Reassessment

       “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not, ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’”—C.S. Lewis

“Self-pity, self-love, fear of suffering, withdrawal from the cross: these are some of the manifestations of the soul life, for its prime motivation is self-preservation. It is exceedingly reluctant to endure any loss.”—Watchman Nee

       Why must mankind suffer? Individuals have pondered that question for eons. That question also raises many others. “What is the purpose of suffering?” “If God is love, why does He allow suffering?” and “How should one react to suffering?” 

     At the root of many of these types of questions is often a deep-seated anguish at the apparent senselessness of it all. If suffering has no meaning—if it serves no discernable purpose—then what is the point? Suffering and trials are generally so pervasive as to be almost completely unexceptional. They are as prosaic and prevalent as dirt. 

     Such were my despairing views in the early days of loss. Suffering had in effect rendered me commonplace and thereby irrelevant. Car wrecks should not happen to faithful Christians. The accident had reduced a formerly precious and sacrosanct mother and child experience to little more than an insignificant statistic. How could I ever go on unless some sense could be made of the tragedy?

Mankind, enmeshed as we are in the deceitfulness of appearances, seeks answers in obvious places. Simplistic explanations for human suffering abound. Suffering exists because there is no God. Natural laws, when broken, create consequences. Chance and fate rule the day. Karmic influences prevail. Fatalists would chalk up life’s angst to little more than some sort of pointless and sadistic cosmic joke. C. S. Lewis facetiously sums up such specious views: “. . . all life will turn out in the end to have been a transitory and senseless contortion upon the idiotic face of infinite matter,”⁽¹⁾ This aphorism would hold true if no point could be found in the seemingly pointless. 

Yet, the concept of life as a capricious roll of the dice runs counter to all that is distinctly Christian.  Believers are to embrace hope, not nihilistic despair. Rejecting glib answers, Christians must, conversely, weigh suffering in view of what we think we know of a kind and loving God. Therein lies the difficulty. For what do we really know of God? Prior to this, I had only experienced Him as a kind and gentle entity. One who had lovingly sent a Savior to rescue me from a terrible destiny. He was, to me, a figure of unimpeachable benevolence—the very soul of goodness. In light of what I had experienced, it seemed I now had to redefine Him. 

     To find our way forward, what do we do? Retrace our steps to discover what went wrong? Learn from our experiences or the experiences of others?

Someone once suggested, “When you’ve lost your way, go back to the beginning.” Much easier said than done. Finding the beginning by retracing early steps seemed too painful and a means by which the blame game could become the loudest voice. Some insight might be gained by locating where things went wrong, yet who would wish to go back and relive the past with its mistakes and failings? The better approach was to forge a new beginning. But how and where to make that beginning?

Consulting experience to seek wisdom seemed the wrong way around. Contrary to popular belief, experience is not the best teacher. Experience may be the fair teacher in the temporal world, but it’s an insufficient guide to the spiritual one. Experience involves looking backward, which Christians should wisely avoid. Remember Lot’s wife. In fact, hindsight can be cruel. Experience is far too one-dimensional to consult. It does not, in the end, lead to increased wisdom because it reflects what we already know, not what we don’t know. Unfortunately, what we don’t know is what hurts us most. Experience is only validated to the degree that God is welcomed there; it is, however, not a reliable guide. In the end, we must reject experience for the faulty gauge that it represents; it has never been the workings of the human experience or even observation of the natural world that brought mankind to a recognition of God. Externals do not address what ails us. Rather, we find answers to our questions by looking deep within.

     I know this because my own relationship with God did not evolve from externals. Although a number of external factors—sermons, books, conversations, relationships—contributed to my becoming aware that a different type of life existed and was desirable, my conversion was based primarily upon unseen, internal factors. It was a hunger, more a starvation, actually, that drove me inexorably to Him. Research and rumination, questionings, yearnings, and an active conscience were far more instrumental in bringing me to a gradual belief in the existence of God than any circumstances that originated from without.

Since experience did not lead me to God, an experience—though one most terrible—must not now be the catalyst that drives me away. Laying aside experience to the extent that I can, I will in the future reexamine what I think I know, or thought I knew of God.