Unanswered questions

Mac Sledge: I don’t know why I wandered out to this part of Texas drunk, and you took me in and pitied me and helped me to straighten out, married me. Why? Why did that happen? Is there a reason that happened? And Sonny’s daddy died in the war, my daughter killed in an automobile accident. Why? — Tender Mercies, 1983

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. — 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 (NLT)

I have questions. Not Google or Wikipedia questions, but questions for God. I want God to make sense of what makes no sense, to me. I’m old Job, sitting in dust, asking God to explain himself.

Except, that’s not what Job did. After Job lost everything that was dearest to him, he sat in his grief and pain and said, “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” (Job 2:10 – NLT) Job was a better man than I am.

I have a memory. It’s the spring of 1961 and my six-year-old younger sister and I have been sequestered on the back porch at my grandparents’ house. The living room is full of adults — aunts, uncles, our mother — and they all have very serious looks on their faces. They’re murmuring quietly so we can’t hear. Mom is crying. Then my Aunt Adelaide comes through the screen door, sits down, and tells us that our father has died.

My sister bursts into tears and cries out, “Why?” I’m the stoic of the family. I save my tears and my complaints for that night when I’m alone in bed.

In any great moment of tragedy, people are likely to ask, why? The question isn’t really what it appears to be on the surface. My sister wasn’t asking to see the coroner’s report; she was complaining to the universe, to God, about the injustice of a little girl losing the father whom she loved.

Why is very often a question about fairness, about justice, about the apparent random cruelties life doles out. It’s a question that tries to make sense of the world and our powerlessness to control some of the most tragic and consequential events in life.

Christians believe that evil, tragedy, suffering, and injustice entered creation when humanity turned its back on God, our Creator. Ever since that long ago moment, we have continued to live badly, selfishly, without love, except where it benefits us. With this rebellion against God came death, because God is the true source of life and when you reject him, you don’t get roses in the bargain. With that rejection of our Creator came all manner of horrors, most of which continue to plague us despite all of the technological and societal progress humanity has made.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

September is National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month. If you’ve been here in the past year, you’ll probably know that my son took his life 11 months ago after suffering from depression for many, many years. His mom and I tried everything in our power to help him find a way out of the darkness. His doctors and counselors did as much as he would allow them to do. In the end, he lost hope and gave up trying.

Why? I don’t understand why his life turned out the way it did. I don’t understand why the things I prayed for didn’t materialize. I don’t understand why some people succumb to the dark lies depression tells them and others break through to light and hope.

Why do such things happen?

Good question. Before we can hope to find an answer, we ought to figure out who we’re going to aim the question at. If I reject the supernatural, I must direct my displeasure at government or society or science, any one of which might plausibly be blamed for some contributory failure to make our ugly world beautiful again.

But if the cause of all of the world’s ills is at a higher level, does it suggest that God doesn’t care? Is God impotent? Is God deaf to our pleadings?

No. I believe, and the Bible confirms, that God is living, active, at work in the world, listening to our prayers and even answering some. But not all. And that’s one of the mysteries that Paul writes about in the passage at the top of this post.

God does not cause terrible things to happen, but he does not often step in to prevent them. As Lewis says, he hopes that our shouted Whys? will lead us to ask the even more urgent question: “Who are you, Lord?” And if we ask that question honestly, determined to discover the answer, we may run into the man, Jesus Christ, Son of God, sent by God, the one who started the process of tearing up death and evil by the roots through his own death and resurrection from the dead.

There is much that we don’t know, isn’t there? We don’t know the shape of the universe our little planet is hurtling through. We don’t know why some people can write beautiful music and others can’t hold a tune. We don’t understand the experience of consciousness and how it arises from the biological stuff inside our heads.

We don’t understand God. If he is really the creator of everything we are and know, how could we ever hope to know the mind of such a being? How could we know his purposes? He has revealed himself through his son, Jesus. There is much in Jesus’ life and words that shine a spotlight on the truth about this invisible God. But as Paul suggests in 1 Corinthians 13, even what we think we understand from Jesus is incomplete, and will remain so until he returns. (Yes, he’s coming back! That’s a story for another post.)

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. Am I wrong to focus so much grief and regret on what I’ve lost, when I must admit that the time we had together made me richer than the kings of old? Do I belittle the wonderful experiences I had as my son’s father by wishing there had been more? I’m not saying grief is wrong, or that I should pretend his suicide wasn’t a tragedy, but perhaps I need to focus as much on being grateful for all the blessings my son brought into this world as I do on the raw wounds of his passing.

I have questions, but not many answers. I have memories both joyful and sad. And I have friends whose children are struggling with the same darkness and hopelessness that took my son. Mental illness is a scourge. Depression is as deadly as a plague. There were almost 50,000 suicides in the US in 2022, the highest ever recorded.

Why? How can we who have the hope of the resurrection transfuse hope into the lives of those who feel swallowed up by darkness and anger and confusion and grief?