Ch. 1, Pt. 2: We Have this Problem (of Evil)

Greg Rakozy

Before the church conference began, a friend of the family came up to me - crying and trembling. He asked if we could pray together after the service, then proceeded to sit several rows ahead, giving no further explanation for his distress.

I kept my eyes on the back of his head throughout the entire sermon — thoroughly spooked! Rows of striped banquet-hall chairs blurred in my vision as I panicked: Did someone die? Did he have a premonition that someone is going to die? He was the type of guy God seemed to have full-length conversations with.

An agonizingly long sermon later, I found out that no, no one had died.

“This very rarely happens to me,” he explained. “And it’s even rarer for me to tell someone else, but God told me to pray for your healing.” Oh, that. Phew.

We circled up. Hands piled on my back and shoulders. And through an outpouring of tears, he asked God to heal my ear — EVEN if it meant that he would lose hearing in one of his own.

*Not sure why God would need to cure one person’s (single-sided) deafness by striking another with deafness, but I thanked this man for such a sincere (and self-sacrificing?) prayer.

Before leaving, he added: “When I asked God what the outcome would be, he said it was none of my business.”

Hmm…can’t say I disagree.

None of My Business

Despite this odd encounter (and the miracle that did not follow), I paid the experience forward. I started my senior year of college as a Residence Hall Chaplain obsessed with “cracking the code” of healing.

I remember learning of someone’s chronic health issue and thinking, “if I had true faith, I’d pray for God to cure her condition.” Later that night, I knocked on her dorm-room door. I was shy and barely knew her but explained that I thought God wanted me to pray for her. She let me in, we sat on the floor, I prayed, then… we never talked about it again. (If you happen to be reading this, friend, I’m sorry. That was presumptuous and intrusive of me. None of my business.)

Looking back now, it’s not hard to see the wheels turning in my head: IF I could PROVE my faith for someone else’s miracle, THEN maybe I’d be worthy of my own. Maybe THAT’S the transaction God is waiting for! But, like all of my previous efforts, it wasn’t enough.

This is my fault, then?

I’ve heard some religious people say that God brings “trials, tests, and tribulations” into our lives to teach us lessons. And others that God turns lives upside-down as punishment for our sins. Or so that we’ll realize our need for him. Whatever the case may be, they assert that “God is in control.” You might rightly blame him for your situation, but remember, “He has your best interests at heart.” Or “He’s working it all together for good.” It’s just that your tiny human brain can’t yet understand…

This, of course, is where prayer comes in. Through prayer, you can influence Mighty-God’s activity; you can petition his power in your situation. And the more people praying, the more God will take notice of your cause. The more faith you have and the more persistent you are in prayer, the more miraculous his answer will be (on the contrary, the more sin in your life, the less God will be able to hear you).

This was the logic I was working with.

But, when met with grief and loss, “perfect answers” don’t hold up in the same way. Everything once thought solid, cracks open. It all breaks down without your permission.

Please don’t explain my suffering to me

The “encouraging words” mocked me , telling me I was a disappointment and failure in God’s eyes, that I didn’t have enough faith or the right kind of faith. They offered more guilt and shame than any kind of comfort — INCREASING the weight of my burden.

I didn’t need the weepy prayers or uninvited explanations about “God’s plan” as I processed my loss, my grief, my “new normal.”

What I needed was to know that my pain was legitimate…that my questions for God were legitimate. That there was plenty of Time and Space for me to doubt. That I didn’t have to bury or deny any of it. That I didn’t have to pretend that everything was okay. That my grief was NORMAL; healthy even. That it did not exclude me from God or his family. And, above all, that I was not alone…I didn’t have to walk into the darkness alone.

But, I didn’t know these things at the time. So I kept my questions to myself.

In the fitting words of Pete Enns, “I had never openly explored my thinking about God because I was taught that questioning too much was not safe Christian conduct…so dangerous thoughts lay dormant. I didn’t plan this little moment, and before I knew it my view of God passed from ‘yeah, I got this’ to ‘uh-oh.’”

(The Sin of Certainty)

My growing pile of questions looked something like this:

> God creates, preserves, governs, & enables the events of life…okay, sure. But, when does God exercise his Direct Will, interrupting the regular pattern of existence, to do miracles — if ever? Why in certain situations, places, times, and not others?

> Does my “sin” or my amount of faith play into God’s answers to my prayers? If so, why do bad things still happen to the most faithful?

> If more people are praying for something, does it get more of God’s attention? If so, how is that fair to those with fewer friends? What if I don’t want to publicize my pain? Does “faith” require that I consent to strangers’ thoughts, prayers, and hands on my body?

> “Results” of prayer seem extremely inconsistent and erratic! Does prayer actually influence God’s actions in the world? Or does prayer only “work” to give comfort or change the person doing the praying?

All these questions (without answers) pushed back against the script I’d been following, the “encouraging words” people were offering, and the image of God I had in my brain.

I didn’t know it yet, but underneath it all, I was asking: Who is this God, really? Can I TRUST Him?

Uh-oh.

I felt like I was wading into a fog — looking so hard for some kind of landmark to spiritually reorient myself, and finding none. Nothing familiar or trustworthy. Nothing steadying. The more I studied my surroundings, the more disoriented I felt!

I was like a toddler asking “Why? Why? Why?” and I didn’t know how to shut it off! The questions were coming faster and faster, and zooming out wider and wider:

> How much of what we experience is determined by “God’s will,” OR is simply a result of human “free-will” (which God permits & cooperates with — as complicated as it makes things)?

> What does it mean for God to have a primordial purpose or plan (for this world/my specific existence), anyway? Is that even a thing? Or is it just something people like to say to find meaning in the meaningless?

> What does it mean for God to be sovereign, while so many people are suffering? Where was God during every long hour and day and week and month and YEAR of the Holocaust? How can God claim to be good, and not intervene in the bad? How can God be all-powerful AND all-loving, and choose NOT to rescue people from pain?

> Is it even possible for me to grasp the answers to these questions from my finite, mortal perspective? What can I expect to understand about God when I am confined to this specific space and time, and limited human consciousness?

I found my quest halted at the base of THE most classic theological and philosophical dilemma: The Problem of Evil.

(This should come as no surprise, as it’s a problem the GREATEST MINDS of human history have not been able to “solve” conclusively). And I too was stumped.

Boy, did I miss the simplicity of my naivety!

…Or, is that what got me into this mess?

“We believe in a God who’s both good and all-powerful, and when you see hard things, to put it bluntly, either God is good and not powerful or powerful and not good, or he’s not there. Atheists don’t have this problem. Buddhists don’t have this problem. Deists don’t have this problem. We who believe in a loving personal God who created the earth and can intervene at any time – we have this problem.”

T.M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back