Chapter One
A Problem
That Won't Go Away * * *
Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms.
When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing
Him, if you turn to Him then with praise, you will be welcomed
with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when
all other help is vain and what do you find? A door slammed in
your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.
After that, silence. You may as well turn away. C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
I feel helpless around people in great pain. Helpless, and also guilty.
I stand beside them, watching facial features contort and listening to
the sighs and moans, deeply aware of the huge gulf between us. I cannot
penetrate their suffering, I can only watch. Whatever I attempt to
say seems weak and stiff, as if I'd memorized the lines for a school play.
One day I received a frantic plea for help from my close friends
John and Claudia Claxton. Newlyweds in their early twenties, they
were just beginning life together in the Midwest. I had watched in
amazement as the experience of romantic love utterly transformed
John Claxton. Two years of engagement to Claudia had melted his
cynicism and softened his hard edges. He became an optimist, and
now his letters to me were usually bubbly with enthusiasm about his
young marriage.
But one letter from John alarmed me as soon as I opened it. Errors
and scratches marred his usually neat handwriting. He explained,
"Excuse my writing . I guess it shows how I'm fumbling for words.
I don't know what to say." The Claxtons' young marriage had run into
a roadblock far bigger than both of them. Claudia had been diagnosed
with Hodgkin's disease, cancer of the lymph glands, and was given
only a fifty percent chance to live.
Within a week surgeons had cut her from armpit to belly, removing
every visible trace of the disease. She was left stunned and weak,
lying in a hospital bed.
At the time, ironically, John was working as a chaplain's assistant
in a local hospital. His compassion for other patients dipped dangerously.
"In some ways," he told me, "I could understand better what
other patients were undergoing. But I didn't care any more. I only
cared about Claudia. I wanted to yell at them, 'Stop that sniveling,
you idiots! You think you've got problems-my wife may be dying
right now!'"
Though both John and Claudia were strong Christians, an unexpected
anger against God surged up-anger against a beloved partner
who had betrayed them. "God, why us?" they cried. "Have you teasingly
doled out one happy year of marriage to set us up for this?"
Cobalt treatments took their toll on Claudia's body. Beauty fled
her almost overnight. She felt and looked weary, her skin darkened,
her hair fell out. Her throat was raw, and she regurgitated nearly
everything she ate. Doctors had to suspend treatment for a time when
her swollen throat could no longer make swallowing motions.
When the radiation treatments resumed, she was periodically laid
out flat on a table, naked. She could do nothing but lie still and listen to
the whir and click of the machinery as it bombarded her with invisible
particles, each dose aging her body by months. As she lay in that chill
steel room, Claudia would think about God and about her suffering.
Claudia's Visitors
Claudia had hoped that Christian visitors would comfort her by
bringing some perspective on what she was going through. But their
voices proved confusing, not consoling.
A deacon from her church solemnly advised her to reflect on
what God was trying to teach her. "Surely something in your life must
displease God," he said. "Somewhere, you must have stepped out of
his will. These things don't just happen. God uses circumstances to
warn us, and to punish us. What is he telling you?"
A few days later Claudia was surprised to see a woman from
church whom she barely knew. Evidently, this plump, scatterbrained
widow had adopted the role of professional cheerleader to the sick.
She brought flowers, sang hymns, and stayed long enough to read
some happy psalms about brooks running and mountains clapping
their hands. Whenever Claudia tried to talk about her illness or prognosis,
the woman quickly changed the subject, trying to combat the
suffering with cheer and goodwill. But she only visited once, and after
a while the flowers faded, the hymns seemed dissonant, and Claudia
was left to face a new day of pain.
Another woman dropped by, a faithful follower of television faith
healers. Exuding confidence, she assured Claudia that healing was her
only escape. When Claudia told her about the deacon's advice, this
woman nearly exploded. "Sickness is never God's will!" she exclaimed.
"Haven't you read the Bible? The Devil stalks us like a roaring lion,
but God will deliver you if you can muster up enough faith to believe
you'll be healed. Remember, Claudia, faith can move mountains, and
that includes Hodgkin's disease. Simply name your promise, in faith,
and then claim the victory."
The next few mornings, as Claudia lay in the sterile cobalt treatment
room, she tried to "muster up" faith. She wondered if she even
understood the procedure. She did not question God's supernatural
power, but how to go about convincing God of her sincerity? Faith
wasn't like a muscle that could be enlarged through rehabilitation
exercises. It was slippery, intangible, impossible to grasp. The whole
notion of mustering up faith seemed awfully exhausting, and she
could never decide what it really meant.
Perhaps the most "spiritual" woman in Claudia's church brought
along some books about praising God for everything that happens.
"Claudia, you need to come to the place where you can say, 'God, Ilove you for making me suffer like this. It is your will, and you know
what's best for me. And I praise you for loving me enough to allow me
to experience this. In all things, including this, I give thanks.'"
As Claudia pondered the words, her mind filled with rather
grotesque images of God. She envisioned a figure in the shape of a
troll, big as the universe, who took delight in squeezing helpless
humans between his fingernails, pulverizing them with his fists, dashing
them against sharp stones. The figure would torture these humans
until they cried out, "God, I love you for doing this to me!" The idea
repulsed Claudia, and she decided she could not worship or love such
a God.
Yet another visitor, Claudia's pastor, made her feel she was on a
select mission. He said, "Claudia, you have been appointed to suffer
for Christ, and he will reward you. God chose you because of your
great strength and integrity, just as he chose Job, and he is using you
as an example to others. Their faith may increase because of your
response. You should feel privileged, not bitter. What we see as adversity,
God sees as opportunity." He told her to think of herself as a track
star, and to view adversity as the series of hurdles she would need to
leap over on the way to the victory circle.
Sometimes the notion of being a privileged martyr appealed to
Claudia, in a self-pitying sort of way. Other times, when the pain
crescendoed, when she vomited up food, when her facial features
aged, Claudia would call out, "God, why me? There are millions of
Christians stronger and more honorable than I-couldn't you choose
one of them instead?" She didn't feel like a track star at all, and she
wondered why God would deliberately place hurdles in the path of
someone he loved.
I, too, visited Claudia, and found her desperately confused by all
these contradictory words. She repeated for me the advice given her
by well-meaning Christians, and I listened to her bewildered response.
Which of these lessons was she supposed to be learning? How could
she have more faith? Who should she listen to? In the midst of much
confusion, Claudia had one certainty: her happy world with John was
disintegrating. Above all, she didn't want that to end.
I had little advice for Claudia that day. In fact, I came away with
even more questions. Why was she lying in a hospital bed while I
stood beside her, healthy? Something inside me recoiled as I heard
her repeat the clichéd comments from her visitors. Is Christianity supposed
to make a sufferer feel even worse?
At the time I visited Claudia, I was working for Campus Life magazine
while also moonlighting as a free-lance journalist. In a short span
I wrote six "Drama in Real Life" stories for Reader's Digest. I interviewed
a young Canadian couple who had been mauled by a grizzly
bear. Although both survived, the young man lost one eye, and no
amount of plastic surgery could hide the scars across his face. In
another city, two young adults told me the story of a childhood camping
trip taken with their father up Mount Rainier. Caught in a blizzard,
they frantically dug a snow cave. Their father, lying protectively
across the face of the cave, froze to death overnight.
All these people repeated their own versions of the cacophony of
voices from Christian "comforters." One amputee told me, "My religious
friends were the most depressing, irritating part of the entire
experience." That pattern disturbed me greatly. Something was wrong.
A faith founded on the Great Physician should bring peace, not confusion,
at a time of crisis.
Why do people have to suffer so? What does the Bible really say?
Because of the questions that arose from my contacts with Claudia
and others like her, I began a quest that culminated in this book. I
have looked for a message we Christians can give to people who are
suffering. At the same time, I've hunted for a message that can
strengthen my own faith when I suffer. Where is God when it hurts?
Is he trying to tell us something through our pain?
A Personal Approach
After an extensive tour of the United States, the well-known German
pastor and theologian Helmut Thielicke was asked what he had
observed as the greatest deficiency among American Christians. He
replied, "They have an inadequate view of suffering." I have come to
agree with him.
That deficiency stands out as a huge blemish to the non-Christian
world. I've asked college students what they have against Christianity,
and most of them echo variations on the theme of suffering: "I can't
believe in a God who would allow Auschwitz and Cambodia"; "My
teenage sister died of leukemia despite all the Christians' prayers";
"One-third of the world went to bed hungry last night-how can you
reconcile that with Christian love?"
No other human experience provokes such an urgent response.
No one sits in smoky coffeehouses late into the night debating the
cosmic implications of the sense of smell or taste. Smell! Why this
strange sensation? What did God intend? Why was scent apportioned so
capriciously, lavished on roses but not on oxygen? And why must
humankind get by with one-eighth the sensory ability of the dog? Oddly,
I hear no one debating "the problem of pleasure"; why do we take for
granted sensations of pleasure but react so violently against pain?
As I did library research on the problem of pain, I discovered that
many great philosophers, otherwise sympathetic to Christian principles
and ethics, have stumbled over this problem of pain and suffering,
ultimately rejecting Christianity because of it. C. E. M. Joad
wrote, "What, then, are the arguments which for me have told so
strongly against the religious view of the universe? . First, there was
the difficulty presented by the facts of pain and evil." Other philosophers,
such as Bertrand Russell and Voltaire, share Joad's complaint.
The messy problem of pain and suffering keeps popping up
despite erudite attempts to explain it away. The great British writer
C. S. Lewis offered perhaps the most articulate treatment of the subject
in this century with The Problem of Pain, written at the height of
his intellectual powers. But years later, after his own wife died of bone
cancer, Lewis wrote another book, A Grief Observed, which he published
under a pseudonym. It covers the same topic, but in a very different
way. As the quote at the beginning of this chapter reveals,
Lewis's confidence had been shattered, his emotions stretched to the
breaking point-stretched beyond the breaking point. "You never
know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood
becomes a matter of life and death to you," he said.
Continues.
Chapter One
A Problem
That Won't Go Away * * *
Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms.
When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing
Him, if you turn to Him then with praise, you will be welcomed
with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when
all other help is vain and what do you find? A door slammed in
your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.
After that, silence. You may as well turn away. C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
I feel helpless around people in great pain. Helpless, and also guilty.
I stand beside them, watching facial features contort and listening to
the sighs and moans, deeply aware of the huge gulf between us. I cannot
penetrate their suffering, I can only watch. Whatever I attempt to
say seems weak and stiff, as if I'd memorized the lines for a school play.
One day I received a frantic plea for help from my close friends
John and Claudia Claxton. Newlyweds in their early twenties, they
were just beginning life together in the Midwest. I had watched in
amazement as the experience of romantic love utterly transformed
John Claxton. Two years of engagement to Claudia had melted his
cynicism and softened his hard edges. He became an optimist, and
now his letters to me were usually bubbly with enthusiasm about his
young marriage.
But one letter from John alarmed me as soon as I opened it. Errors
and scratches marred his usually neat handwriting. He explained,
"Excuse my writing . I guess it shows how I'm fumbling for words.
I don't know what to say." The Claxtons' young marriage had run into
a roadblock far bigger than both of them. Claudia had been diagnosed
with Hodgkin's disease, cancer of the lymph glands, and was given
only a fifty percent chance to live.
Within a week surgeons had cut her from armpit to belly, removing
every visible trace of the disease. She was left stunned and weak,
lying in a hospital bed.
At the time, ironically, John was working as a chaplain's assistant
in a local hospital. His compassion for other patients dipped dangerously.
"In some ways," he told me, "I could understand better what
other patients were undergoing. But I didn't care any more. I only
cared about Claudia. I wanted to yell at them, 'Stop that sniveling,
you idiots! You think you've got problems-my wife may be dying
right now!'"
Though both John and Claudia were strong Christians, an unexpected
anger against God surged up-anger against a beloved partner
who had betrayed them. "God, why us?" they cried. "Have you teasingly
doled out one happy year of marriage to set us up for this?"
Cobalt treatments took their toll on Claudia's body. Beauty fled
her almost overnight. She felt and looked weary, her skin darkened,
her hair fell out. Her throat was raw, and she regurgitated nearly
everything she ate. Doctors had to suspend treatment for a time when
her swollen throat could no longer make swallowing motions.
When the radiation treatments resumed, she was periodically laid
out flat on a table, naked. She could do nothing but lie still and listen to
the whir and click of the machinery as it bombarded her with invisible
particles, each dose aging her body by months. As she lay in that chill
steel room, Claudia would think about God and about her suffering.
Claudia's Visitors
Claudia had hoped that Christian visitors would comfort her by
bringing some perspective on what she was going through. But their
voices proved confusing, not consoling.
A deacon from her church solemnly advised her to reflect on
what God was trying to teach her. "Surely something in your life must
displease God," he said. "Somewhere, you must have stepped out of
his will. These things don't just happen. God uses circumstances to
warn us, and to punish us. What is he telling you?"
A few days later Claudia was surprised to see a woman from
church whom she barely knew. Evidently, this plump, scatterbrained
widow had adopted the role of professional cheerleader to the sick.
She brought flowers, sang hymns, and stayed long enough to read
some happy psalms about brooks running and mountains clapping
their hands. Whenever Claudia tried to talk about her illness or prognosis,
the woman quickly changed the subject, trying to combat the
suffering with cheer and goodwill. But she only visited once, and after
a while the flowers faded, the hymns seemed dissonant, and Claudia
was left to face a new day of pain.
Another woman dropped by, a faithful follower of television faith
healers. Exuding confidence, she assured Claudia that healing was her
only escape. When Claudia told her about the deacon's advice, this
woman nearly exploded. "Sickness is never God's will!" she exclaimed.
"Haven't you read the Bible? The Devil stalks us like a roaring lion,
but God will deliver you if you can muster up enough faith to believe
you'll be healed. Remember, Claudia, faith can move mountains, and
that includes Hodgkin's disease. Simply name your promise, in faith,
and then claim the victory."
The next few mornings, as Claudia lay in the sterile cobalt treatment
room, she tried to "muster up" faith. She wondered if she even
understood the procedure. She did not question God's supernatural
power, but how to go about convincing God of her sincerity? Faith
wasn't like a muscle that could be enlarged through rehabilitation
exercises. It was slippery, intangible, impossible to grasp. The whole
notion of mustering up faith seemed awfully exhausting, and she
could never decide what it really meant.
Perhaps the most "spiritual" woman in Claudia's church brought
along some books about praising God for everything that happens.
"Claudia, you need to come to the place where you can say, 'God, Ilove you for making me suffer like this. It is your will, and you know
what's best for me. And I praise you for loving me enough to allow me
to experience this. In all things, including this, I give thanks.'"
As Claudia pondered the words, her mind filled with rather
grotesque images of God. She envisioned a figure in the shape of a
troll, big as the universe, who took delight in squeezing helpless
humans between his fingernails, pulverizing them with his fists, dashing
them against sharp stones. The figure would torture these humans
until they cried out, "God, I love you for doing this to me!" The idea
repulsed Claudia, and she decided she could not worship or love such
a God.
Yet another visitor, Claudia's pastor, made her feel she was on a
select mission. He said, "Claudia, you have been appointed to suffer
for Christ, and he will reward you. God chose you because of your
great strength and integrity, just as he chose Job, and he is using you
as an example to others. Their faith may increase because of your
response. You should feel privileged, not bitter. What we see as adversity,
God sees as opportunity." He told her to think of herself as a track
star, and to view adversity as the series of hurdles she would need to
leap over on the way to the victory circle.
Sometimes the notion of being a privileged martyr appealed to
Claudia, in a self-pitying sort of way. Other times, when the pain
crescendoed, when she vomited up food, when her facial features
aged, Claudia would call out, "God, why me? There are millions of
Christians stronger and more honorable than I-couldn't you choose
one of them instead?" She didn't feel like a track star at all, and she
wondered why God would deliberately place hurdles in the path of
someone he loved.
I, too, visited Claudia, and found her desperately confused by all
these contradictory words. She repeated for me the advice given her
by well-meaning Christians, and I listened to her bewildered response.
Which of these lessons was she supposed to be learning? How could
she have more faith? Who should she listen to? In the midst of much
confusion, Claudia had one certainty: her happy world with John was
disintegrating. Above all, she didn't want that to end.
I had little advice for Claudia that day. In fact, I came away with
even more questions. Why was she lying in a hospital bed while I
stood beside her, healthy? Something inside me recoiled as I heard
her repeat the clichéd comments from her visitors. Is Christianity supposed
to make a sufferer feel even worse?
At the time I visited Claudia, I was working for Campus Life magazine
while also moonlighting as a free-lance journalist. In a short span
I wrote six "Drama in Real Life" stories for Reader's Digest. I interviewed
a young Canadian couple who had been mauled by a grizzly
bear. Although both survived, the young man lost one eye, and no
amount of plastic surgery could hide the scars across his face. In
another city, two young adults told me the story of a childhood camping
trip taken with their father up Mount Rainier. Caught in a blizzard,
they frantically dug a snow cave. Their father, lying protectively
across the face of the cave, froze to death overnight.
All these people repeated their own versions of the cacophony of
voices from Christian "comforters." One amputee told me, "My religious
friends were the most depressing, irritating part of the entire
experience." That pattern disturbed me greatly. Something was wrong.
A faith founded on the Great Physician should bring peace, not confusion,
at a time of crisis.
Why do people have to suffer so? What does the Bible really say?
Because of the questions that arose from my contacts with Claudia
and others like her, I began a quest that culminated in this book. I
have looked for a message we Christians can give to people who are
suffering. At the same time, I've hunted for a message that can
strengthen my own faith when I suffer. Where is God when it hurts?
Is he trying to tell us something through our pain?
A Personal Approach
After an extensive tour of the United States, the well-known German
pastor and theologian Helmut Thielicke was asked what he had
observed as the greatest deficiency among American Christians. He
replied, "They have an inadequate view of suffering." I have come to
agree with him.
That deficiency stands out as a huge blemish to the non-Christian
world. I've asked college students what they have against Christianity,
and most of them echo variations on the theme of suffering: "I can't
believe in a God who would allow Auschwitz and Cambodia"; "My
teenage sister died of leukemia despite all the Christians' prayers";
"One-third of the world went to bed hungry last night-how can you
reconcile that with Christian love?"
No other human experience provokes such an urgent response.
No one sits in smoky coffeehouses late into the night debating the
cosmic implications of the sense of smell or taste. Smell! Why this
strange sensation? What did God intend? Why was scent apportioned so
capriciously, lavished on roses but not on oxygen? And why must
humankind get by with one-eighth the sensory ability of the dog? Oddly,
I hear no one debating "the problem of pleasure"; why do we take for
granted sensations of pleasure but react so violently against pain?
As I did library research on the problem of pain, I discovered that
many great philosophers, otherwise sympathetic to Christian principles
and ethics, have stumbled over this problem of pain and suffering,
ultimately rejecting Christianity because of it. C. E. M. Joad
wrote, "What, then, are the arguments which for me have told so
strongly against the religious view of the universe? . First, there was
the difficulty presented by the facts of pain and evil." Other philosophers,
such as Bertrand Russell and Voltaire, share Joad's complaint.
The messy problem of pain and suffering keeps popping up
despite erudite attempts to explain it away. The great British writer
C. S. Lewis offered perhaps the most articulate treatment of the subject
in this century with The Problem of Pain, written at the height of
his intellectual powers. But years later, after his own wife died of bone
cancer, Lewis wrote another book, A Grief Observed, which he published
under a pseudonym. It covers the same topic, but in a very different
way. As the quote at the beginning of this chapter reveals,
Lewis's confidence had been shattered, his emotions stretched to the
breaking point-stretched beyond the breaking point. "You never
know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood
becomes a matter of life and death to you," he said.
(Continues.)
