Why God?

I have questions for God. There are some things I don’t understand and I would like answers. I guess to some that sounds impertinent, to ask the Creator of all seen and unseen to explain why some things go terribly wrong and why He lets them happen when it’s within his power to stop them. Cue the platitudes: “I guess it was His will.” “They are in a better place.” “God had His reasons.” “God wanted another angel in heaven.”

There are others, but truth be known, when death comes to the young and those in the prime of life, I am left without a satisfying answer and I hate handing out platitudes to the grieving. It feels like it invalidates their pain and offers hollow words that do nothing to truly console those who may be asking the same questions. “Why God?” “Why did You do this?” “Why didn’t You heal?” “Why did You let this happen?” Honest, legitimate questions and to ask them is a natural response to tragedy.

I am steeped in faith in the goodness of God. I don’t believe He gives people cancer or other deadly diseases. So the question of why God makes people sick and die doesn’t haunt me. But that faith doesn’t come so easily to others. And the question of why He allows suffering is one that has been asked since Cain killed Abel leaving a pair of grieving parents to wrestle with it. It’s most common to point to the story of Job who lost all his children, his wealth, and his health and was left in great physical and emotional pain trying to stay faithful, but eventually began accusing God of being unjust and uncaring. Even his wife told him to just curse God and die.

Why God allows suffering is a question I wrestle with along with so many who experience loss in one form or another. It bothers me enough that I have gotten angry with God. I have suffered some very ugly painful things. It took nearly thirty years for me to finally share about one incident in a therapy group. Wherever people gather who have suffering in common, one of two things can happen. Either people will prod each other’s anger, depression or hate, or they will find a way to comfort one another. Fortunately, I was in the latter. I still don’t understand why I could be minding my own business and become the victim of a violent crime. I believed God would protect me, and it seemed He didn’t, at least at the time. But as the wisdom that comes from age has gradually deepened in me, I realize He did protect me from something even worse.

I just lost a friend and coworker to cancer. It was a fast-moving aggressive and rare cancer that claimed her life within months. I prayed, I asked my church to pray. I asked everyone I knew to pray for her, and I have no doubt her family and church were praying, too. But God didn’t heal her. God didn’t stop the spread of the disease or ease her suffering. Instead, He let her die. And it begs the question, “Why God? Why are her children bereft of their mother, her husband left without his life’s companion? Where were You?” We want an answer that makes sense. We want to know why the God of love and mercy let this happen.

Nowhere in the scripture are we promised exemption from suffering. What sets Christians apart is their worship of the suffering Messiah. One who came and dwelt among us and experienced all that we do, including excruciating pain and death. But we worship not just a suffering Messiah, but One who was raised from the dead and lives and promises the same to us. Some call it pie in the sky. I call it faith and I can do that because of how He has touched my life and so utterly changed it from what it had been before I became a friend of His.

I cannot answer the why of my friend’s death, but I can believe she now sees the face of God and Jesus who made it possible. And I can believe that one day I’ll see His face, too, and not only that, but see her, too, and maybe we’ll laugh about some of the crazy things that happened in the library. I believe she already knows why her life ended the way it did. The rest of us will have to wait to know, but God is God and He has the final say over all His creation, and that’s no platitude.

My church ends each service with the phrase, “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.” That is the only thing that keeps me going when bad things happen. Scripture says all things work together for good for those who love the Lord. We may wrestle with God for a time, but eventually our strength fails and then we discover instead of chastening us for the struggle, he picks us up and holds us, letting His love overwhelm our grief and calm the emotional storm in our souls. It may not answer, “Why” now, but it will help us carry on without bitterness, and that will bring the peace and patience to wait until we finally learn why.