The Jagged Journey. Barry Lee Callen

      We Wish It Were Otherwise, But It Isn’t!

      A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. . . . Don’t blame fate when things go wrong—trouble doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s human! Mortals are born and breed for trouble as certainly as sparks fly upward.

      Job 14:1-2; 5:7

      Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

      The Princess Bride (1987)

      This is a book I would have chosen not to write, but somehow there was no choice. It’s an unavoidable subject, God and human suffering. What a difficult and troubling combination of words! For those who believe in an all-powerful God, the suffering of anyone, and especially of those who love and serve God, is troubling. Even more troubling is the thought that God suffers because we sin.

      A best seller was Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen To Good People.1 Why should that ever happen to good people? And how could it possibly be that God suffers when we do? Well, biblical revelation makes clear that suffering resides at the center of God’s heart and also is key to our calling as followers of Jesus. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

      Does God Cause or Just Help Our Suffering?

      I confess. Like Harold Kushner, I don’t want to treat suffering like a crossword puzzle, making every piece fit together neatly and thus not reaching people where they are—hurting! Suffering people want an answer to the question, “Why?” They don’t want a graduate class in technical theology. But what if any satisfying and responsible answer to the “Why?” question requires clarifying some basic theological assumptions? Sorry, but it does. That’s what chapters two and three of this book are about.

      Suffering haunts all humans sooner or later. When it does, it raises difficult questions, even for a devoted Christian.

      Those suffering often tend to assume that God controls everything and must have a reason for having brought the suffering. Presumably God caused it, or at least allowed it because of what the sufferer did to deserve it. So the questions come. Did I do something wrong or does God have reasons beyond my comprehension? Either way, the answer leaves sufferers hating themselves for being at fault or feeling badly toward God who brought the pain, won’t explain why, and makes things worse by not stopping it.

      There’s got to be a better answer to “Why?” than “we all get what we deserve.” Our experience tells us that many people don’t get what they deserve, despite Isaiah 3:10–11 and Proverbs 12:21. This world isn’t as neat a place as Psalm 92:6–8, 13, 16 describes. Therefore, we’re left with pushing off until the judgment of eternity the straightening out of all the earthly injustices. Or we come to another insight that frees us to think again. Maybe the Bible reports our many human thoughts on the matter of suffering but doesn’t necessarily teach as truth all that it reports.

      If Psalm 92 is too neat a picture of the world we know—the righteous, in fact, don’t always flourish like a palm tree, then Psalm 121 might help. It says that relief from our suffering comes from the Lord. This implies that our help and not necessarily our suffering comes from God. We must be careful what we decide to lay at the feet of God.

      Suffering haunts all humans sooner or later. When it does, it raises the most difficult of questions, even for the devoted Christian. We cry in pain and reach out in desperation and confusion. We believe, and then we’re not sure we can believe. We want healing and death comes. The best we can say then is that death is the ultimate healing. Yes, in a sense it is, but why the substantial