Where is God in a Pandemic?

There is a particularly poignant scene in Les Miserables. The poor and oppressed people have risen up in revolution hoping for a better life, but the revolution has failed. 

Good men and women have fallen, and the level of suffering has increased and now Marius Pontmercy sits in the broken cafe knowing he's the only one to survive, his friends have died, other than Jean Valjean, and he now regrets and reminisces the loss of his friends. 

“Oh, my friends, my friends, forgive me.

That I live and you are gone.

There's a grief that can't be spoken. 

There's a pain goes on and on.” 

One of the realities of human life and certainly a time like this is that tragic things and suffering happen in our world, and not just to bad people who we might think deserve a good wake-up call. 

One of the great questions in life is this: Why is there suffering? 

Or we might put it in our time: “Where is God in a Pandemic? 

How do you respond to that? 

How do we help our kids understand why the suffering doesn’t just go away when they say their prayers? 

What do you believe your faith has to say that is helpful or unique at a time like this? 

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of the provocative book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, tells how one day he received a phone call informing him that a five-year-old boy in the neighbourhood had run out into the street after a ball, had been hit by a car, and died. He did not know the boy; the family was not a part of his synagogue. Nonetheless he went to the service. 

In the eulogy, the family's clergyman said, “This is not a time for sadness or tears. This is a time for rejoicing, because Jack has been taken out of this world of sin and pain .... He is in a happier land now where there is no pain and no grief, let us thank God for that.”

Rabbi Kushner said that he felt so so bad for Jack's parents and family! 

Not only had they lost a child without warning, they were being told by a representative of their religion that they should rejoice. Of course they did not feel like rejoicing. They felt hurt; they felt angry; they felt that God had been totally unfair to them; they felt, not for any valid reason, guilty even. Their minister assumed God to be the direct and simple cause of this tragedy, and that therefore a simple solution would suffice. 

I don’t believe life is that simple. Suffering happens. Tragic things happen, that are not easy to understand nor easy to accept, nor I think, does it help to simplistically say: “Oh, it was just the ‘will of God.” 

Sometimes there are no humanly logical reasons at all, for these heartbreaking events — Bushfires, floods and pandemics have all been our lot this year! Yes, we might say that lack of back-burning or climate-change or whatever, effects our environment, but why did THOSE people lose their farms and not these. And why did THEY escape unhurt, whilst THESE others were hurt. No matter how or where this Corona virus originated — none of the people in emergency wards were responsible for it. They breathed in, when maybe the person next to them breathed out. 

These sort of events betray all human explanation. They are a mystery, and they do bring very real anger and grief. 

There will be those who will want to say: “Ah, God must have wanted them in heaven more than on earth.” I don’t believe that’s helpful at all in making sense of his time here on earth. 

There may be those who may want to say: “If only we had had more faith or been more spiritual.” Well that’s just plain wrong. I don’t believe God plays faith-games, as if there are quotas of faith, amounts of spirituality that trigger a response. There are plenty of faithful, prayerful people living in situations of great suffering or persecution.

Don’t ever make someone feel guilty or inadequate by suggesting their faith or their prayers weren’t impressive enough or big enough to move God! 

There will be those who will be tempted to use clichés: “God is testing you, growing you somehow.” or “Everything must have a reason,” or “God has made you strong, you are an example to us all,” and on and on and on. What can seem comforting to the speaker can be a hurtful hammer-blow to the hearer, can’t it? 

The friends of Job, in that ancient Old Testament story came with all sorts of good reasons for Job’s sorrow and suffering — and left with the mystery of job’s situation unresolved. The best thing they did by far was when they just to sat quietly with Job. 

“When Job’s friends realized what Job was experiencing, they shared in his grief... and they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights. And no one said a word, for they saw that his suffering was too great for words....”  (Job 2:12-13:)

When we look at our world with its wars, and famines and homeless refugees and a pandemic; be careful about glib answers and pat solutions. 

We can’t begin to understand the feelings and the questions and the pain and the weariness those suffering must feel. 

But you can love them.
And you can sit with them.
And you can come alongside them and to hold them in your hearts. 

And I do believe that at a time such as these, we come to our Lord, not for immediate answers but as to one whose nail-pierced hands enfold us and demonstrate that he too is in the midst of our pain weeping with us. 

We find God, not on a distant throne beyond the universe but as one who has taken on human form, rolled his sleeves up and entered into the suffering and messiness of this broken world. 

The New Testament book of Hebrews says of Jesus: “…This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same struggles and temptations we do .... So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it....” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

Click HERE to  watch the DVBC Online Service from a few weeks back on this theme.