Beyond Suffering

Beyond Suffering: Encountering Christ in the Book of Job Introduction On 31st January 2000, Harold Shipman was pronounced guilty of killing fifteen patients under his care by lethal injection of diamorphine. It is believed that spanning 23 years as a GP in Hyde and Todmorden, Shipman murdered between 215-260 vulnerable elderly people. The day following his conviction I hosted a memorial service at St. George’s Church, Hyde, for the victim’s families. The church was packed as people came to pour out their grief and seek answers for the pain and hurt they were suffering. I confess I felt numb and to this day I struggle to find any words that can bring lasting comfort and spiritual healing to those families and friends. I mentioned in that service that ‘our innocence had been destroyed,’ and it had in so many ways; our faith in the medical profession, our confidence in our judgement of character for all maintained he was a caring, compassionate doctor, and for some the belief that God would keep them safe from harm. Maybe in time we might find reasons to explain why Harold Shipman had committed such ruthless acts of violation, but why had God allowed him to get away with these murders for so long and cause so many such pain and distress? This question I have wrestled with for the last fourteen years both in my capacity as a parish priest and also in my personal life, as time and time again I have been forced to confront the enigma of innocent suffering and a loving omnipotent God. I empathise with Bertrand Russell, sharing his feeling of helplessness, when he wrote in the prologue to his autobiography1, ‘Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.’ How is one to make sense of suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? How can an almighty, all loving God allow the innocent and the vulnerable to suffer? From the earliest times the dilemma posed by the suffering of innocent godly people has perplexed the world’s greatest philosophers and theologians. Augustine advocated suffering was an inevitable consequence of free will, a view adopted by many today who argue our pains are the result of humanity’s inhumanity. Whilst this argument may be plausible in some cases, there are difficulties in employing free will as an explanation for all suffering. For example, it fails to provide a satisfactory response to natural disasters - on average 250,000 people will die each year as a direct result of earthquakes, tornados and tsunamis, leaving millions more homeless and destitute. More disturbingly, free will, as generally understood, grants humanity a god-like status whereby every man, woman or child can seemingly frustrate and overrule the desires of an omnipotent creator. It is this aspect that troubled me most in the case of Dr. Shipman, for whilst he may think he had the power of God, I could not accept his belief as absolute. Far from free will providing a defence of faith, I found it actually undermines the belief that God is able to protect his people. A similar case can be made to answer those who advocate Satan as the architect of all suffering, envisioning a dualistic universe in which God is in constant conflict with his arch adversary. God is either Lord of all or he is not Lord at all, as Isaiah writes, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, ‘this is what the Lord says… I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.’ Isaiah 45:1,7 However much we might want to exonerate God from any involvement in our suffering, we must not supplant his authority by appealing to free will or the machinations of some angelic being. We cannot see him as one who is constantly, desperately seeking to patch up his creation, helpless to stop the onslaught of evil and the wickedness of humanity. God is God and there is no other. He does as he pleases and all his ways are righteous and loving. The problem before us is how to reconcile this truth with the suffering of the innocent and the impression that those who flagrantly disobey God seem to flourish and thrive? We need answers, but so often we are told that we will only understand when we get to heaven. That may be true, but still we need to try to make sense of our pain and suffering; we need to know whether or not God truly cares. For the Christian, it’s not about his power to save, that’s a given; it’s about his love! The book of Job has been written specifically to address these questions, not theoretically, but through the lived out example of a blameless God fearing man. In Job the author explores the human dilemma, exposing the inadequacy of our moralistic worldview and replacing it with a biblical theology of God and suffering. Furthermore, he achieves this by making Job in his suffering, the focus of all our confusion, anger and pain, so that through Job we encounter our own personal struggles expressed in words as deep as our anguish, challenging God with a holy boldness we dare not match. Job becomes our spokesman, voicing our fears and our pain. It is by walking with him through his questioning that we discover not only answers to our deepest needs, but also hope and the strength to endure. For this reason I have not sought to provide numerous biographical stories of individual suffering, as it is not for us to interpret God’s intentions in the lives of others, but instead to gain wisdom in our journey with Job, as the one, whose story God has specifically given us for our instruction and benefit. As we consider the book of Job we need to bear in mind it was written pre-Christ, so the writer is trying to make sense of the world and God’s dealings with man, but without seeing the full picture. This can be a help to us, for in times of trial we often need to strip everything back to the basics and start again from the beginning. It can help us to understand why it is we believe what we believe. I remember once driving through thick fog along the motorway, with no sat nav to guide me; only the rear lights of the car ahead and the cats-eyes marking the lanes and showing when I had finally reached the slip road. Sometimes, our suffering can be like driving through a thick fog. It concentrates our minds on what is most important; we ignore the scenery, we stop all careless conversation and we give all our attention to looking for signs of those who have gone before and for a sure guide to lead us home (Psalm 119:105). As we turn to Job, we will find that sure guide: We will walk with him through the fog of his understanding, but we also have the torch of the New Testament as our guide and the light of Christ at our side. It is my personal prayer that as we wrestle with the issues surrounding Job’s suffering, we will come to experience, even as Job, the depth of God’s love so that even in our most painful suffering, we might be able to worship him as the one who holds us in his everlasting arms.