Roughly a decade ago, I stripped my faith down to the studs. It would probably be better said that my faith was stripped down to the studs. I certainly wasn’t directing this demolition; I’m not even sure if I was complicit in it. It happened. I was there. That is all I know. Though I can’t say for certain, I have a hunch that God was the director of this renovation project. I can’t say for sure, because, let’s be humble and honest enough to admit, we don’t KNOW much of anything, especially when it comes to God. We BELIEVE quite a lot, but to borrow from Todd Snider, “Believing and knowing are two separate things.”
If it was orchestrated by God, it was at my request. Be careful what you ask for because you might get it, but it may not look like what you think it will. Kind of like when you order something from Temu. For years I had asked God to mold me and shape me in the ways that He saw fit. I wanted to be a “better” Christian (whatever that means). I wanted to be what God wanted me to be, and I believe He honored that request, but I had no idea what something like that might entail. What did it entail? Pain. Lots of pain.
I’m going to jump in right here and offer one very clear caveat: I do not believe God is the author of any suffering. Period. End of story. I cannot harmonize a good and loving God who would intentionally bring about suffering, especially that which is unending. Maybe you can, and maybe you are right and I’m wrong, but I simply can’t harmonize those concepts. Obviously this requires a little additional explanation. Clearly, suffering exits. Suffering is possible, and I believe that is an inevitable consequence of free will. Suffering exists because circumstances exist wherein suffering is an option available for all sorts of reasons that I’m not sure I can fully fathom. But there is a big difference between God allowing suffering to exist — as a consequence of free will — and God CAUSING suffering.
My love for my grandchildren is beyond my capacity to explain, but it is as true and full and expansive as I am able to comprehend. I did not create it, I don’t choose it, they have done nothing to obtain it — it simply exists, much like God. He too is love that is all encompassing and uncreated. There is no scenario in which I would knowingly and intentionally cause them to suffer. Do they suffer at my hands? I guess it depends upon how you view it. When I deny them something they want that is not good for them or even harmful to them, I’m sure they perceive that as me causing them to suffer, though the reality is it is my love for them that is doing what is best for them. They desire that which is not good for them, and a good and loving grandfather is not willing to concede to their desires just to alleviate their perceived suffering.
Much of our suffering is the result of our desiring that which is not good, and the suffering goes away the moment we stop desiring that which is not good. Sometimes we refuse to concede our desires for that which is not good and pursue them anyway. God allows us to exercise our free will — because love requires it — and that can result in us seizing our desires when God refuses to provide them (because they are not good). The suffering that follows is not caused by God, but caused by our refusal to trust God to define for us what is good and what is harmful, the same as our ancient parents in the Garden when they seized the fruit of knowledge rather than trusting God to provide wisdom.
But what about when suffering isn’t the result of our choices? Sometimes our suffering is the result of the choices of others, and once again, this is the double edged sword that is free will. When wielded in harmony with the desires of God it is a majestic tool, but when seized to selfishly obtain our own ignorant desires apart from God’s guidance, it is a weapon of mass destruction. The choices that others make in conflict with the will and wisdom of God can reign down suffering as collateral damage on everyone in their lives. From time to time one of my grandchildren will push the other down, take a toy from them, or hit them — all of which are against my will for them — and they suffer because of it. There is a difference between what God causes, and what our free will -- that God allows -- is capable of producing.
But what about the suffering that is not caused — per se — by our choices or the choices of others. Children are capable of getting brain cancer as the result of genetic flaws; lighting can strike someone and kill them — so what about suffering like this? If you want honesty — and that is all I can promise when I write — I don’t have an answer and I don't think the bible does either. “The silence of God is the greatest test of our faith. Who is not aware of that?” (Helmut Thielicke) I have some ideas, but I don’t have answers or even good explanations and illustrations. The best I can do is refer to the response God gave to Job.
Job had endured tremendous, unexplained suffering for a long time without any explanation from God. He wanted to know why he was suffering so terribly and he knew it wasn’t because of anything he’d done, and finally God responds: you wouldn’t understand. That’s essentially what God says to Job, though much more poetically. “Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words?“
This isn’t an insult and it isn’t dismissive or rude, it’s a statement of fact, as harsh as it may sound to our delicate ears. Have you ever listened to someone expound on a topic that they clearly know absolutely nothing about? -- pretty much a daily occurrence on social media. People love to pontificate on things they know nothing about and think that having an opinion is superior to the established knowledge of experts.
It reminds me of the old joke about someone collapsing in a public place and a person loudly announces, "Everyone back up! I took a CPR class!" They begin pushing people away and reciting the steps from memory, becoming increasingly bossy. One of the people he pushes away says, “When you get to the step that says ‘call a doctor’ I’ll be right here.”
God is calling Job’s attention to the fact that He is God and Job is not and there are going to be some things that Job simply isn’t capable of comprehending from such a limited perspective. To illustrate, God begins asking Job a series of question about things pertaining to the natural world that Job inhabits:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Where does light come from and where does darkness go? Where is the path to the source of light? Do you know the laws of the universe? Can you use them to regulate the earth?”
The point being: there is an awful lot about your own natural world that you simply cannot fathom, and included in that are things pertaining to the justness of God. Job got the point and replied, “I am nothing—how could I ever find the answers? I will cover my mouth with my hand. I have said too much already. I have nothing more to say.”
If you are thinking, “Well then God, why don’t you explain it all to us?”, I have some homework for you: when your three year old asks, “Where do babies come from?” I want you to explain the scientifically understood process of human procreation. And I don't mean the birds and the bees, I'm talking gametogenesis, ovulation, fertilization, implantation, embryogenesis, and gestation; haploid gametes to form a diploid zygote, blastocyst, endometrium implantation, etc. Good luck. Even if you could understand and explain the process like a world renowned expert, take it one step further and explain where the soul of that baby comes from and where were they before they were conceived. I’ll wait. There are some things that simply cannot be grasped at certain stages, so we clumsily do the best we can with illustrations and metaphors and symbolic language and oversimplification. “They come from mama’s belly.” Our spiritual ancestors used simplified language too, like outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth and flames.
I think this is what Emily Dickinson was hinting at when she wrote poem 1263:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
So on the topic of uncaused suffering and why God allows it, I’m going to take a lesson from Job and say, “I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me.” We often speak of the patience of Job, but I think we need to place a higher value on the wisdom of Job. Back to the lecture at hand.
So what did I make of the pain I mentioned before? I don’t believe God caused the pain I was suffering, but I do believe He used it to accomplish good. Think of it the way a doctor sets a broken bone — an excruciatingly painful process to be sure, but also necessary for healing your body so it can function as God intended. The doctor did not cause the broken bone — and the pain it created — and neither does he intend to hurt you, but it does hurt, though in the service of healing you. The goal and purpose of the doctor’s work is not hurting, but healing, and sometimes healing is precipitated by hurting.
It’s not lost on me that I’m writing this sitting in the waiting room of St. Thomas — as in “Doubting Thomas”, though today he is considered the patron saint of BUILDERS — hospital, looking at a statue of St. Jude — aka, Thaaddeus, the patron saint of the desperate and hopeless — while a doctor has knocked my daddy unconscious, cut holes in his body and is carving up his arteries….in the service of saving and preserving his life. Speak Lord, thy servant heareth.
A decade ago God hurt me bad in the service of healing me. “There are some things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.” (Oscar Romero) Sorry for mixing my metaphors (medical/construction), but my faith was stripped down to the studs, but it was in the service of renovation, not demolition. The spiritual house that is my faith was constructed of too much insufficient material that had to be torn out and disposed of if the house was to stand. Nothing valuable or needed was stripped away and destroyed, only worthless false idols. “Idols are our wrong ideas/thinking about God that gets established and fixed -- we believe it’s the truth when it’s a lie, they deceive us and then enslave us.” (Brian Zahnd)
So what do I now know? Though not to his extent, I can say with Fyodor Dostoevsky, “I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt” and I know that what remains is the unflinching conviction that God is good, that God is love, that God is the source of beauty, and truth, and wisdom — what the ancients referred to as the “transcendentals” — and I can build a life on that. As I have rebuilt my life it has been upon this framework and I refuse to hang anything on it that is unworthy or unbecoming of these glorious truths. If you want to live in a house of condemnation, abandonment, suffering, punishment, and judgment inflicted BY God, that’s your choice, but don’t bother inviting me to stay over.
Don’t misread what I’m saying. I believe wholeheartedly in the feelings of and existence of condemnation, abandonment, suffering, punishment, and judgement, I just don’t believe God is the one INFLICTING them. I know hell is real because I have spent much time there, and having passed through those flames I understand them differently than before. Those wiser than me have said it better and before me:
“What is hell? The suffering of being no longer able to love.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
“For Hell, as Origen said, is precisely the burning sensation caused by one’s own conscience” (Peri Archon 2.10.4 ~ Olivier Clément)
“The doors of hell are locked from the inside.” (C.S. Lewis)
“If eternal conscious torment is true, then: evil never ends, suffering never ends, reconciliation is never complete. Yet Paul says: ‘Through Christ, God will reconcile all things to Himself.’ And Revelation ends not with hell expanding, but with death, mourning, crying, and pain passing away. If evil continues forever in a parallel eternal hell, then evil is never actually defeated. It’s just quarantined. That’s not victory, it’s just containment…I imagine hell as a time of deep and unavoidable truth. A moment when the stories we told ourselves fall quiet, and we are finally able to see clearly the ways our actions affected others.” (Leslie Nease)
I’ve passed through those flames already, though I doubt this journey is over, for Paul says we must all pass through the fire to expose what our spiritual house is made of, and I don’t imagine that ends with death. If this is true for the temporary and diluted life we know on earth, how much more will that be true of the life that is truly living that awaits? And though I see the sometimes haunting glow of those flames on the ever nearing horizon, I face them knowing that the consuming fire is not wrath, but true love, for “the wrath of God is merely the love of God wrongly received.” (Brian Zahnd)
Sometimes, when you walk face first into these glorious and wonderful mysteries, God winks at you in the way that you might wink at someone you love from across the room to reassure them and let them know, you’ve got this and you’re going to be alright. I think He might have just done that. Hand to my heart, as I was putting the finishing touches on the final paragraph of this writing, my phone which has been randomly(?) shuffling music into my earpiece for nearly two hours, lands on Erin Rae’s “True Love’s Face”.
Rather than to sound alarms
I’ll wrap myself in true love’s arms
In true love’s arms
In true love’s arms
I will know it when I see it
I will not turn it away
I won’t question everything
As I have done until today
The Talking Heads "Burning Down The House" might have been more fitting, but "True Love's Face" was more needed.
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