A conversation about Faith and Doubt between a believer and a skeptic

“The Problem of Suffering” 

(Note: this conversation dates back a few years as references to historical events indicate)

 You said last time that we need to search for the right questions to ask. What did you mean by that? 

 I think that I myself have often been asking questions for which we cannot find good answers. For example, the question of why God allows so much evil and suffering in the world. You said that it was especially your concern for human suffering that contributed to your loss of faith. As it has for masses of others, of course. It’s probably the single most difficult problem that calls into question for nearly all of us the concept of a God who is both omnipotent and loving. Philosophers and theologians and thinkers of all kinds have struggled with this problem and written many volumes. For myself, all this evil and suffering has haunted me ever since I woke up to the invasion of Holland in WWII. But I’m coming to accept what Job discovered: so much of God’s being is shrouded in mystery, beyond our grasp. Maybe we should stick to what we can know and understand. 

That sounds like a possible copout to me. Whenever you can’t come up with a good answer to a really important but tough question, you resort to hidden mysteries. But so, what questions to you are the “right” ones then? 

 Maybe we should begin with the question why there is so much evil and suffering. 

 And? 

 The answer is because of us. We, the human community, are responsible for all the man/woman-made suffering. We have choices, and we keep making the wrong ones. There is nature-made suffering as well: disasters, epidemics, incurable disease, animal attacks. Even here there may often be a dimension of human responsibility involved. There is also the suffering caused by acts of mental derangement. And then there is of course accident-caused suffering. All of it shows we are part of what you’ve often heard described as a “fallen world,” a creation that, as St. Paul describes it, is groaning for liberation from its bondage to decay and suffering. 

 But you believe that God made us and nature too, and that he made it good. Apparently not good enough? 

 He made us not as robots or puppets but as moral agents of decision-making. God must’ve decided that puppets with no freedom to choose between good or evil could not glorify Him in the way He intended. He made us good but with the freedom to choose evil. 

 But if, according to the story, God created Adam and Eve good, how could they choose evil? 

 Because evil had already entered the universe. Exactly how and why we don’t know much about. The Bible tells us evil was present and in combat with God. John Milton in “Paradise Lost” gives us a vivid poetical account of this warfare. The conflict between good and evil has always been part and parcel of our human existence. And evil is something like a rotten apple or an epidemic: it spreads and has a way of contaminating all it comes into contact with. 

 How can God stand it? 

 Well, the Bible tells us He couldn’t, and so he destroyed pretty much the whole mess and started over, but promised he wouldn’t destroy again. 

 Does He care about suffering? 

 Yes, a lot. The Bible speaks again and again of a God who grieves, whose “sorrow is beyond healing,” as Jeremiah has it, whose essence is love, and who hurts when the object of his love hurts or turns away from him. The gospels certainly leave no doubt about the love and compassion of God revealed in Christ. 

 Well, if there’s a God who loves the world enough to have his Son killed in order to save it, why didn’t he do something to save those five or six million lives in the concentration camps? Or why doesn’t he do something now to stop the genocide in Darfur that’s been going on and on? Couldn’t he prevent these awful things? 

 I’m sure he could. Just like he could’ve sent his angels to rescue Jesus from crucifixion. But that’s not the set-up. God is not Spiderman. If there are cancer cells in your body, God’s not going to reach in to reverse all the natural laws of biochemistry, etc., and snatch those cells away. He’s not going to snatch you away if you should step in front of a moving truck. He’s not going to immobilize the killers that descend on a village in Sudan. He could, and sometimes he does intervene. But he’s established natural laws, and he’s given human beings the responsibility to make moral choices. There’s a relationship between cause and effect. That’s the set-up. 

 And so human suffering goes on and on? 

 Yes, until people change. That’s why Christ came. And until a new heaven and earth are born. But the question you ask often haunts nearly all of us, people of faith included. It’s a question about how to reconcile those two, as you framed it: the love of God and the proliferation of evil. I won’t pretend that we’ll resolve the limitation of our understanding. What we can do is to try to see how for believers evil poses a big question but does not necessarily threaten their faith; in fact, pain may often intensify it. But let’s look at that more next time. ...to be continued

A Teacher Forever

This article was originally published in Christian Educators Journal in '87 and reflects my 1985 experience in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. China was not then what it has become today. So much has changed,and some of my former students have died. I had the chance many years later to visit one of my older students, who had become a special friend,in his home city. Some came to the U.S.to pursue advanced education and made this country their home. One calls me Dad and became a high school teacher here.China will always have a special place in my memory. ................................................................................... My eye happened to fall on one of my Chinese students, relaxing in her seat during the ten-minute break between afternoon lectures. She was a beauty with that creamy, almond-colored complexion and big shiny eyes. It was a steamy summer afternoon in Chengdu, China, and my student in the Sichuan College of Education classroom stood up, lifted her dress, and sat down on her panties, This wholly unselfconscious gesture had startled me when I first saw it for it seemed so out of keeping with the well-known Chinese modesty. But I had grown used to it, though I never understood how sitting on a sticky seat became more comfortable that way. What I saw next, I never grew used to: this charmingly dressed and beautiful young woman cleared her throat, bent over, and expectorated on the classroom floor, rubbed her feet over the spittle and casually resumed conversation with her nearest neighbor. There were thirty of us American teachers on this Chinese campus, and all of us encountered many such paradoxes. For example, to Chinese students the teacher is a formidable authority figure, yet many of our students, who themselves were teachers of high school English, would blithely ignore our instructions and commands; though they prize integrity as a viirtue, yet no honor system worked in any test-taking situation; though they surely meant to pay me their highest compliment when they said I was strict and hard, yet they seemed to appreciate especially those times when the demands were low and the laughter flowed freely; though they could be quite status conscious and discriminatory among themselves, yet from us they demanded equal attention. Yes, what I remember about my Chinese students is not so much such inconsistencies, nor their tendency toward pretest panic and last-minute cramming that would both amuse and annoy us, nor their apparent imperviousness to specific explanations and instructions that often surprised and frustrated us; rather, what I remember most is that which in time engendered in me a lasting admiration, respect, and love for so many of them. I came to admire many of my students for their earnestness. They would break off their afternoon sushi early to get the front seats in the lecture room for what they expected would be maximal learning. They would copy everything I would write on the board, especially the famous quotes of the day and the words of the songs we would teach them. And they would study diligently under such noisy and crowded conditions that effective study seemed all but impossible. My students knew hardship and suffering. The Culteral Revolution had ended less than a decade ago. The older students talked of its excesses and cruelty, of the painful personal toll it had exacted from them and families. For most it had meant an end to their education, to their ambitions and dreams. After the revolution they had been assigned to teach, often far from family and friends. And there they were stuck, at twenty-five dollars a month or less, in a profession for which they had not been well-trained, which was not yet particularly highly regarded by their country, and from which they often failed to derive mush personal satisfaction. Yet they were dedicated! They wanted to become better teachers of English and of students. And they still knew how to enjoy life. As often as time would allow, they would take an evening stroll with each other or with us, or they would gather to play games, to sing, to dance, to laugh. Highly musical, they would be apt to launch into a song, or dance even during class breaks. And they reveled as children when we taught them such American grade school games as Blind Man's Bluff, Drop the Handkerchief, and Spin the Bottle. I came to respect them for their fortitude, their strength of character, and their love of life, despite its burdens. But before we left in the last part of August, I came to love many of my students as well. As Christian teachers we were committed to model the kindness and love of Christ among ourselves and to our students. Apparently few of them had ever been thus treated by their teachers. They were deeply touched and grateful. Their responsiveness over- whelmed us. They said they wanted to be such teachers, too. And they let us into their lives, into their hearts, and shared wuth us their burdens and their hopes. Out of their scarcity, they generously treated us to outings, parties, and beautiful presents. On our departure day many delayed their own trip home to stay with us as long as possible: they cried, and they told us that we would be their teachers forever. I pray that they're right. We wrote to many of them. And because they now have a special place in our hearts, we surely hoped to return and see them again some day. I often think now of that inspiring Chinese saying: "Teacher for a day, a father (mother) forever." Is there a more important challenge?

 

Honor Convocation 1997

 

I appreciate this opportunity to address you, honored students, on what l think, upon reflection, much of the teaching I've done at Calvin boils down to.

 

It gives me particular pleasure that my youngest daughter is also among the honored and that I may share this final lesson with her too.

 

VOICES

 

I have read and taught literature most of my life. And literature, as you must have discovered too, speaks to us through many voices. It's those voices that compelled my attention already when I was but a child. It's those voices that have fascinated me always, even as they enlightened, entertained, angered, moved, and nourished me. I want to tell you about two of them, for they contain nearly all the others. One I shall call the Voice of Earth, and the other the Voice of Heaven.

 

They're the voices of my teachers. Listen, for they're your teachers too.

 

“There once was a wise Teacher who imparted knowledge to the people.

He pondered and searched to find just the right words, so that what he said would be right and true.

 

And this is what he said:

 

I wanted to see what was worthwhile for us to do under heaven during the few days of our lives.

I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I owned more herds and flocks than anyone else. I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasures of kings and far-away places. I acquired the delights of many women and became greater than all others around me.

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.

But when I surveyed all that my hands had done, and what I had toiled to achieve, I found that everything was meaningless, a chasing after wind.

 

So I hated life. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, all the things into which I had poured my effort and skill. What do we get for all our toil and anxious striving with which we labor under the sun? Aren't all our days of work touched by pain and grief? Even at night our minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.

 

For death ends all of it. Neither the foolish nor the wise will long be remembered.

 

I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed--and they have no comforter; power was on the side of the oppressors.

Better not to be born than to see the evil that is done under the sun.

I looked and saw the righteous get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get what the righteous deserve.

 

All this, I say, is meaningless, a chasing after wind.

 

I saw wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner.
The sleep of a simple laborer is sweeter than that of a rich man whose abundance permits him no sleep.

Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.

As goods increase, so does consumption. And of what benefit is it to the owner except to feast his eyes.

For as we come, so we depart. We can take nothing from our labor that we can carry in our hand. All come from dust, and to dust all return.” (Ecclesiastes)

 

When the Teacher had spoken, the people pondered its meaning--the meaninglessness of life.

 

Have you pondered it too? Have you wondered, "what if it's true?"

 

The voice is familiar to you: you encounter it in your classrooms and in your dorm rooms, the voice that emerges from ancient scriptures as well as the contemporary novel and film and the latest rock lyric.

 

Listen to the voice of Goethe's Faust sum up the meaninglessness of his education:

 

Faust: I've studied now Philosophy

And Jurisprudence, Medicine,

And even, alas! Theology

All through and through with ardor keen!

Here now I stand, poor fool, and see

I'm just as wise as formerly.

Am called a Master, even Doctor too,

And now I've nearly ten years through

Pulled my students by their noses to and fro

And up and down, across, about,

And see there's nothing we can know!

That all but burns my heart right out. (Goethe, Faust, 1, 354)

 

Listen to the voice in TS Eliot's Wasteland lament about this "world of broken images,...where there's fear in a handful of dust--where many are born to idleness, to frittered lives and empty bottles and squalid deaths."

 

Listen to Macbeth exclaim over the ruins of his once-noble life:

 

...all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow,

A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing!"

 

Listen to "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas:

 

All my dreams pass before my eyes a curiosity

Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind, ...just a drop of water in an endless sea

All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind

 

Have you pondered it? The meaninglessness?

 

I think you have!

All of us are painfully aware that Brian DeWall is not among us tonight. That Matt Remein and Lorie Powell are not here.

(Brian was killed in a car accident and the others were seriously injured.)

All of us know something of the shock of hearing what we cannot bear to hear: someone we know, someone we love has died; someone is critically injured; someone has been violated; some unspeakable human atrocity has been inflicted on the innocent. When such news reaches us, the rational mind shuts down before that blank wall of incomprehension, and the heart goes numb under the icy grip of death and disaster.

Yes, you have pondered it, we all have, when the voice under the sun said: meaningless!

 

Who can look back on this 20th century and not feel anguish at the sickeningly twisted and broken figures that have littered the path of our human journey. Who does not feel " the void of unfulfilled lives that have been tossed forth from the womb only to fail."

Who has not felt the poison of meaninglessness seep into one's own heart at times, even and maybe especially at age 20.

 

Of course you have.

 

And yet, we cannot accept ourselves as mere dice thrown out of a cup. Like the Ancient Teacher, we think we ought to be more than a handful of dust.

 

A voice that is easily lost in the din of Earth voices says we are. It's the voice of another Teacher, with a Word from Heaven.

“This Teacher from the beginning was himself the Word, and the Word was God.

He lived for a while among us, full of grace and truth.

Those who believed His Word received the right to become children of God.”

 

And this is what He said:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. The truth will set you free. Come, follow me.

Whoever follows me will have the light of life. You are the light of the world; see to it that the light within you is not darkness.

You cannot serve both God and Money. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. For where your treasure is, there is your heart also.

If anyone wants to be first, he must be the servant of all.

Love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Love one another. Love your enemies.

My mother and brothers are those who hear God's Word and put it into practice.

Those who believe have everlasting life.”

 

The Teacher spoke, and his words had authority, for he came from God.

 

Many pondered the meaning of his words--the meaning of life and death.

Have you pondered it too? Have you wondered, "what if it's true?"

 

Some of those who believed, like Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders among the people. Or like Barnabas, who, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, brought a great number of people to the Lord.

And some who heard the Teacher's words, like Peter and Paul, began to talk to others. They talked about the love of God; they said:

 

“The Father of compassion and the God of all comfort comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort others with God's comfort.

Nothing will be able to separate us from God's love.”

And they talked about the need to love each other. They said: “If we love each other, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. So let us love one another deeply, from the heart; not with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

They said, “we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. We must live as peacemakers who raise a harvest of righteousness. We must share with God's people who are in need. If our enemy is hungry we must feed him; if he is thirsty, we must give him something to drink. We must overcome evil with good.”

 

The Teacher's words echoed through the centuries. Echoed in novels and sermons and drama and hymns and oratorios. Echoed in actions, as some began to feed the hungry, began to comfort the oppressed, tried to make straight what was crooked, built churches and hospitals and schools.

 

Built Calvin College.

 

We're here tonight at Calvin College to celebrate God's gift of good minds and to honor you for using that gift with distinction. Now, there are voices under the sun that encourage you to excel because it's in your own best self-interest--it will lead to enhanced personal status and security. And there are other Earth voices that would have you abandon your pursuit of excellence for self-indulgence, or even for despair in the face of ultimate meaninglessness.

 

The Word from heaven is different.

It tells us that this is our Father's world, and that all of what we are and what is under the sun belongs to him. And if you believe that, you get up each morning to use your gifts we're celebrating, because they're God's gifts, gifts for learning to create beautiful music and stirring poetry and compelling art; gifts for preparing to distinguish yourself in science and theology and education and business; gifts for preparing to build magnificent structures and rockets that go beyond the moon; gifts for preparing to join all those who want to take good care of this fragile earth.

 

In every Calvin classroom you are challenged to use and develop your gifts in ways that honor the Giver and that bless his creation.

 

But like the Ancient Teacher, we hear the voice of Earth, and we too are so easily tempted. Our hearts are so easily fooled. We like personal success and all its perks too. We like to build empires for ourselves. We so easily become mere moneymaking machines for the acquisition of more status symbols. We listen to the voice of Donald Trump a week ago as he asked 300 fifth graders in the Bronx:

 

“You know what you have to do to live in a big beautiful mansion?

You have to work hard, get through school. You have to go out and get a great job, make a lot of money, and live the American Dream.

And you're going to have fun doing it. It's a lot of fun.”

 

We like to live what everyone else seems to live for.

 

"We like to turn," as T.S. Eliot put it,

“To the grandeur of our mind and the glory of our action,

To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,

To schemes of human greatness ...”

 

But then we remember the Ancient Teacher whose chasing after wind left him a hollow man who had eaten the bread that did not satisfy and drank the water that did not quench. For the deepest need of our human heart, the voice from Heaven tells us, is to live for ultimate meaning, and for the joy that comes not from getting, but from giving.

The voices of Earth, in literature and life, have much to teach us. They are part of our Father's world.

 

That's why at Calvin College we try to understand Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Hemingway. We note the oppression that is taking place under the sun. We are challenged by the track "Little Sister" sung by JEWEL:

 

“..we gotta start feeding our souls/not our addictions and afflictions of pain/ we gotta start feeding our souls/I wish I could save them from all their delusions/all the confusion/of a nation that starves for salvation/God only knows that drugs/are all we know of love/”

 

We are profoundly touched by Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf who wanted music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, passion instead of foolery, but found no home in this trivial world of ours, and who over "the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while suffering its seeming meaninglessness and living its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God's presence. "

 

We ignore nothing in this fallen world. For nothing is meaningless under the sun.

Not beauty or goodness or grace or love. Nor evil. Brian's life was not meaningless; neither is his death. Pain is not meaningless--especially the pain so deep that faith can't get around it; it has to go through it and discover that even in the deepest, blackest pit, the God who is acquainted with grief will be there. And it is good to weep when God weeps with us.

 

If you have heard the Word from heaven and believe it, there is much to do under the sun that is meaningful. There are classes to attend, term papers to write, portfolios to prepare, books to read, friendships to develop, fun to enjoy, beauty to savor (Gushee, Mr. CT).

 

And there's a world out there, where too many “cry like infants in the night,” (as Tennyson put it) “cry like infants for the light, and with no language but a cry." Or as E.A. Robinson put it, “there's a world out there that's a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks”; where too many think of Nike as a more powerful symbol than the cross.

 

Calvin College was built to prepare you for your place and your mission in that world, The mission of claiming all that's under the sun for Christ and for doing his work in this world which he loved and for which he died.

Seeking to transform a culture that practices its entertainment--sex without love and violence without conscience--to transform this culture into communities that value honor and respect for another.

To transform the American Dream of material consumption into MLK's dream of equality and dignity and brotherhood.

To transform power brokers into peacemakers.

To transform the voices of disdain for this life into a rip-roaring celebration of all the beauty and joy and goodness that by God's grace still find their way into both the light and the dark places of this scarred and broken world.

 

That's our calling, because this is our Father's world, and we are his children. That calling will require the most gifted minds and most committed hearts you can offer -(to paraphrase T. S. Eliot)-to bring all your gifts/ to bring all your powers for life, for dignity, grace, and order to His service.

 

Honor students at Calvin College, listen to the voice that has the words of ultimate significance. Discover the ways in which to love and serve your God and this world with all the gifts of your mind and of your heart.

 

 

Worlds of Wanwood

Many years ago I started a column (The Asylum) in the Christian Educators Journal.  It featured a high school faculty lounge with a continuing set of characters.  I was teaching in the English department of Calvin College, and after a few columns I asked a colleague to join me as co-columnist.  Often we would co-write a column, but sometimes we took turns.
The piece that follows is an excerpt of a column I wrote during the fall season back some thirty years ago.  The falling leaves during the last week reminded me of it.
It focuses on the Bible teacher, John Vroom, whose teaching at Omni Christian High has not gone well, especially on this particular morning. Tom Graham, a brilliant student, again made him feel uncomfortably inadequate and even defeated. He found himself empty of authority. 

On this blue Monday morning, John Vroom entered the Asylum like a phantom lost in space.  He dropped into his chair and sagged there, staring into nothing.
Outside, the early winter sun reflected brightly off nature’s overnight dusting of snow. 
Inside, Vroom remained oblivious to the scene and the sounds just outside the room window. 
But there, under the large oak tree that in summer shaded Omni’s faculty room, Lucy DenDenker and her English class had gathered. 
The students crowded around Lucy, some holding up a wet handful of fallen leaves whose flaming orange and bright yellows had long ago turned into muted browns and blacks. 
A few students pulled themselves up onto the lower branches, a thin layer of snow cascading down as they climbed higher. 
The class grew quiet as Lucy’s clear voice began to recite:

            That time of year thou may’st in me behold
               When yellow leaves. or none, or few, do hang
               Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
               Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

On the inside of the slightly opened window, John Vroom floated within a dark bubble, where he heard and saw nothing.

            In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
               That on the ashes of his youth doth lie…

Lucy’s voice, husky with emotion now, reached the rhyming couplet:

            This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
               To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

It was the next voice that penetrated John’s stupor and activated his senses:

            Margaret, Rachel, Susan, Stanley—are you grieving
               Over Omni’s oak unleaving?

Vroom stirred, his eyes focusing now on the mahogany table he’d been staring at.

            Ah, as the heart grows older
               It will come to such sights colder
               By and by, not spare a sigh
               Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
               And yet you will weep and know why.

John Vroom knew that voice.  As if released by a coiled spring, he leaped up and sprang toward the window. 
Lucy DenDenker, surrounded by her students, stopped him. 
The students’ faces, solemn and attentive, stopped him.  He followed the upward gaze of some, and then he too saw where the voice was coming from. 
Tom Graham, perched halfway up the oak, face serious and intent, delivered the next lines of his version of Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall”:

Now no matter, class, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Now not only his senses but John’s mind began to refocus as the last lines floated down:

            It is the blight we were born for,
               It is Margaret, Kenneth, Janet, Robert that you mourn for.

A breeze stirred through the oak’s bare branches, scattering more feathery flakes across the schoolyard, some briefly flashing their bright crystals in the November sun. 
Quietly, Lucy’s class gathered and began to move back toward their classroom. 
Quietly, John Vroom stood by the window and waited for the light to reach his darkened soul.