Where is God in Suffering?

I’m confused about the book I am reading right now; a faith-themed book, I thought I could foresee its conclusion, but now I am not so sure.  The book is written by a brain surgeon.  Early on, he takes as a patient a young healthy man, a Christian strong in faith, a man with a strong wife and beautiful kids --- and the MRI shows he has brain cancer.  Even before further testing, the surgeon knows what type of cancer this is --- “this is the end of you.”  Rapidly spreading, the cancer has a 0% survival rate; people rarely live beyond a few months, but he hides this fact from the family.  “I’m boing to beat this,” the young man says, smiling; “We’ll work out a plan of action, and I’ll be praying for you,” the surgeon responds.  And each time the young man returns, optimistic, the MRI shows the rapid spread of the cancer.  And the surgeon prays, yet always knowing “this is the end of you.”

The particular type of cancer written about progresses in various ways, and the surgeon writes of other patients he sees.  Some quickly die, one way of another.  One, who is being operated on to capture a small sample of the brain for biopsy, dies on the table.  Some of the patients quickly give up, while some go to huge extremes --- and expense --- but all end up with the same result.  Then the surgeon operates on a young man who was injured in an auto accident --- an addict who is chained to his bed by the police.  In operating on the young man’s skull fracture, the surgeon notices a tiny, but familiar, oddity on the surface of the brain, and tests it.  It is the horrible form of cancer, as he suspected, and so the surgeon cuts out a large piece of the brain.  And in coming weeks, the young man has all sorts of complications, but to the surprise of the surgeon the cancer does not return.  And as the book progresses, the young addict, who wishes he were dead, lives --- and the strong, faith-filled man (for whom, in reading the book, I expected a miracle cure), dies.

And the surgeon prays, and becomes despondent.  All those he prays for die, as he knows they will.  “So why am I praying for them,” he wonders.

I expect that at some point in the story the surgeon will come to some realization that everyone dies, and yet we pray for each other.  I expect that he’ll com to some sort of realization like I wrote in my recent posting called “Retirement Planning,” but I am far from sure of the outcome of this book.  I expected a miracle, a happy ending, but now I don’t know.  I think the surgeon is slowly drifting toward a realization, in faith, that even in the horrible suffering in this world, which he must participate in, there is a reason.

The Bible Study guys were talking about 1John5.  It says “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”  The conversation about how to put this truth into our hearts and make it a key focus of our life rambled all over the place.  It was a typical Friday morning.  My mind wandered, and then I glanced at the headline in today’s Wall Street Journal, which lay on the table before me.  “Virus Outbreak is Declared a Global-Health Emergency.”  The article stated that the number of know cases had again doubled overnight, to 6,000, with a death rate of over 2%.  And as I sat there, I scratched numbers on the paper.  Doubling each day, there will be 384,000 cases by next week, 100 million by the following week, and the entire world would be infected within 3 weeks --- with 150 million dead.  I looked at those numbers, as the Bible Study guys continued to discuss how hard it is to find time to worry about spiritual matters.  And at a point, I could not help but speak up.

Oh, I guess I rambled about priorities, understanding God’s will and our eternal destiny, and so forth, but then I brought up the coronavirus facts.  “Scientists have difficulty understanding God,” I said, “because they deal in facts: who, what, where, when and how.  And God isn’t in any of those things.”  And I briefly mentioned the Christian brain surgeon I was reading about.  “To live our earthly life, a key purpose for which we are here, requires those facts and answers to those questions.  But science cannot answer “why” those facts occur.  That is where our faith, our spiritual life, makes some sense of this world, this suffering.  And one of the guys looked up the Spanish Flu, which started at the end of World War I in 1918, and was spread by returning soldiers throughout the world.  About 500 million were infected, and 75 million died.  They survived a horrible war, for a while.

And our Bible Study’s closing prayer this morning was much different than our opening prayer.

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I mentioned, in a posting a month ago (Love: Craved vs Offered), how God changed my plans one night.  I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, so I went to the chapel.  And there --- in an unusual series of coincidences (which I don’t believe in) --- I met a number of people.  I thought at the time that the reason I was directed to that chapel was because I was meant to re-connect with these people (but I haven’t seen them since).  And at the time, I thought lightly of the one who told me he had run into a priest who said God spoke to him, telling him to prepare for a 3-month disaster.

My Jesus, I trust in You.

The Better Part, on Spiritual Growth

I’ve always been honest in saying that the words I write for this blog are not mine.  I think they come from words I read, people I meet, and God’s grace pulls all the experiences and thoughts together into HIS thoughts, which He wishes to share with me.  And I write them down --- sometimes whether I want to or not.  I just have to do it.

But sometimes He just gives me a clear picture, already painted, complete.  Maybe He’s frustrated that with all the inputs He has given me I still don’t get it --- I wouldn’t be surprised.  Maybe it’s just the right time for me to see something that He has already shown to someone else, and I need to see it or hear it.  I think that’s the case with the Gospel reflections in The Better Part, for yesterday’s and today’s Gospel.  The reflections there spoke so clearly to me, I underlined them in the book, but want to document them here also.  They are worth saving, and sharing.  (Reflections 105 and 106, on Mark 4:1-34).

“The harvest consists of fruits of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (Gal 5:22).  In other words, by following Christ we become the kind of persons we yearn to be, both now and in eternity, and we are able to help others do the same. 

But accepting Christ’s rule involves refusing to vote for other candidates.  The parable (of the sower) identifies three types of alternative candidates.  The first is superficiality- to just go with the flow, like a lemming.  The second is laziness – comfort, pleasure and acceptance become highest priorities.  The third is self-centeredness – the seed which falls among the thorns, this candidate s obsessed with personal plans, goals, and achievements, in short, a personal agenda (kingdom) so consuming that Christ’s Kingdom loses all attraction.

Jesus begins to use parables because he wants to overcome his opponents’ hard-heartedness.  He tells them the truth about his Kingdom using small stories and vignettes.  His listeners, he hopes, will therefore be able to understand the message of each parable and accept it before they realize that it entails changing their own ideas --- thus making the change more palatable.  There are two lessons in this approach.  First, we need to be careful about our fixed ideas.  We think we know it all.  Everyone else is wrong; anyone who disagrees with me is a poor ignoramus.  Jesus parables remind us we need to make a point of staying humble.  God always knows more than we know, and he always has more to teach us.

In a media-centered culture, a constant, unrelenting, numbing flow of information and images travels through our minds, making it harder for us to reflect deeply on our life experiences, to mull over the gifts and challenges that life brings us, to cultivate a rich interior life.  How happy the devil is when we join the ranks of educated drones for whom every headline is equally important.  How tragic for us when we lose the youthful human capacity to reflect deeply, to dream joyfully.

Lord, every day you sow new seeds of holiness in my life.  You keep watering and digging and fertilizing my heart with your Holy Spirit.  Teach me to hear your voice amid the noise of my daily life.  Use me to sow that same word in everyone around me, through my prayer, my example, my actions, and my conversations.”

“The “growing parables” reveal three essential characteristics about living in communion with Christ.  First, our life in union with God depends primarily on God; we cannot achieve Christian success based solely on our own efforts.  Second, growth in holiness (life in communion with God) is a gradual process.  We need to learn that when it comes to our friendship with God, constant, patient effort and an unshakable confidence in God are necessary.  Third, spiritual growth takes time.  Imagine a farmer or gardener standing out in the field and yelling down at some recently planted seeds: “Grow faster, you fools!  Faster!”  It’s an absurd picture, but a common one; every time we get frustrated at our slow progress, we’re futilely screaming at the seeds to speed up their growth.

How I need patience, Lord!  You are patient, humble, wise.  Stay close to me.  Hold me back.  Let me know when I’m being ridiculous.  You know that I want my life to bear fruit for your Kingdom, and I want to taste the fruit of your Kingdom in my own soul.  So, teach me, Lord, in your kindness, show me how to cultivate the grace you have planted in my soul.”

Retirement Planning

I believe that most Christians who “give my life to Christ” know that they have been given a unique purpose for their life.  Some wrestle with finding that purpose.  Some wrestle --- as I did --- with the parable of the talents: Am I using all the blessings God gave me to the maximum extent, to be who He created me to be?  But I believe that in general most Christians don’t wrestle very hard; not seeing a clear goal or victory in sight, they “just do the best I can”.  They accept the general statement “I try to be a good person,” as being good enough.  I might say they trust in God’s mercy, but they don’t really take the time to know Him, or His mercy.

The Gospels, the key lessons Jesus wanted to teach us and so the Holy Spirit-inspired authors wrote, only cover 10% of Jesus’ life, his last three years.  The other years were spent fulfilling His unique EARTHLY PURPOSE, as the son of Mary and Joseph.  Oh, He did grow in spiritual purpose also --- He had to be about His Father’s will in the temple --- but it was in His latter years, when He reached full maturity and completed His earthly purposes and began preaching and teaching a focus on ETERNAL LIFE, that are recorded as MOST important time in the Gospels.  In our lives, we call those latter years of our life a “retirement” from our key earthly purposes.  Why don’t we treat those years with the same importance that Jesus did?

It seems to me that many people treat retirement years as a time to get the most out of this earth before we die: the most experiences, the most enjoyment we can buy.  We save money for 90% of our life so we can spend it in that last 10%, spend it without worry.  Or some save so they can leave it to their children, so they don’t have to save (why not?).  They equate money with happiness; they want to end their life happy --- yet, strangely, will admit that money cannot buy happiness.  And, equally strangely, they will admit they can’t take the money with them, nor will they take the earthly experiences and enjoyments.  Christians have a large focus on preparing for retirement from their earthly obligations, but --- strangely, to my mind --- spend little time focusing on their heavenly eternal obligations.

Jesus spent the years, when He retired from His earthly obligations, focused on His heavenly obligations.  He lived out His retirement years focused on loving God and loving neighbor, to the best of His abilities.  And He attained heaven.  This was His example, so important it was recorded in great detail, on how we should live our retirement years.  Retirement years aren’t meant for closing down our earthly years with some kind of well-deserved reward, but for planning our heavenly years, the eternal reward for our lives.  Even as our youth was spent gaining strength and education to maximize the results of our earthly purposes, our retirement years’ new focus is meant to maximize the results of our heavenly life.  The final summation of who we become, spiritually, during this earthly life defines who we will become in our heavenly life.  That life will be our ultimate experience and enjoyment, far better than anything we can experience here.

So why not plan to maximize that?  As our earthly obligations wind down --- whether successfully or not --- why not focus on our spiritual obligations?

As Christians, we recognize we are body and spirit.  With Baptism’s grace, our “hearts” have both earthly and heavenly connections.  We’re supposed to grow both those connections, but the earthly connections are thrust upon us; the heavenly connections grow with our deliberate focus, they are not as forcefully given or noticed as our earthly experiences, but they are given.  The Church, the Sacraments, and the Bible are all like crutches to help our spiritual walk, until we can walk and run on our own.  We can always fall back on them, but when our hearts become focused on grace, on God’s will for us, we can go to the author of those supports directly.

Love God, and love your neighbor.  Remember them as you live your earthly purposes; you are not alone here on this earth.  But put a new focus on those words, make them your life’s focus, and you will be living your retirement years to their fullest, and with optimum planning for your eternal future.

In a class I’m taking, we recently spoke about the crises --- critical changes --- which occur in our lives, and how long it took to recover from the shock.  It varied from person to person, whether the death of a loved one, divorce, financial loss, or some other event took the longest to recover from.  No one mentioned aloud, however, what I wrote, nor did I.  I wrote that my death to self was the crisis which absorbed the longest period in my life, and still does.  “Putting on the mind of Christ” so “it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me” is no easy change in our life.

No one ever said preparing for eternal life was easy.  God Himself had to come to show us the way.  It just sounds easy, but you have to work at it.  I’ve found it helps if you get to know Him, and can talk it over with Him.  If you learn to listen, He’ll show you the way.  If you can die to self, He’ll fill your heart with His heart.  And you’ll not look back with any regrets over earthly experiences you had or didn’t have, but look forward to future experiences with Him

My Jesus, I trust in You.