IT WAS THE STORY ABOUT RODNEY DICKENS that finally broke through to me.1 Like everyone else, I was numb from watching television on September 11, and 12, and 13, and afterward. I had trouble feeling anything anymore. I’d cried. I’d gotten angry. I’d sensed real fear. I’d gasped at the site of the crumbling World Trade Center towers. I’d hoped for some way to turn back the clock. And I’d started to cover over the pain with a hard callus.
Since September 11, 2001, in newspaper op-ed pages, via social media, and around countless kitchen tables, Christians have offered their take on the problem of evil. None of these classic Christian responses, however, helped me wrap my mind around the pain and the emotions I was feeling as I read Rodney’s story in the new periodical The Week.
As good journalism will do, the cover story about the attack put faces to the statistics. The magazine was filled with photographs of those who were lost, along with their stories—quotations of last-minute cell-phone calls, words left on answering machines, and prayers uttered with telephone operators. For even the most solid of Christians, to read these stories could precipitate a crisis of faith. Rodney’s picture with the short caption below was the prompter for my trial of belief:
Sixth-grader Rodney Dickens and his teacher at Washington, D.C.’s, Ketcham Elementary School had just embarked on a National Geographic-sponsored geology trip to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, Calif., when their plane was hijacked. American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. It was Dickens’ first airplane flight. Dickens lived in one of Washington, D.C.’s, toughest neighborhoods, but he always made the honor roll…. The exclusive school trip, limited to just three students from the inner-city Washington, D.C., area, included plans for introducing them to such outdoor activities as kayaking and hiking.2
I tried not to read the story. I was simply thumbing through the magazine at a newsstand and wanted to put it back and walk away, fully composed, able to concentrate on other things. But I couldn’t stop reading. I still can’t stop thinking about Rodney.
The so-called problem of evil has always been a difficult question for Christians. Our critics have called it the Achilles’ heel of our faith. “How can a good God allow such evil and suffering?” It’s the ultimate why question. And it’s become even more important for us to grapple with that question since that horrific day—a day The New Yorker magazine called “the catastrophe that turned the foot of Manhattan into the mouth of Hell.”3 Even after the pain of September 11 subsided a bit, there will always be people who’ll want to know, “Why?” We must answer them and not just by regurgitating what someone might write on a Philosophy 101 exam.
Over the course of more than twenty years as a campus minister, I’ve conducted a lot of surveys. As freshmen move into their new homes away from home, many of us ministers have stood outside dormitories asking new students to take a few moments to fill out a short questionnaire. It’s been a good way for us to identify those students who are interested in joining a Bible study or those who are willing to talk and to hear our presentation of the gospel.
To find out what issues we should address on campus, we started including this question: “If you could ask God any one question, something that has never been answered to your satisfaction, what would you ask?”
Some of the answers have been funny, an obvious attempt to avoid our question: “Why didn’t You make the Packers win the Super Bowl this year?” “Why did You make men so stupid?” “Why are women so hard to figure out?”
Some of the questions were attacks: “Why do You let Christians hand out surveys outside my dorm?”
Most noteworthy to me, though, was the trend that occurred over the years. When we began to ask this question in the 1970s, the most frequent responses were intellectual inquiries about religion: “Why does the Bible have so many contradictions in it?” “Why are there so many religions if there’s only one God?” “How can we know what You are like?”
Then during the early 1990s, the temperature got hotter. The tone became more hostile, as reflected in the various wordings of the most frequently asked question: “Why do Christians think theirs is the only right way?” “Why are Christians so intolerant?” “How can you think that you’re the only ones going to heaven?”
That lasted only a short time, although I’m sure that the sentiments still linger. As AIDS became more of a scare on campus and college students lost friends to that scourge, the question that most often appeared on our survey addressed the problem of evil—the ultimate why question: “Why do some people suffer so much?” “Why does a good God allow things such as AIDS or cancer?”
Many of the questions were worded more personally: “Why did my friend Larry die of AIDS?” “Why is my aunt dying of cancer?”
Although the handwriting on some of the surveys was almost illegible, the emotions behind the words were starkly clear.
How are we—followers of Christ and people who say that God is good—to respond when people ask why bad things happen? Whether the question is expressed as “How can a good God allow evil and suffering?” or “Where was God on September 11?” the challenge is formidable.
Many of the so-called answers don’t work. Or they really don’t address the question the way it deserves to be answered—by delving into the depths of intellectual confusion as well as empathizing with the pain of despair.
Do we say that we live in a fallen world and that things are not as God intended? Surely this is true. But why was Rodney affected by the fallenness of our world so much more than some other child? Why do Rodney’s parents live with the unspeakable memory of that horrific morning whereas other parents have carefree drives with their children to soccer practices or clarinet lessons?
Do we say that we inherited the consequences of sin from our spiritual forebears, Adam and Eve, and that’s why evil happens? Again, I wonder why the consequences of that day in the garden of Eden seem, in our world today, so random and arbitrary.
Take, for example, Barbara Olson, a TV commentator and the wife of former Solicitor General Ted Olson. She deliberately delayed her travel plans to be at home with her husband on the morning of September 11, his birthday. Instead of leaving the previous evening, she boarded the same plane that little Rodney boarded at Dulles Airport—the one that created an inferno on the side of the Pentagon. At that very point of impact, inside the building, a desk was destroyed—a desk that was usually manned by my friend Rick. He just so happened to be away from his desk at that moment, walking around on the other side of the Pentagon. He lives. Barbara and Rodney do not. Does the Adam-and-Eve answer resolve this inequity?
One well-meaning Christian circulated an email attempting to explain “where God was on September 11.” It proclaimed that God was very busy that day—keeping a lot of people off the flights, delaying a lot of people in traffic so they didn’t get to the World Trade Center, and so forth. This was supposed to comfort people and attract non-believers to the gospel? What kind of weak god is that—a god who tried his best to stop this tragedy but came up short?
I could go on, citing other answers that have been offered. Each one would prove more shallow than the last.
The truth is, we don’t have an adequate answer for the problem of evil. No one does. We simply must have the honesty to admit it. That’s what we’d do if we were to take seriously what God has revealed to us in the book of Job.
Of all of the possible ways to address the existence of evil, God gave us the book of Job to help us cope with this most difficult topic of life, what C. S. Lewis called “the problem of pain.” Job seems to be, at first glance, an odd way to answer our question. It’s a book of poetry, not of philosophy; it records dialogues filled with emotions rather than diatribes packed with proclamations, a barrage of questions rather than a series of answers. And it’s long. And it still doesn’t answer our question.
Consider the fact that it’s poetry. Poems are not what most of us turn to for answers. We turn to them for comfort, strength, or inspiration. If we were in Job’s place, we wouldn’t have asked for a poetry reading. We’d have demanded quick, rational explanations for what was happening to us. We’d have wanted God to tell us in no uncertain terms (just as Job demanded) why we were going through that hell. We wouldn’t have wanted a book like Lamentations—poetic, emotional, and slow-moving. We’d have wanted a document that read like the book of James—blunt, clear, and to the point.
But God didn’t give us that kind of document. He gave us poems. He gave the nation of Israel the book of Lamentations—one extensive poem—to help them process their national grief when their beloved (but neglected) Jerusalem was destroyed. He gave us the book of Job to do the same thing on a personal level.
So in reading the book of Job, we feel on a greater level than we comprehend. Don’t your emotions plummet with Job’s when you read the following words?
Why did I not perish at birth,
and die as I came from the womb?
Why were there knees to receive me
and breasts that I might be nursed?
For now I would be lying down in peace;
I would be asleep and at rest
with kings and rulers of the earth,
who built for themselves places now lying in ruins,
with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child,
like an infant who never saw the light of day? (3:11–16)
Don’t you feel the depths of his emotion when he tries to quantify his pain?
If only my anguish could be weighed
and all my misery be placed on the scales!
It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—
no wonder my words have been impetuous.
The arrows of the Almighty are in me,
my spirit drinks in their poison;
God’s terrors are marshaled against me. (6:2–4)
Don’t you feel his desperation as he acknowledges his sin while making a plea for God to be merciful? Sure he has sinned, he freely confesses. But does this level of punishment really fit the crime?
If I have sinned, what have I done to you,
you who see everything we do?
Why have you made me your target?
Have I become a burden to you?
Why do you not pardon my offenses
and forgive my sins? (7:20–21)
This is not the place in Scripture to formulate a theology of forgiveness. It is a place to realize how the processes of confession and intercession feel. It’s also a place to cultivate intense emotions about the misuse of theology. Don’t you feel like slugging Job’s idiot friends after they offer such horrible words as, “Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right? When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin” (8:3–4).
Job felt intense indignation toward them! And so should we. If we don’t feel the power of his sarcasm, we’ve missed the point in such responses as, “Doubtless you are the only people who matter, and wisdom will die with you” (12:2).
When people simply respond to pain with cold, calculated statements of theology, they deserve the title that Job gave his friends—“miserable comforters” (16:2). And God’s evaluation of their theological expertise was even less flattering: “I am angry with you … because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has” (42:7). And I think that God wants us to feel what Job felt when he asked his friends, “Will your long-winded speeches never end? What ails you that you keep on arguing?” (16:3).
Consider, too, that the book of Job is a series of dialogues. Surely, God could have inspired a writer to address this topic in the style of an elaborate, well-crafted argument—like the book of Romans. Instead, the drama consists of cycles of interchanges between Job and his friends. The cycles are marked by a great deal of repetition—almost painstaking repetitions. Nor are the cycles balanced. The third cycle is not as complete as the previous two, as though it got interrupted.
And then comes a disturbing exchange with a fourth friend, Elihu. In some ways, it’s similar to the exchanges with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Yet this last exchange is different than the others. It’s hard to tell what we should think and feel about Elihu. The effect is one of confusion. Consequently, a great deal of debate has occurred in commentaries about whether Elihu was correct (as the other three men surely were not).
Rather than sounding like the fine-tuned drama that we’d prefer, these dialogues combine to more resemble a series of recordings from psychotherapy sessions.
And maybe that’s exactly how the book of Job is supposed to sound. Maybe God gave us this magnificent book not so we’d impress philosophers with erudite answers, but so we’d process grief and come through it as Job did—with a stronger faith, a humble heart, and a hand held over our mouths (see 40:4). We lie on the couch, so to speak, with Job and travel with him through a process of argument, despair, self-examination, defense, lamentation, philosophizing, anger, and a host of other honestly expressed emotions to which his friends were oblivious. We come to incomplete conclusions, disturbing realizations, and frustrating dead ends. (That’s my best guess, by the way, as to why Elihu seems partly right and partly wrong. In the midst of processing pain, some of our thoughts are correct and others aren’t. The presence of Elihu embodies that dichotomy.)
That God “answers” Job with questions rather than answers is an appropriate climax to a book that processes more than it proclaims. God’s is the monologue that trumps all previous dialogues. To be sure, that God holds the superior hand is frustrating. But the greatest need we have, when we insist upon God justifying Himself, is not an intellectual explanation. We need to be put in our place. So God graciously gives us questions—several of which could have been worded, “Who do you think you are?”
We’ve set a mental stopwatch, giving God a deadline by which to explain Himself. But on and on goes the inquisition, ticking off the seconds, ticking away at our demands. God persistently asks; we eventually kneel. Don’t you feel that effect in your soul as He asks, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?” (38:4–5). On and on He goes, asking more than seventy questions over the course of four chapters (38–41). Why? Because it takes that long for us to get off our high horse.
Apparently, God doesn’t want us to know why bad things happen to good people because He doesn’t tell us. Our expectations always rise when we get to the end of the book and we read that God appeared to Job in a whirlwind. Surely now He’ll tell Job about that cosmic bargain that He struck with the Devil back in the first two chapters. That glimpse into the heavenlies (a glimpse, it must be noted, that Job never sees!) makes the problem only more baffling. God was the one who suggested Job as a target for Satan’s attacks. “Have you considered my servant Job?” he posed to the Devil—not once, but twice (1:8 and 2:3). And God’s repeated description of Job was that he was “blameless and upright” (1:1 and 1:8).
Perhaps that puzzling opening sequence is why the book is so long. It has to be. God wants us to be healed, not informed, and that takes time. Given the complexity of the question of evil (which becomes more vexing, not less so, after reading Job), no wonder the book is as long as it is. Job finally declares, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (42:5). His declaration confirms that, more than the answer to the ultimate why question, God wants us to know the answer to the ultimate who question.
In effect, then, the book offers us a choice. Will we choose to respond to life’s trials and pains as Job’s wife recommended—“Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (2:9)? Or will we follow Job’s example and proclaim, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (13:15)?
When I couldn’t stand watching TV anymore after September 11, I read, instead, the book of Job—I sobbed with him, raged with him, put my hand over my mouth with him. Although frustrating, I learned there’s wisdom in living without an answer. In addition, it’s humbling. It brings our very finiteness to the surface of our souls. It reminds us we are not God! Although painful, we must repent of our insistence for an answer, seeing the very demand as a form of idolatry.
The difficulty of living without an answer can cause us to do what Job’s friends did—offer a partial answer as if it were the whole answer. Consider, though, what the Bible does teach us about the problem of evil. It gives us slivers of a pie chart. One tiny sliver (and I’m convinced that it’s no more than that) would be labeled, “We live in a fallen world.” Another sliver would say, “There is a Devil.” Other tiny slivers would be labeled, “People have free will,” “Sin has consequences,” “Sometimes God disciplines His people,” or “Good can come out of suffering.”
Perhaps there are more slivers. I tire even writing them because they offer such little consolation. The vast majority of the pie chart (a good 75 percent if you could quantify such things) would be labeled in bold, bright letters, “WE DON’T KNOW.”
However we choose to word our answer, we must not imply that one of the slivers is the whole pie. Our “answer” must sound and feel like it’s 25 percent sliver, 75 percent “I don’t know.” If our words have no Job-like angst, we’ll sound more like Job’s friends and receive a similar response.
Living without an answer can lead us to another mistake—stating things that are blatantly untrue. Insisting upon answers can lead us to wrong conclusions. Rabbi Harold Kushner’s best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People falls into this trap. Demanding an answer for why his son suffered and died so tragically, he concluded that “God can’t do everything” and we need to “recognize his limitations … [and] forgive him for not making a better world.” Rabbi Kushner concludes his book with this seemingly holy but actually self-righteous question: “Are you capable of forgiving and loving … God even when you have found out that He is not perfect?”4
Even Job didn’t stray so far from orthodoxy. He concluded his search with the words, “I know that you can do all things”(Job 42:2). The rabbi’s book has a sense of comfort in it—at first. But that comfort soon wears off, and the pain of having such a pitiful god leads to insurmountable despair. No one should trust such an impotent deity. If God were so powerless, contrary to so many statements in Scripture, the better advice to follow would be that of Job’s wife—“Curse God and die!” (2:9).
Living without an answer has led some people to even worse options than offering untruths—they offer utter nonsense. Well-meaning friends, desperate to say anything to people in pain, do more harm than good. To a mother who lost her son to a shark attack off the Virginia Beach shoreline, a “friend” said that God had taken her son because He needed another angel. This was supposed to bring consolation? Who would want to worship such a needy god!
But living without an answer should not lead us to silence.
A friend of mine related what happened in his church on the Sunday after September 11. After a time of singing hymns and offering prayers for the victims and their families, the pastor climbed the few steps to the pulpit for the sermon. He stood there in silence for a moment and then said, “I have nothing to say.” He then sat down.
The effect was dramatic and powerful. But isn’t that taking things too far? Such a response ends up in hopelessness, a place of non-Christians. Hasn’t God indeed spoken to us in our pain? Although He didn’t give us all of the answers we demanded at the end of Job, He is not silent. Hasn’t He given us Psalm 23, Lamentations 3, a host of lament psalms, the assurances of Romans 8:28, and a litany of comforting Scriptures about our promise of heaven and eternal life? It would have been far more dramatic and truly helpful for that pastor to say, “I have nothing to say. But God has spoken. Hear the word of the Lord,” and then read the Holy Scriptures for the rest of his sermon.
Although we live without an answer, our partial understanding is better than anything that any nonbiblical worldview has to offer (see the next chapter).
So when people ask us (or our own souls cry out within us), “How could a good God allow such a thing?” we need to ask a different question—one that points to the pain behind the question. Then we won’t rush to utter things that we shouldn’t—things that are incomplete, untrue, or foolish.
How much better it would be for us to respond with the words, “I wish we knew.” After a pause to grieve, sigh, and even shed tears along with the questioner, we could ask, “Can you tell me what you’re feeling right now?” By answering the question with a question, we would be showing the person that we care. Later, we could add, “There are some things I do know about God and life that help me at times like these. Would you be interested in hearing them?”
There are other questions that we might pose:
In the case of someone who’s dealing with the death of a close friend or relative, we could ask the bereaved person to tell us about the deceased. Smiling over a funny story about the loved one, or asking the bereaved to relate a favorite memory, or just saying, “She sounds like a great person. I wish I had met her” could be a way to set the stage for the answers we really want to convey—later!
We would do well to follow Billy Graham’s example. When he spoke to the grieving families after the Oklahoma City bombing, he found that elusive balance between the known and the unknown. After comforting people with the assurance of God’s knowledge, power, and care, he plainly answered the ultimate why question with those three great words, “I don’t know.” But then he added, “Times like this will do one of two things: they will either make us hard and bitter and angry at God, or they will make us tender and open and help us reach out in trust and faith…. I pray that you will not let bitterness and poison creep into your souls, but you will turn in faith and trust in God even if we cannot understand. It is better to face something like this with God than without Him.”5
That last statement suggests that living without an answer can be liberating. Once we let go of our idolatrous demand for intellectual satisfaction, we’re set free to seek God for comfort, hope, healing, peace, and, most importantly, salvation. When our friends ask us the ultimate why question, that’s what they really need. And that’s an answer we can give them.
1. Portions of this chapter originally appeared in Randy Newman, “Living Without an Answer,” Discipleship Journal, September/October 2002, 28–34.
2. “Obituaries,” The Week, September 28, 2001, 32.
3. Hendrik Hertzberg, “Tuesday, and After,” The New Yorker, September 24, 2001, 27.
4. Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), 134, 148.
5. Robert Torricelli and Andrew Carroll, eds., “The Reverend Billy Graham, After the Oklahoma City Bombing, Offers a Sermon on the ‘Mystery of Evil,’” in In Our Own Words (New York: Kodansha International, 1999), 414–15.