest, open communication.
My experience is that once we begin to experience real communication with God, we begin to see things differently. To use a pop-culture cliche, think of it like the Matrix. Most people see through a lens focused on ourselves as people and as a species. It is a layer of unreality placed over God's reality through self-reliance and deception. When you work to change your lens through prayer and outreach, you begin to glimpse the world through God's eyes - the world as it really is. I believe that miracles, real miracles, happen every day, every hour, every second. We are blind to them through our own filters that we put up because we like to believe that we are ultimately in control.
When I am really, "On" - when I have opened myself up to God, I sometimes have moments like the one Thomas Merton (Pictured above) had in 1958,
"Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were or could be totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream - the dream of my separateness - of the 'special' vocation to be different."
In those few, fleeting moments, the miraculous seems to abound around me - everything is miraculous. Then, usually, it fades and I am left with the reality my ego constructs, but some of the vision remains.
If you feel angry at God over injustice, be angry with God. God's a big guy (gal?), he can take it. We simply can't understand the choices God either makes or allows to be made. As Christians, we have the assurance that God suffers with us - that even in heaven Jesus' resurrection body still bears the marks of the Good Friday nails that we as human beings inflicted. God suffers with us, by us, and through us. It is my belief that in the big picture, suffering is turned to good by God, as is everything else.
David+
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