This past week has me, again, reflecting on the perceived dichotomy of suffering and a benevolent, loving God.
Particularly, the fundamentalist, evangelical Christian God who rewards the righteous in this life; the God the fringe of the Charismatic Movement —
“Positive Confession,” “Name It, Claim It,” etc. — interprets those rewards as health and wealth and little or no suffering.
I understand, and this week even weep with those who have reached their limits of pain vs. faith, because they expected something else of life from what they were taught. Finally, they chose to cauterize the pain by simply declaring there is not, cannot possibly be, a benevolent loving God who cares about each of us, especially his children who obey, sacrifice and try to emulate Christ’s teachings.
For them, it has become a case of psychic, spiritual pain management: If God is benevolent and loving, they finally ask in their suffering, the perceived lack of that divine care amid the crucibles of life is a kind of open-ended pain that can, finally, become unbearable.
A trapped animal will chew off its own paw to be free of pain and hopelessness. A human being can be understood, empathized with, yes, forgiven for lopping off the extremity of faith in his or her most desperate times.
My week is nothing akin to the suffering others have endured, both those who hang on to faith and those who run from it. I have not reached the point of amputating my faith, and in some ways it is even stronger; but that all has come with more depth, and more pain.
Yesterday, I called my sister — in a group home in Washington state, crippled by cerebral palsy and intellectually a 5-year-old — to wish her a Happy 65th Birthday. Understand, she is my “big” little sister, being three years older, and a lifetime younger, at the same time.
“Hi Mom!” she said, answering the phone, and my heart sank. My mother, in the end stages of Alzheimer’s, is in a nursing home a few miles away from my sister, no longer able to talk, care for herself or remember any of her children, her husband, brothers, sisters.
Mom would not be calling. Her world has imploded to one of sleep, food, playing with dolls. Her body lives; her spirit has all but departed.
“It’s your brother, sis,” I said. The disappointment in her stuttering voice was tangible, and my eyes welled up.
I tried to keep it upbeat. Sang to her. Happy birthday. I could hear her, in that peculiar moaning stutter of her’s, upset. Mom’s denouement has been particularly hard on her; how do you explain memory loss to a childlike mind that only knows her mother, her bedrock in life, doesn’t know who she is?
Abruptly, she said,
“Bye,” and the phone disconnected.
Last night, my Dad called, fear and despair in his raspy, almost 93-year-old voice.
“Bob! I can hardly see anything anymore!” His macular degeneration has suddenly accelerated. I promised to call the medical staff for him, something he could have done . . . but in his terror forgot, reaching out to his son for help.
His maddeningly helpless son, 800 miles away. I called, asking for an expedited exam by the eye specialist to determine what, if anything, can be done.
It all felt like a massive, growing mountain before me: The mother who was a constant source of prayerful support and stubborn faith, gone; the father who spent his life preaching the gospel, sacrificing to do so in one tiny parish after another, in the twilight of life without his wife, stroke damage limiting his mobility, and now going blind, fearing the darkness to come; a sister who needed her mother, not her brother, on her special day.
So, I begin to understand how some people of faith can finally stumble under skies that seem to have turned brass to their prayers. And, I find myself amazed, and not a little humbled,
and yet remain faithful.
It is the perspective of eternity, of knowing there will be plenty of pain in this life — but we are not alone in it. It is believing that like a morning fog, that pain will, someday soon, give way to immersion in the Love that is beyond this veil of tears.
Angel Vasko wrote about that a few years ago for CBN, after dealing with her mother’s prolonged, painful illness and death. (To read the whole article, visit
http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/prayerandcounseling/Vasko_Trust_in_Tragedy.aspx)
“What is the lesson here God?!” she said.
“Do you want me to know that life is hard and that people suffer and then die!!!? I get it!”
Vast concluded that,
“I still have so many questions and I have so much to learn. But in my heart of hearts, I just want to run into daddy’s arms and have Him hold me. I want to have a pure heart. I want to have a simplistic faith again. Most of all, I want my first love, Christ, to know that I still love Him wholeheartedly."
In our finite existence, happiness and sadness, blessing and loss, joy and pain come, and not always in equal portions. But life is, perhaps thankfully so, brief as it is changing.
On the wild, wonderful, scary ride that life is, it is good to have, as Solomon once wrote,
“Eternity in our hearts.”
