This Sunday, I’m doing a teaching on suffering and what Christianity has to offer to those who have gone or are going through the “dark night of the soul.” I reject the deist claim (common in some Christian circles) that believes God has left the building. I also reject the neo-Calvinist claim that tells me I must accept that God is sovereign, controlling both the good and evil that is breaking out in our world. Neither “God” is worth believing in.
There’s a third way.
To tell this third way, I’m going to have a conversation with a young mom at Otter Creek who’s experienced death and chaos up close. Her story is not only powerful, it is honest, refreshing and full of tear-stained passion.
There’s a Jewish adage I read recently that goes something like this: Expecting the world (translation: life) to take it easy on you because you are a good person is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.
I like that. A lot. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. So does drought.
It does not bother me much when something bad happens to a bad person. It does not keep me up at night when something good happens to a good person. Most days I can even stomach when something good happens to a bad person (mostly because the line of good person/bad person is much more difficult to draw than we realize). I get hot under the collar when bad things happen to good people. That’s where Christianity, if it is a religion worth any consideration at all, had better have something to say that goes deeper than Hall-Mark slogans like “God needed another angel” or “God has a plan.”
While we dive into the third way, we enter into the suffering of those around us.
“To watch over a person who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God,” Elie Wiesel.
I am glad you want to offer more than simple pat answers that are no help at all.
I still believe the best we can offer a person in the throws of suffering is our presence – to be there to listen rather than speak, to serve rather than pass judgments on the raw emotions that we may not understand because we are not the ones suffering. It is the most simple of things to do yet, in our culture, it seems to be one of the most difficult (and I’m not sure why).
Thanks from one who has experienced the dark night of the soul.
K. Rex Butts
by K. Rex Butts (Oct 31 2009, 10:50 am)