God's Love in Our Time of Great Suffering

Sometimes in our seasons of despair and deepest need, we turn away from that which we need the most.  We ask ourselves: Why have we been abandoned?  Where is God in our time of suffering?  Why can we not see the light?  This has been my latest struggle in the reconciling of my faith with life’s seemingly unnecessary hardships.  

All too frequently in our culture, we are accustomed to treating our Christian faith in terms of cause and effect… in the sense of rewards and punishments.  We believe that bad things should not happen to good people and, likewise, that good things should not happen to bad people.  Where would be the fairness in that?  What would that mean for justice?  However, I’ve come to realize that God does not operate in such humanly-minded terms.

Similarly, many followers of the Christian faith presume that our failure to live up to what God calls of us should result in punishment, and, contrarily, that our success in being obedient to God should result in reward.  Thinking of our faith in such a way causes us to lose focus on what really matters.  If our faith is genuine and true, then we ought not to think about what rewards or punishments will come from our actions.

These ideas surrounding a rewards-based religion are especially apparent in our times of great trial. While suffering, we often question why God has abandoned us or why something so grave has happened. I cannot help but be reminded of the story of Job, perhaps one of the most beautiful and passionate books of the Bible.  Although he suffers, Job continues to believe.  As the book of Job points out, Job had not done anything particularly disobedient to God to reserve such relentless punishment.  In fact, he was regarded as a man of integrity and innocence, but still suffered immensely.  Why then?  It is this line of questioning that we must leave behind.  We must live disinterestedly (not seeking gains for our obedience) and talk about God in such a way that will allow us to accept His love in our time of great suffering.

But how are we to talk about a God who is revered as love in situations plagued by suffering?  How are we to proclaim a God of life to those in the darkest of valleys?  Like Job, we must come to the conclusion that justice is beyond a matter of simple retribution.  God revealed to Job that His love dwells in freedom and is not subject to this doctrine of retribution.  God asserts that he does have plans and that the world is not a chaos.  The plans do not control God, however, but are controlled by human beings.  God’s gratuitous love is the ground of all existence and provides justice.  But justice alone does not tell us how we are to speak about God.  It is only when we come to the realization that God’s love is freely and gratuitously given that we can enter into his presence and know how to talk about him. 

The silence of God is hardest to bear in time of trial.  This fact is true.  And I’ve come to know it as a hard truth, especially in these uncertain and difficult times.  However, without moving away from this idea of the doctrine of temporal retribution, we cannot completely accept the free and unmerited love of God.  Eliminating this method of thinking from our minds is a difficult (seemingly impossible) task.  And even after doing so, suffering will still remain.  But we have to remember that God will always turn the valley of misfortune into a gateway of hope (Hos. 2:15).   God is a presence that leads amid darkness and pain.  Luis Espinal, a priest murdered in Bolivia, wrote the following:

Train us, Lord, to fling ourselves upon the impossible, for behind the impossible is your grace and your presence; we cannot fall into emptiness.  The future is an enigma, our road is covered by mist, but we want to go on giving ourselves, because you continue hoping amid the night and weeping tears through a thousand human eyes.

This is exactly what Job did.  He flung himself into an unknown future, despite suffering and pain and hardship, relying fully on God’s love.  And in this way, he met the Lord.  

It seems that I have been asking the wrong questions throughout the past year and weeks.  So, I’ll stop asking “Why?” and starting asking, “Where can I find You?”

I leave you with the following poem by Juan Gonzalo Rose entitled “La Pregunta” (“The Question”).  I’ve included the translation for you non-Spanish speakers. Its profound message has certainly hit my heart like a wave.

Mi madre me decía:
si matas a pedradas los pajaritos blancos,
Dios te va a castigar;
si pegas a tu amigo,
el de carita de asno,
Dios te va a castigar.

Era el signo de Dios
de dos palitos,
y sus diez teologales mandamientos
cabían en mi mano,
como diez dedos más.

Hoy me dicen:
si no amas la guerra,
si no matas diariamente una paloma,
Dios te castigará;
si no pegas al negro,
si no odias al rojo,
Dios te castigará;
si al pobre das ideas
en vez de darle un beso,
si le hablas de justicia
en vez de caridad,
Dios te castigará.
Dios te castigará.

No es este nuestro Dios,
¿verdad mamá?

------------------------------

My mother told me:

If you stone the white fledglings,

God will punish you;

if you hit your friend,

the boy with the donkey face,

God will punish you.

It was God’s sign

of the two sticks;

and the commandments of God

fitted into my hands

like ten more fingers.

Today they tell me:

If you do not love war,

if you do not kill a dove a day,

God will punish you;

if you do not strike the black,

if you do not hate the Amerindian,

God will punish you;

if you give the poor ideas

instead of a kiss,

if you talk to them of justice

instead of charity,

God will punish you,

God will punish you.

Mamma, is that really

our God?


Paz y amor,

JMF