I've grown quite a bond with two beautiful brothers that go to the school that I've been working with. Their names are Miguel and Geovany. They both have severe learning difficulties- Miguel can barely read at the age of 14, and Geovany still gets confused between 'yellow' and 'orange'. He's 12. The boys come from a very poor family- their parents day-job is selling freshly squeezed orange juice at the park for 30cents a cup. Imagine if on a rainy day they only sell 4 cups a day? That's $1.20 income to feed themselves and 4 children- Miguel, Geovany, their older sister and their younger brother. Obviously getting a proper primary education is not high on the list of priorities when you're struggling to feed a family of 6. However, not long ago they were a family of 7. Miguel and Geovany had another older sister who was 18. She was murdered here in Santo Domingo a few months back. She left to go out with her mates one night and never came back. Her body was found a couple of weeks later.
Imagine if something like this were to happen to an Aussie family? I mean, I'm sure that it has. I'm also sure that whichever family member was lost, there was a memorial service of some kind. Councelling would have been provided for the rest of the family, and parents and siblings would have been granted time off work/school to grieve for their loss. Not here in Santo Domingo. Things like this happen quite frequently apparently. Most of the time there is no good-bye service, there is no tomb-stone and there are no endless arrays of flowers and funeral songs. The sun goes down and comes back up the morning, as if nothing has happened. There is no leave from work- it's back to selling juice in the park the next day. No time to process; no time to reflect; no time to grieve. Life must continue as normal to provide for the rest of the family. Life must go on.
Hearing about stuff like this provokes me to pose the unfathomable question: If God is so wonderful and loving, why do people suffer?
Ah well, here it is. I'm sure you knew it was coming...
The first and foremost thing to remember is that I cannot provide you with a straight answer to this question because I simply do not know- '..then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out...' (Ecclesiastes 8:17)
God's ways are so super-duper-ridiculously and frustratingly higher than anything that we can comprehend. We cannot understand what He does and why He does it. We can question His ways all we like- we can battle with Him to give us a reason, an explanation for why things happen- but it's no use. No Christian, nor scientist, nor happy hippie living in the hills of Spain can give an accurate answer.
The Bible tells us that is that suffering is the result of human sin. The world is not as it was intended to be. We were the ones to screw it up- no one is innocent, therefore every single person on the planet is vulnerable to suffering- 'for ALL have sinned and ALL fall short of the glory of God.' (Romans 3:23).
Also, God may be letting evil run it's course to prove that by not abiding by His word, or doing things contrary to His will is harmful to us?
Well, though these answers provide a response that's accurate in relation to scripture, they don't really comfort us emotionally, do they? I mean, can we find comfort in the fact that Miguel and Geovany's sister was brutally killed because the Bible says that we are all worthy of suffering? Not at all. However, maybe you will find some comfort in something that God taught me though my own personal experience:
My life is wonderful, it really is. However, it has taken me a lot to get to where I am now. I've had to live through a lot for a 20-year-old- including the death of a parent. Looking back on the last 6 years, God has taught me how much positive can come from an experience so negative. Not just taught me, He has SHOWN ME through certain events that have happened in my life since the death of my father. I can SEE IT with my EYES. Once you are able to see positive effects come out of a painful event in your past it's harder to resent it. Not that I'm trying to say that 'I'm glad my dad is dead'-that's not it at all. What I'm trying to say is that I can see how God used such a dark phase of my adolensence to bring about so many positive things that are happening today. Before I knew God, it was as if all the events in my life were just tiny dots randomly spread about on a huge piece of paper, starting from the biggest spot that is my dad's death. When I became a Believer, God handed me a black marker and helped me connect them all into a wonderful pattern that leads me to where I am now. Lesson learned: God used the BAD in my life to bring GOOD.
How easy would it be for ME to be angry at God? How easy would it be for me to say- 'Screw you God,- you left me dad-less.'? How easy would it be for me to dwell on the negative? We have become so accustomed to looking at the bad that we usually don't see the good. It's like that old saying- 'When one door closes, another door opens. We are usually too fixed upon the closing door that we cease to see the one that has opened for us.'......We are so accustomed to complain. We think that everything is crap, and we continuously pose the same questions- 'If God loves everyone, why do people get raped? If God loves everyone why do innocent little children get hurt? If God loves ME, then why did this happen?'
No one knows. But give Him a chance to show you why once in a while.
You may be thinking- "Okay, so maybe God uses good to do bad, I can get that. But why doesn't He just stop all the suffering in the world so that we can all get by like happy little teapots? It's not fair!" You want God to change all the bad shit in the world? Are you willing to change yourself first? Are you a wonderul, all-loving, always-righteous person? Are you FAIR to everyone that you meet, in your actions and in your mind? No? Me either.
"What causes quarrels and fights amongst you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.." (James 4:1)
All because we don't get things our way we think badly of one another, scream profanities at one another, place hands on one another, turn evil against one another. Evil is evil whether it is thought of or physically carried out. So, If God were to put a STOP to ALL evil, wouldn't that mean that He would be controlling our thoughts? And by controlling our thoughts, wouldn't that take away our freedom of will?
God gives and gives and gives, we take take take, and then we question why when something doesn't go our way. God probably never intended to have to use our suffering to show His grace, but because of the mega-ways that we have-excuse the French- completely fucked things up in the world, He does. Wouldn't it have been easy for Him to just say 'Nah man, screw this, what a pack of dick-heads those humans are, I'm getting out of here..'? Further, most of the time we are too self-absorbed to believe that there's a slight chance that we actually might be accountable for what happens. My dad smoked more than a packet a day of Marlboro reds since he was 19. When he was 45 he had a heart-attack. No offence (to me, I guess) but only one word comes to mind when I do that math... OBVIOUSLY.
No matter how much you love God, you are going to suffer. Take it from me- I read the Bible everyday and think about God more than I think about anything else, but my life isn't perfect. People see/hear about me going here, and going there; doing this and doing that- I get that's it's difficult to buy that being me isn't just one big party. Don't get me wrong, I am so fortunate to have been blessed with the opportunities to have been the places I have been and to be doing the things that I'm doing- but it's not always easy. Everyday is a challenge. Though my healing process has rapidly increased since finding God, I still struggle as I grieve the loss of my father. Most days are good, but some days are really bad. Some mornings I have to curl up in a ball on the floor of the bathroom and cry for 10minutes to take the edge off and release some emotion. As I grow older, and as I grow closer to God, these days aren't so frequent. But yeah, God and I have fights about it. I scream a little and tell Him that He's an asshole. But you know what? I get through it. I get through it because He WANTS me to get through it-
"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13)
Did God give me more than I could handle and then just piss off? Nope. Is there anything that He has handed YOU in your life that you have not lived through? Well no doofus, otherwise you would not be reading this. I'm sure that you have hurt, and I'm sure that you have struggled, and I'm sure that you think that life is a big bull-shit joke most of the time. Guess what? Me too. But God hasn't given me anything that I have not lived through yet, and even in everything that has occured, He has been there to guide me and lead me on the path of healing; lead me to the 'way of escape', because...GOD IS FAITHFUL.
"There are times when you choose to believe in something that would normally be considered irrational. It doesn't mean that it acutally IS irrational, but it surely is not rational."
If you are currently grieveing or suffering, I am sorry, and I hope that you can share in the hope that I was able to share in, even after what I have lost in my life. I know how it feels to hate God, I really really do. I can't tell you why bad things happen, but I can tell you through personal experience, that something bigger and better will come out of whatever negative process you are enduring. You may not see it right away- it took God 5 years to show me how He'd worked things out. It may take ages for you to put pieces together. He might not even show you while you're in this life- maybe He'll show you when we're up 'there'- 'chillin' with Jesus.' I still question many things that happen- like what happened to Miguel and Geovany's sister. It's hard for me to see what good can come out of that situation for that family. But believing in God is not based on anything 'rational', it's based on having faith- 'Faith is the assurance of things HOPED for; the conviction of things unseen' (Hebrews 11:1)- and I have FAITH. Faith that everything that happens 'happens for a reason'. With every mollecule that makes up my insides and outsides, I believe that God is going to bring sunshine after every storm. How can one expect to see the grace and glory of God if he doesn't fully believe that it's there? How can people expect to have their prayers answered when they don't have faith in the power of God in the first place?
That's my unfathomable question, really.
"He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall their be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Revalation 21:4
Peace and Love,
Crissi
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