My house of Cards- Suffering and the rejection of God

How long, Lord, must I call for help and You do not listen or cry out to You about violence and You do not save? Habakkuk 1:2

If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards- Cs Lewis

It always feels like walking on eggshells. Comforting someone after loss is difficult. What do you even say? Then comes the difficult questions… Where was God, when…? Everything you have to say is measured. I mean how can you even think that you can answer? “Meanwhile, where is God” asks CS Lewis as he lamented on the feeling of loss. ….go to Him when the need is desperate when all other help is in vain and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence!” .

Is God really in control? We wonder. Moreover, even if He is in control, why is the idea so unhelpful? If he was in control wouldn’t the circumstances be different?  It was thus with deep empathy that I reflected through her comments,

“Everyone is so quick to tell me about God; what they don’t know is that every way I knew Him was tested and He didn’t prove Himself. So as they say you should know God for yourself. I now can say I don’t know Him. And I don’t think I want to know Him coz He left me when I needed him the most.”.

I empathized with her situation. Shouldn’t it be in God’s interest for Him to come through for His children every time they called upon Him. Or why does He invite us to call upon Him on the day trouble; Psalms 50:15. Why is God not as forthright as we expected Him to be. Is he a Malicious God who revels in our pain?

There is always that unique thing that makes us question our theology. It can vary from not having enough money or a stable job to loss of a child or loved one, While the degree of pain in these varies, the common denominator is that we always feel shortchanged.  Some of us will pour out our hearts to God in grief Others go a step further to question His goodness while some go as far as questioning His existence. But why should this be the case. Why is God always the casualty of our pain ? Why do we assume that omnipotence means doing away with evil any time it happens to us?

Perhaps outstandingly, I think that suffering places an onslaught on the false ideas that people have about God. Maybe because our understanding is that He is our father. But what kind of father or better still who should we envision a father to be? I do not think that the fact of God being our father means He will do away with any event of pain whenever we want Him to. However, I think that when the scriptures invite us to mourn not as though we have no hope, it is not only asking us to believe in Christ as the resurrection and the life, but that it is given in the context that God is an active reality in our lives. The convictions we held before the time of loss -if they were true- should hold us in the times of desperation. It presumes that in times of such intensity we fall back to a God we have been relating with. This is how the biblical writers faced their suffering. When they struggled, they went back to God with the hard questions: How long will the wicked gloat (Psalm 94:3), for how long till we are avenged (Rev 6:10), I prefer to speak to the Almighty and argue my case before God (Job 13:3). As Ravi Zacharias has stated, God has always been patient with the struggling heart (paraphrased).

As I write this, I know I may stand accused of trivializing the pain of many who are going through loss. It cannot be considered an easy thing to fall back to God when we hoped the outcome that He had for things is different. It is thus rather unloving to expect people not to hurt or even struggle with God’s goodness. Nevertheless, I am also equally aware that in a bid to be seen as loving, many have compromised on the truth of God for convenience. This is the exactly why I find Mary Prude’s words so powerful. Every way she knew God was tested. I submit that therein lies the problem. Too often than not, whether knowingly or unknowingly, we carry this idea that God is transactional. That those who live their lives well are bound to have only the good happen to them. We think that we have God figured out. The phenomenon is so dire that even the legalistic brethren also suffer from the same problem. The assertion that someone’s pain is because of the sin they have committed, only betrays one truth: Their idea of God is faulty. They think that God is in the business of settling scores.

Now I need to be clear on what I am saying here. I do not mean that I think such people were not sincere in their faith but rather that their sincere faith was pegged on a false idea of God or rather it was sincere but wrong. For example it’s indeed true that actions have consequences- The wages of sin is death-. However, I do not think we are in a position to pass such kind of a value judgement on people, that their suffering is because of their sin. Of course, there are times that God will punish us for our sin but that must not be misconstrued to mean that every painful experience is God’s judgement on us.

Thus, in the event of suffering if our impulse is to turn away from God then perhaps we really did not know Him well. If our reaction is to turn away from God when we suffer, then our faith is needed to be knocked down. Reminiscing on the effect that the death of His wife was having on him, CS Lewis writes,

“what ground has it (loss) given me for doubting all that I believe…. Should it for a sane man make such a difference as this? It wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for others had been real concern…. if my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards…it was not faith but imagination….”

But one might then ask, what is the point of turning to God if suffering is inevitable? What value does it add to one who is suffering? This we will look at next