Is Why Worth Asking? Whom Do We Ask?

Faith gives no straight answer to the question of why. Should we keep asking anyway?

Amid the first raw shock of the catastrophe in Japan, why has come forth as a cry from the heart. Many people of faith struggle to respond. Some Christians may trot out St. Paul's message that "all things work together for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28) or "God will not let you be tested beyond your strength" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Others, sadly, will fall back on the ancient notion of divine judgment for sins committed. Some Buddhists might explain it in terms of karma.

All these answers feel woefully inadequate as a man searches for his father in the puddle of seawater that used to be his house.

Why, of course, is hardly new. The Hebrew scriptures, to their eternal credit, devote an entire book to the subject of why. Job is blessed with children, great wealth and a love of God. This same God allows the devil to test Job's faith by stripping him of everything, his health included. Job refuses to curse God -- but then, in chapter after chapter, he complains honestly and mightily. His friends trot out various explanations, but they all pale before the reality of Job's anguish. God eventually responds with four chapters' worth of a non-answer.

Job did not get a straight answer to why then. I cannot imagine why we would get one now. So what are we left with? If faith cannot answer the cry of the heart, what good is it?

This is a dangerous question, because it so easily leads to simplistic replies. Allow me, therefore, to simply suggest a possibility: that faith provides not a straight answer, but a deep answer.

A glimpse of that depth lies in the Book of Job itself -- specifically, in the very fact of Job's rant. Time and again, the Hebrew scriptures tell of Israel's heroes wrestling, or arguing, or reasoning with God. Their struggles tell me it is valid, even encouraged, to ask why. To borrow the language from the creation story in Genesis, why comes from our DNA, and it is good.

Then there is the Christian doctrine that I cherish most: the Incarnation -- the idea that God became fully human in the person of Jesus. To be more specific, God entered utterly into the slings and arrows of our humanity. A reading of the gospels spins out the implications: in Jesus, God is tempted, God gets cranky, God disappoints his parents, God shows extraordinary compassion, God questions the mission.

God even dies -- a brutal, excruciating death.

None of this leaves us with a straight answer to why. It does not make the image of the man searching for his father any less painful. It does give us something else. Validation to be fully, utterly human ourselves. Permission to ask impossible questions and be furious when we get no answer. A God who, inexplicably, has felt the pain of catastrophe just as we have. A sense, therefore, that the Ground of All Being grieves with us, which inspires us to grieve with, and serve, one another.

It is not a straight answer. It will never be a straight answer. It may be a deep answer, with a depth that not only addresses the inexplicable, but resonates in our deepest selves. That alone may be sufficient reason to keep asking why -- and to keep asking it of God.

 

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Comments

[ninetailedfox]

08:14 PM on 03/24/2011

Why do bad things happen? Well, nature can be scary. nature doesnt judge, she just does what she does best. We pollute the air, the water, and the soil and yet we have the conceit to ask why bad things happen? Maybe if we take care of the living breathing entity we call Earth we wouldnt have to ask such questions.

[MichaelGuy]

09:39 PM on 03/24/2011

I guess even Jesus asked His Father, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" Jeremiah asked god if he was a liar, John the Baptist asked Jesus through His disciples :Are you the One or shall we expect another?" The Book of Job has Job referring to God as an enemy especially in the 20's chapters. Pain can be the evidence either for the absence of a God ( or pleural deities) or the the Deity or deities lack love, compassion or power to help a person or change their lot. Faith is either a rewarded virtue or a state of denial. Either our courage, fortitude and stoic endurance and forced love for a God who seems to callously lets pain and tragedy into the lives of those who love Him will be more than compensated in an eternal afterlife or faith is just a attempt to rationalize pure statistical randomness, as if prosperity and health are just a bell curve function.
But the rational decision seems to be indicated by Blaise Pascal, if the Bible is correct and you believe and act upon it you have a paradise to gain, if it is wrong then it is either annihilation, the hell and torment imposed upon you by another God, such as Allah, or re-incarnation. In the end we all bet our soul on the cosmic crap table, so research and find the most probable and act upon it. I would suggest Christianity, especially Orthodoxy.

[John Backman]

10:55 AM on 03/25/2011

We'd probably still ask the questions, but you make an important point. Karma might be the best way to describe at least some of the natural disasters we face. I can see pondering that on a broad systems level, but I still wouldn't bring it up when standing alongside someone who's lost everything in such a disaster.

[rtgmath]

01:15 PM on 03/22/2011

God confesses to Satan that He has moved against Job without cause (Job 2:3)

Job asked the right questions, made correct assertions, and protested that he'd done nothing to deserve what God was doing to him. And it was God's doing - God gave Satan permission!

The point of the cosmic bet was, Would Job crack under pressure and curse God? God said no, Satan said yes (but it was God that brought Job to Satan's attention!). The bet was placed and Job began to suffer. Almost nothing was left off the table. Job not only lost his wealth, and health but his servants and his children died as a result of this bet. Innocent people were killed to prove a point.

When God finally showed up, He yelled at Job for having the temerity to assume that he was right -- even though he was. Of course, God never revealed the Cosmic Bet to Job. Yell at God, protest your innocence when you actually *are* innocent, and you will get yelled back at. God doesn't brook challenges. Yes, eventually God admitted to others that Job had said right things about God when others hadn't. And God blessed Job later. But -

I'd bet that Job never took any future blessings for granted, or believed that God was totally trustworthy. He'd never voice those feelings, but look what happened.

No, Job does not provide comfort -- if you really read the book. It is a scary lesson about random judgment.

[John Backman]

10:50 AM on 03/25/2011

Great post. The lesson I draw from the Book of Job--and actually, I do draw some comfort from it--is its validation, even encouragement, of our questioning and ranting against God. (I don't draw this from God's soliloquy in chapters 38-41, but rather in the structure of the book itself, and how much space it devotes to Job's questions.) Any faith tradition that actively urges this kind of wrestling is OK by me.

[shoogie]

12:35 PM on 03/22/2011

I believe Why? is worth asking because it's part of the grieving process. Getting to the point of acceptance means realizing that not every question will have an answer and learning to go on afterward. Skipping steps in the processing of something as traumatic as Japan's catastrophe doesn't help anybody resolve their challenges to faith and I'm pretty sure God is compassionate enough to understand.

[LesHamilton]

09:15 AM on 03/22/2011

The answer to pain and suffering is our memory; we forget the immediate crushing pain of loss; that attenuates quickly leaving just a vestige of it to shape our lives.

[John Backman]

09:52 AM on 03/22/2011

Fascinating thought. It stopped me in my tracks. I don't think it's true of all human pain and suffering--the pain of some experiences remains powerful throughout our lives--but I do think you're on to something here.

[PeaceByJesus]

08:58 AM on 03/22/2011

So the answer is not to keep asking why, though God understands our infirmity, and we must examine ourselves for any impenitent sin, but rather than listening to the ol Serpent who seeks to install a victim mentality in us, and charge God with injustice, (Gn. 3:1-5) we need to trust God by His word that He will not give us more than we can handle by His grace (emphasize) and will make all things work together for good for those who love Him. (Rm. 8:28)

The living and true God gives us both faith and strength to endure as well as faith for deliverance in the end, (1Cor. 10:13; Heb. 11:32-38) as His highest priority is for souls to be conformed to the image of His Son, (Rm. 8:29; Heb. 2:10) And those who have seen suffering thru can best help those who are suffering.

And i am preaching to myself also, but one has to first know Christ by becoming born again.

[PeaceByJesus]

08:55 AM on 03/22/2011

Job did get an answer, which was that if God made the universe, from Orion to the Ostrich, and instilled and revealed the very sense of morality and justice that Job reacted out of, then Job could trust God that He would and intended this to work for good.

And your superficial rendering fails to mention, "the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy," (James 5:11) This being that after Job was enlightened by the multitude of rhetorical questions of the Lord - reminding Job of His omniscience and power - Job confessed, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. {6} Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. " (Job 42:5,6)

Cntd...

[John Backman]

10:11 AM on 03/22/2011

I don't know, Peace. To my ears, God's answer (as you eloquently put it in your first paragraph) still has the ring of "I made the rules, so just trust me and deal with it." Ultimately, this may be all we have, and so we have to live out of it. But does it really answer Job's questions? I can't see it.

On a side note, I've recently read some scholars who assert that the translation of Job 42:5-6 is a major bone of controversy--and even if it's translated correctly, it may not carry quite the meaning it appears to carry. I have no idea what to make of that, but I figure you'd like to know if you haven't heard this already.

[Elijah A Alexander Jr]

12:07 AM on 03/22/2011

Faith, as defined in Hebrews 11:1, say it will provide us with the answers. There's the asking why pessimistically, optimistically and objectively. The first two are the broad way while objectively is the narrow way with the straight gate. The first 2 ask objecting or loving which blinds with emotions, objectivity takes away the emotional blinders freeing our spirits to see the whole.

When Jesus asked "why hath thou forsaken me" he received his answer and "gave up the ghost" taking the answer went with him. Even if he had explained the answer people would not have believed it, neither will most believe the reason for Japan's earthquake, they are asking from the head rather than the heart objectively. Thus, the straight answer comes to those having entered the straight gate, the few who are not emotional concerning the events of this world but working to bring about the kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven." They are content, therefore, seek ye the kingdom of heaven and such answers will be provided.

[John Backman]

10:07 AM on 03/22/2011

Nice observation about the words of Jesus. And while I really like your thought on the value of objective inquiry, it strikes me that even the answers we get from such inquiry are missing something: they fail to resonate, to ring of truth, to answer the cry of the heart. I don't know why this is an important criteria, but I do know it's not the same as simply satisfying the emotions with an answer. Rather, it's an important point of epistemology--like "passing the smell test." I'm grasping for words here, so I'll stop, but I thought it was a point worth making. Any thoughts on this?

[Elijah A Alexander Jr]

05:48 PM on 03/22/2011

John,
To get the answer unprepared for it doesn't resonate with what "broad paths" people believe to be the heart. A day's morning is a broad time, evening is a broad path but first light to sunrise and sunset to dark are a straight line [way] around the earth. When in the latter with back to the light we see in the dark, turn into the light and we see clear and still see clearly in the narrow way therefore there's no emotion since we can see the whole.

Those in the dark don't see what's in the light nor those in the light what's in the dark but they believe they see the whole is why it doesn't resonate as truth to what they believe to be their hearts, they only see and believe in part. It's so easy to say "I'm born again" without having testimony of conception, gestation, trivial, birth, baby-childhood, adolescence and, if any, adulthood, the problem with religion. The Bible say we are new creations, the tadpoles are new creations when they become a FROG to reproduce, it takes time to make the transition as does the metamorphosis of new born man.

As new creations man see the whole picture so if it doesn't fit left nor right it fits the middle way and resonates as truth. That's why common man can't understand scripture, they don't see the whole plan.