Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] How can we imagine that God is active in our world? A genuine, not a rhetorical, question.
[00:00:07] Are there moments when you wonder not just why things are going badly for you or why they are very, very badly for others, but more comprehensively about why there needs to be suffering at all? I certainly have, and I'm now doing a thread of posts that explain some of my reflections through excerpts of the opening sections of my book, God's how the Bible Fails to Explain Our Most Important Problem, why We Suffer, published in San Francisco by Harper One in 2008.
[00:00:35] In my previous post, I explained how these issues eventually led me to leave the faith. Now I continue by reflecting on a subsequent moment long after I was no longer a believer, when I was particularly floored by the problem of suffering.
[00:00:52] Only on rare occasions do I go to church now, usually when my wife, Sarah, very much wants me to go. Sarah is a brilliant intellectual, a distinguished professor of Medieval English literature at Duke University, and a committed Christian actively involved in the Episcopal Church. For her, the problems of suffering that I wrestle with are not problems. It's funny how smart and well meaning people can see things so differently, even on the most basic and important questions in life.
[00:01:23] In any event, the last time I was in church was with Sarah this past Christmas Eve while visiting her brother Simon, another agnostic, in Saffron Walden, a market town near Cambridge in England.
[00:01:35] Sarah had wanted to attend the midnight service at the local Anglican church, and Simon and I, who both respect her religious views, agreed to go with her.
[00:01:45] When I was young, I always found the Christmas Eve service to be the most meaningful worship experience of the year. The sacred hymns and carols, the prayers and praises, the solemn readings from Scripture, the silent reflections on this most powerful of nights when the divine Christ came into the world. As a human infant, I still have a strong emotional attachment to the moment.
[00:02:06] Deep down, I am profoundly stirred by the story of God coming into the world for the salvation of sinners. And so I was prepared, even as one who no longer believes, to find the service on this Christmas Eve to be moving and emotional.
[00:02:21] It was emotional, but not in the way that I'd expected.
[00:02:25] Hymns were sung, the liturgy recited, the sermon delivered. But what moved me most, however, was the congregational prayer, which did not come from the Book of Common Prayer but was written for the occasion, spoken loudly and clearly by a layperson standing in the aisle, his voice filling the vast space of the cavernous church around us.
[00:02:44] You came into the darkness and made a difference, he said. Come into the darkness again.
[00:02:51] This was the refrain of the prayer repeated several times in a deep and a sonorous voice, and it brought tears to my eyes as I sat with bowed head, listening and thinking.
[00:03:03] But these were not tears of joy. These were tears of frustration.
[00:03:07] If God had come into the darkness with the advent of the Christ Child, bringing salvation to the world, then why is the world in such a state? Why does he not enter into the darkness again? Where is the presence of God in this world of pain and misery? Why is the darkness so overwhelming?
[00:03:28] I knew that the very essence of the message of the Bible lay beneath this heartfelt and well meaning prayer for the authors of the Bible. The God who created this world is a God of love and power, who intervenes for his faithful to deliver them from their pain and sorrow and bring them to salvation, not just in the world to come, but in the world that we live in now.
[00:03:49] This is the God of the Patriarchs who answered prayer and worked miracles for his people. This is the God of the Exodus who saved his suffering people from the misery of slavery in Egypt. This is the God of Jesus who healed the sick, gave sight to the blind and made the lame walk, and who fed those who were hungry.
[00:04:07] Where is this God now? If he came into the darkness and made a difference, why is there still no difference?
[00:04:15] Why are the sick still wracked with unspeakable pain? Why are babies still born with birth defects? Why are young children kidnapped and raped and murdered? Why are there droughts that leave millions starving, suffering horrible and excruciating lives that lead to horrible and excruciating deaths?
[00:04:35] If God intervened to deliver the armies of Israel from His enemies, why doesn't he intervene now when the armies of sadistic tyrants savagely attack and destroy entire villages, towns and even countries?
[00:04:47] If God is at work in the darkness, feeding the hungry with a miraculous multiplication of loaves, why is it that one child, a mere child, dies every five seconds of hunger?
[00:05:00] Every five seconds?
[00:05:03] You came into the darkness and you made a difference. Come into the darkness again.
[00:05:09] Yes, I wanted to affirm this prayer, believe this prayer, commit myself to this prayer. But I could not. The darkness is too deep, the suffering too intense, the divine absence too palpable.
[00:05:22] During the time that it took for this Christmas Eve service to conclude, more than 700 children in the world would have died from hunger, 250 others from drinking unsafe water, and nearly 300 other people from malaria.
[00:05:36] That's not to mention the ones who've been raped and mutilated and tortured and dismembered and murdered, nor the innocent victims caught up in the human trade industry, nor those suffering throughout the world from grinding poverty, the destitute migrant farm workers in our own country, those who are homeless and afflicted by mental ill disease, not to mention the ones who have been raped and mutilated, tortured and dismembered or murdered, nor the innocent victims caught up in the human trade industry, nor those suffering throughout the world from grinding poverty, the destitute migrant farm workers in our own country, those who are homeless and inflicted with mental disease, nor to mention the silent suffering that so many millions of the well fed and the well tended have to experience daily the pain of children with birth defects, children killed in car accidents, children senselessly taken by leukemia, the pain of divorce and broken families, the pain of lost jobs, lost income, fail prospects, and where is God?
[00:06:42] Some people think that they know the answers or they aren't bothered by the questions.
[00:06:46] I'm not one of those people. I have been thinking intensely about these questions for many, many years. I have heard the answers, and even though I once knew and I was satisfied with these answers, I am no longer satisfied.
[00:07:00] I think I know when suffering started to become a problem for me. It was while I was still a believing Christian. In fact, it was when I was pastoring the Princeton Baptist Church in New Jersey.
[00:07:12] It was not the suffering that I observed and tried to deal with in the congregation the failed marriages, the economic hardship, the suicide of a teenage boy that prompted my questioning, but something that took place outside the church, in the academy.
[00:07:25] At the time, in addition to working in the church, I was writing my PhD dissertation and also teaching part time at Rutgers University. It was a busy time. On top of it all, I was also married with two young children. One of the classes I taught that year was a new one for me. Until then, I mainly taught classes on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the writings of Paul.
[00:07:46] But I had been asked to teach a course called the Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Tradition. I welcome the opportunity because it seemed like an interesting way to approach the Bible, examining the responses given by various biblical authors to the question of why there is suffering in the world, in particular among the people of God.
[00:08:05] It was my belief then, and it continues to be my belief now, that different biblical authors had different solutions to the question of why God's people suffer. Some, such as the prophets, thought that suffering came from God as a punishment for sin. Some thought that suffering came from God's cosmic enemies who inflicted suffering precisely because people tried to do what was right before God. Others thought that suffering came as a test to see if people would remain faithful despite suffering.
[00:08:34] Others said that suffering was a mystery and that it was wrong even to question why God allowed it. Others still thought that this world is just an inexplicable mess and that we should eat, drink, and be merry while we can, and so on. And so it seemed to me at the time, and it seems to me now, that one of the ways to see the rich diversity of the scriptural heritage of Jews and Christians was to see how different authors responded to this fundamental question of suffering.
