The Problem of Pain
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution....?" (Romans 8: 35a) It didn't go as expected, again. Before the Discipleship school began, our staff team had been wrestling immigration bureaucracy to get visas so we could stay in Vienna for the lecture phase of the school. Several of us had massive faith that it would work out, even if imperfectly, and we'd get a 'yes' to our visas. With this in mind and my 3 months as a tourist running out, off I popped to England, using my waiting time outside the Shengen to connect with a few ministries I had originally intended to visit in April. Praying it would only take a week or two to get my 'yes'.
My visa application was rejected. I went into a tailspin. We'd had so much faith it would work out! After all, my motives for wanting to stay in Vienna were unselfish. Everything was in place for it to work out as we hoped. But it didn't.
The previous year had already been very hard, and now this? For a little while I was depressed and very confused. I barely told anyone that first week after finding out, because I didn't want to have to try to answer them when they asked what I was going to do. I didn't know how to answer.
It's been a month since then. I've been in England, staffing my DTS part-time via Skype and helping out at YWAM London. It's less busy than normal DTS staffing, which is an all-day commitment for 6 months. I've had time to seek God, time to process and time for God to work some much-needed healing. I've been wrestling, this past year, with the problem of pain. Why do bad things happen when God is all loving and all powerful? It's an old question and the church has all kinds of answers to it, some good, some not so good, and many of them oversimplified. And simple, pat answers are an insult when you're in the middle of really difficult stuff. Really, most answers won't do, because though you ask questions desperately, all the logic in the world doesn't change the fact that your heart is screaming. But we forget that, and we offer pat answers like, "When God opens a door, he closes a window!" We try to remind the person of why they should be happy, when what we really should do is just shut up and listen and let them grieve. The following is an excerpt from my journal recently, a letter I wrote to God on a day my heart finally started to find resolution on this "Problem of Pain". I don't propose to have the answer, but with this realization my heart, at least, had peace. I hope it will have the same effect for you, too: "I don't know why things go as they do, feel as they do, sometimes. I don't know why its left beyond my understanding. But I know your wisdom is beyond me. I know your love is inescapable and utterly complete. Your reasons are good. Your heart is loving and pure. In troubles- and in your love- I am MORE than a conqueror. I will always rise again, eventually. WHEN I recover and WHEN I see evidence that you're rescuing I don't know- I don't comprehend your timing. But eventually, when its right, you come to the rescue. I don't know when or how you'll do it, but you are always here with me, and you'll rescue when its right. Sometimes, it has to hurt for awhile. You do allow things to hurt. You allow all the messiness, confusion and brokenness of life as humans, and of this fractured battleground we call our world. You CAN intervene however you wish, but we don't comprehend the big picture of how that should look. We prideful humans who think we have it figured out- even CAN have it figured out! We comprehend so little. We see so little. We think we get it but we don't. We can only really know you get it and you're good. And I'm tired of pat answers, easy answers. To speak of how the universe and our circumstances will work? To answer as to WHY things happen?? Our systems, theories and formulas fail us. Should you be so simple and small that we can figure you out? No. Us trying to figure you out like a formula is us trying to be in control. We're not in control.
Thankfully, you are. This is why you require our trust. Because no matter how we try, we'll never have you fully figured out. We'll never understand it all. We can't whip out our mathematical equations and predict you each time. We're too small, too limited. We're lovely and brilliant, but next to you, we're fools. So we must simply trust. When it gets beyond our understanding- which is more often that we like to admit- we must simply trust the one simple truth that you're always good, always loving, always powerful enough. However this broken mess of a world works, you always choose what's best- even if what's best hurts."
