Introduction - Were You Away Then?
I stood motionlessly by her graveside, asking the inescapable question: Why?
When life hurts, helplessness often takes over the helm and routine and pleasure jump ship. The loss of a beloved child, a soul mate, a sacrificing parent, or an endeared grandparent abruptly halts the mellow voyage of life, transforming the shimmering waves of happiness into towering waves of sorrow. Nothing we do, nothing we say, nothing we possess can bring our loved ones back. Memories both comfort and pain us. Questions both flee and haunt us. Answers both calm and anger us.
Often it isn't long before we find ourselves overboard, fighting to stay afloat amid the dark and foreboding waters of despair. Sometimes the waters are familiar to us, but no friendlier. We've survived them before. We've gone down time and again ... and somehow found the strength to resurface -- gasping for answers. But each time is a little different. Every crashing wave of grief pounds us into the ocean floor a little differently, contorting, spinning, and tumbling us head over heels, stopping just long enough to allow us to resurface so it can pound us again.
Perhaps you've never experienced the heart-rending loss of someone close to you. But make no mistake, in life's game of hide-and-seek, suffering will eventually find you; it's only a matter of time. The only place one can safely hide is in the grave. And for those who have rejected God, even this is an illusion. Your unutterable suffering may be a devastating divorce, a child with cerebral palsy, an unrelenting ache deep in your back, abandonment by your mother or father, the ruinous loss of your cherished possessions in a fire, or the painful memories of abuse suffered as a child. Professor and author, Dr. Edward Kuhlman, (no connection to the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman), who lost his sixteen-year old son to cancer, bared his soul in his book An Overwhelming Interference. " No one escapes life without experiencing pain," wrote Kuhlman "although many become preoccupied with attempts to alleviate it. Pain is the overriding, inexplicable condition of life."
Indeed, pain and adversity hold no prejudices. A good friend of mine, in his capacity with the Canadian government, had the rare opportunity to meet Princess Diana on one of her last visits to Canada. Shielded from the press, he met with the Princess and described her as personable, shy, soft spoken, down-to-earth, -- yet restless. She asked my friend and his fiance about their upcoming wedding plans, making the comment about how expensive weddings are these days (a bit funny considering the cost of her own wedding). And she laughingly joked about sneaking away from the press outside to get a few beers with him and his officers. My friend said she came across as a "very normal person," and he remarked, "In hindsight, I wonder if at some level in her genuine desire to discuss our 'boring plain lives' she wasn't longing for that." Maybe the Princess really was just like the average person in many ways. The world's favourite Princess battled bulimia, wrestled with feelings of insecurity, experienced family feuds, and lived through a broken marriage. And at the age of thirty-seven her seemingly "fairy-tale life" reached the final line in the final chapter in a tragic Paris car crash. Even the most popular of England's royal family -- the most popular and well-loved person in the world at that time -- could not escape the vice-grip of pain, suffering, and death.
As I stood by my grandmother's graveside, staring blankly at her suspended coffin, the question was grinding through my head: Why? Toward the end of her life, my grandmother's final dream was to hold in her arms her first great-grandchild. When my sister became pregnant for the first time, you can imagine just how excited my grandmother became. She knew that her dream would be realized in a matter of months. But less than two weeks before my sister gave birth to her first baby boy, Joshua, my grandmother, at the age of seventy-two, died of cancer.
The minister at her funeral remarked that one life was ending and in a short time another would be beginning. The words left an indelible mark on my consciousness and I wondered to myself, Why? God? My grandmother faithfully served and worshipped You for decades, and You couldn't give her just two more weeks to see her first great-grandchild? You allowed Simeon, the righteous and devout saint, to live until he could hold the Messiah (see Luke 2:25-35). Why, God, couldn't you have spared her life for fourteen more days? It would have meant so much to her. We weren't demanding a miracle -- just two weeks. How hard would that have been?
But, as in Job's situation, God never answered our questions. My grandmother courageously battled breast cancer undergoing a mastectomy and the painful aftermath of radiation --only to find later that she was filled with more cancer from an unknown source. The explosively dividing cancer cells finally won out. The pain and abdominal bloating grew intense. And she spent her final days on morphine in the hospital where I had trained during medical school.
She was my last living grandparent and there was nothing she wouldn't do for me. But in the end, I couldn't even be there for her. I was isolated three thousand miles away in Los Angeles, working day and night in my surgery residency. One summer evening, my uncle called to tell me she had passed away. The director of the Cedar's Sinai Medical Center surgery program kindly allowed me some time off and I flew back to Canada for her funeral.
When one life is suddenly cut short, unanswerable questions inevitably surface. When millions of innocent lives are suddenly snuffed out -- as in a holocaust -- someone has to be blamed. I remember visiting the site of the World War II Nazi Mauthausen concentration camp in the Austrian countryside where an estimated 120,000 - 180,000 men, women and children died in one of history's ugliest scenes. I walked up the 186 stone steps known as "The Stairs of Death," where undernourished prisoners were forced to march up with huge granite blocks on their backs, some weighing more than seventy-five pounds, sometimes the blocks would slip off their backs crushing the bones of those struggling behind. The tortured prisoners were forced to climb up and down the steps until they died. I gazed down into the rock quarry where many prisoners were pushed to their deaths from the jagged cliff 100 - 150 feet above. Even Auschwitz captives were horrified at the thought of ending up at Mauthausen.
I stood in the basement gas chamber where the SS had herded 120 at a time to be gassed to death. I ran my hands over the dissecting table where SS doctors performed grotesque "experiments" on live patients. I gazed into the crematorium where tens of thousands of bodies were disposed of. I stood on the roll-call square where men, women, and children were shot and clubbed to death -- some mauled by dogs. Selected individuals were stripped naked, doused with icy water and left to freeze to death in the bitter cold.
Most of those who died at the hands of the Nazis were Jews, numbering approximately six million in total. Since the holocaust, convicting fists have been shaken at God for allowing one of the most heinous crimes in history to unfold. The Jews were God's chosen people -- His selected ambassadors to the world; but where was God in their suffering? Where was God in these horrible, unimaginable atrocities? Where was Jehovah when the SS officers were clubbing, gassing, shooting and torturing millions of Jews to death -- exterminating them like ants with the goal of developing a "Master race"? No wonder little Cindy Ellen wrote to God in her letter, "Did you know about this? Were You away then?"
Most of us probably have never sat down to write an actual letter to God. But if we did, I think a good number of us would pour out our hearts to the Almighty like the patriarch Job telling God how much we are suffering and that we've done nothing to deserve it. And like Cindy Ellen, we might ask God the very same questions: "Did You know about this? Were You away then?"
Where is God in my suffering? Perhaps no other question has bewildered, disheartened and angered saints more. Maybe this is the one unanswered question you've been asking all along on your journey. How can we reconcile in our minds an all-powerful, loving heavenly Father who would allow His children to suffer to such awful extremes? Why would God take the life of my loved one? And why does God seem so distant when I need Him the most? These tough questions could very well have been the catalyst that led you to pick up this book.
...Many of these answers are provided for us throughout the pages of Scripture. God often shares with us in an intimate manner what He is thinking. The problem is, we sometimes behave like little children, holding our hands over our ears, pretending we can't hear Him. More often, though, we act like grown adults. The answers in God's Word are so contrary to our humanistic reasoning, we automatically assume they can't be right. But these are all reasons why God lovingly gave us the Bible. If we could intuitively figure out all the answers to the really tough questions on suffering, why would we need His supernatural revelation?
I must forewarn you that the upcoming material may be a little disturbing. You may even find yourself becoming rather irritated or even downright angry with me. I totally understand....God's truth surrounding suffering is certainly not easy to comprehend. The message of this book will be very difficult to accept...but ultimately freeing. For the truth will set you free from the guilt, discouragement, anxiety, bitterness, anger, and confusion you may be experiencing in your suffering...
The fact of suffering undoubtedly
constitutes the single greatest
challenge to the Christian faith.
--John Stott
Contents
Ch. 1 - Suffering: God's Will or the Devil's
Ch. 2 - The "Sovereignty of Satan" Lie
Ch. 3 - When Our Children Die
Ch. 4 - "You Have a Lot of Explaining to do, God?"
Ch. 5 - Is God Punishing Me?
Ch. 6 - The Ultimate Reason We Suffer
Ch. 7 - Seeing the Complete Sunset
Ch. 8 - Solomon's Clues
This book may be purchased at www.amazon.com.
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