How do we stand in the face of such suffering?
The earth shook, the waves crashed down, and the nation of Japan was left with a great wound. Thousands have died; even more are without food and water, and the threat of radiation looms overhead. Of the many questions surrounding these events, the one that is heard above the rest is “Why? If there is a God, why does He allow this to happen? Why this suffering?”
The Japanese have been asking questions like this for years. They are not strangers to suffering. At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the first city in the world destroyed by an atomic bomb.i Mankind gazed upon the devastation caused at Hiroshima in horror and sought for answers. Today, we look at the photographs that document the devastation of the tsunami. The questions remain.
The answers that Christians have come up with are nothing new: it is part of God’s plan, it’s because of sin in the world, these trials help us understand what “good” is, it’s the labor pains of the end of the world, and so on and so forth. Perhaps these can form a partial explanation, but the truth is that no one can claim to have a full understanding of why suffering occurs. There are too many factors and some, perhaps, are beyond man’s ability to comprehend.
To strive to find an answer to the question “Why?” is endless and pushes one farther from the real question: “How do we stand in the face of such suffering?”
In the aftermath of Hiroshima, humanity wondered how anyone could survive, but some did. One such survivor shared her story with a woman named Mabel Francis. Miss Francis served as a missionary in Japan at the time. One night, after a church service, a small Japanese women found Miss Francis and shared what she experienced the day the bomb struck. She remembered being startled by a bright flash of light while looking after her children. When the light vanished, she looked down and saw her two little ones charred at her feet. There was nothing to be done. After a while, she felt the pain of her own burned body, but her physical agony was nothing compared to her spiritual and emotional agony.ii
In desperation she began to look for a way to survive after so much suffering. “I have dragged my weary body to every shrine and every temple I could find,” she told Miss Francis, “If I would hear of another, I would go. But nothing has brought me any comfort.”iii
In the wake of the Japanese tsunami a similar journey has begun. The people of Japan search for a way to stand in the midst of devastation and we search for a way to make sense of it all. The world drags itself from one place to another in an attempt to find comfort.
Perhaps in the belief that all life is suffering we will find comfort? But the pain is still there. If we view life as a dream, that might be the answer. But the pain is still real. What if we give thousands of dollars to help those in need? Or maybe the answer lies in burying our sorrows in wealth and pleasure. Still, the pain is not removed. What if we blame God? If we say it is all His fault and turn away, then maybe…but the pain is still there. Do we claim life has no meaning? Do we try to balance the scales by seeing what good things come out of suffering? Do we believe in nothing? Do we believe in everything? Should we believe that suffering isn’t real, that it’s only a feeling that will eventually evolve away?
One after the other, all of our temples and shrines fail us. Comfort cannot be found where there is no hope, and hope is only found in one place: in the arms of one who understands our pain and who conquered it; in the arms of one with enough power to create us, and enough love to suffer for us. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”iv Jesus Christ holds the only hope the world has in the face of suffering.
Jesus never gives a false hope about what this world holds. He clearly tells us that there will be struggling, suffering and hardship; yet, he gives us something we fail to reach on our own: the ability to have peace in the midst of pain, and joy in the midst of sorrow; “by his wounds we have been healed.”v The things of this world can never offer us true healing or comfort; only Christ can do that because he conquered everything that brings us pain.
When Jesus submitted Himself to death on the cross, He took the instigators of suffering with Him: fear, death and sin. When the Lord Jesus rose to life three days later, He proved He had taken victory over them. Now, for those who believe in Him, is the ability to replace fear, death and sin with joy, peace and love, and the hope that comes with them. Not only do we have hope for this life, but for life after death as well. When Jesus left the earth to be with God, He prepared a place for us in heaven. In this place, “He will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”vi
The small Japanese woman who spoke with Miss Francis had undergone much suffering, but that was not the end of her story. “But tonight,” she went on to say, “you told us of this God’s love and that it was He who created us…I believe it! My heart is comforted. Light has come to me.”vii
She recognized something that remains true no matter what suffering we go through: the only way to stand in the face of suffering is to stand with Jesus.
