When Bad Things Happen Where Is God?

Sundays August 1 and August 8, 2004 ■ CatholicNews

14

Faith & Life Sr Wendy Ooi, fsp, ponders on the mystery of a good and all-powerful God in a seemingly cruel world.

HOME-grown stories like the Zheng family published in The Sunday Times of July 18, 2004 sometimes make us wonder where God is in these situations. In this story by Wong Kim Hoh, Corina Zheng has lost five siblings to the same disease that has now paralysed her. But neither she nor her mother who tends to her complain.

WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN

where is God? THE very first time I was

SEVENTY-year-old Arani Ardja Maniss waits in line in early June for her family’s food ration in the Iridimi camp, along the Chad-Sudan border. The United Nations says fighting between Arab Janjaweed militias and African rebels in Darfur, western Sudan, has killed some 30,000 people and created the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis, with 1 million people forced to flee their homes. Amnesty International accused the Sudanese army and Arab militias of using rape as a deliberate weapon against black Sudanese girls as young as 8. Girls have also been abducted as sexual slaves. Pope John Paul II called for greater protection of the people there and sent a special Vatican envoy to the region. CNS photo

A FATHER comforts his severely burned son at a hospital in Kumbakonam, in southern India, July 16. At least 80 children died and more than 100 were injured when a fire swept through a private school. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the pope was “particularly struck by this tragedy.” The spokesman said the pope offered prayers for the victims. CNS photo

moved to seriously contemplate human suffering and ponder where God was in the midst of it took place about 20 years ago. It was the mid 1980s and Ethiopia was encountering its worst ever famine. I was a college student then and I remember watching on television the bloated bellies of children and skeleton-like adults, barely surviving, and thousands of others starving to death. I asked myself, if God is truly a loving God, why does he allow so much suffering. I’m not sure if I have found the answer to that question, or ever will. But it’s a question that recurs as the world encounters tragedies of varied forms and proportions – the Rwanda genocide, September 11, the Bali bombing, Iraq, and those closer to our homes and hearts like the Sars outbreak, the Nicoll Highway collapse, murders, fatal road accidents and the long and cruel cancer endured and eventually succumbed by a loved one. Some tragedies, like the Ethiopian famine, are natural calamities. Yet, I remember, at the time of the crisis Europe was “suffering” from a massive surplus of butter, beef and grain, mountains of grain! It only showed so clearly that the Ethiopian problem could have been avoided if there was a just distribution of the world’s goods. Indeed much of the world’s woes seem to stem from evil manifested in selfishness, injustice and anger. These perhaps are ultimately rooted in fear, which breeds in the absence of God in one’s life. One of my favourite spiritual writers, Caryll Houselander, provides some insights to the question of

reconciling a good God and a seemingly cruel world. For her, the mystery of suffering is connected with the mystery of sin. Christ did not obliterate suffering when he came into the world but brought love and meaning to it. He changed our suffering into his passion, making it meaningful and fruitful. Through him, our suffering became redemptive. “(Suffering) is then not an evil to be avoided, but a

millions for the famine victims. This subsequently inspired USA for Africa, the US based group of pop stars, to record “We Are the World,” and eventually to Live Aid, a pop concert which took place simultaneously in Wembley, England and the JFK stadium in Philadephia, USA. Altogether, more than 100 million pounds was raised for Ethiopia. We have also seen the heroes and heroines of the

IRAQI family surrounds a man who was injured in a suspected suicide car bomb attack in Baghdad July 14 which killed more than 10 people. CNS photo

thing to be accepted willingly, even joyfully, as a means to sharing in the redemption of the world.” Perhaps what is beautiful and redemptive about the tragedies that take place is that transformation occurs to those who witness these tragedies, and eventually also for those who suffer directly and survive them. Tragedies and suffering evoke goodness and generous love in others. The Ethiopian crisis led to Band Aid, a group of pop stars in the U.K. who recorded a single, “Feed the World,” which became a number one hit and raised

tragic 9/11 event, and our own Singaporean martyrs from the Sars outbreak and the Nicoll Highway incident. I’d like to think that Christ was acting in each of these heroes and heroines too. But even more, with faith, we are led to believe that Christ was also in each suffering brother and sister, and also in each of us as we grapple with our own personal disasters and suffering. Richard Rohr, another personal favourite writer, states, “God is not merely tolerating human suffering or healing suffering. God is participating with us in it,

BANGLADESHI villagers watch as flood waters erode a portion of highway in Sunamganj, Bangladesh, July 13. Annual monsoon rains have caused flooding in the Asian subcontinent, taking human and animal lives, submerging road and rail links, destroying homes and farms. CNS photo

not just looking on. That is what gives believers meaning and hope. This suffering is even life-giving and redemptive. God is omnipotent, infinite, perfect yet the suffering Jesus is the image and revelation of the invisible God.” Many disasters have come and gone since the Ethiopian crisis. Though I still may not have adequate answers to the question of God’s role in tragedies and suffering, I have at least some perspective, understanding and hope to live with the question. And I pray to grow in my Christian attitude towards suffering, as lived by one of my heroes, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. “You ask me whether I am in good spirits,” he wrote to his sister in 1925. “How could I not be, so long as my trust in God gives me strength. We must always be cheerful. Sadness should be banished from all Christian souls. For suffering is a far different thing from sadness, which is the worst disease of all. It is almost always caused by lack of Faith. But the purpose for which we have been created shows us the path along which we should go, perhaps strewn with many thorns, but not a sad path. Even in the midst of intense suffering it is one of joy”. ■ CNS