By TC Lo (盧天賜); May 8, 2020
A long paper written by a group of psychologists and published in “International journal of environmental research and public health” starts with the following opening statement: “The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic is a public health emergency of international concern and poses a challenge to psychological resilience. Research data are needed to develop evidence-driven strategies to reduce adverse psychological impacts and psychiatric symptoms during the epidemic.” (google search)
As Christians, we ask, “What should be our starting point in dealing with suffering such as this pandemic?” and “What is our ‘spiritual-driven’ strategy?” People feel especially lonely and distressful in the midst of suffering. But the thought that our almighty and loving God had promised to walk alongside His children should give us encouragement, strength and comfort as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But how do we know God’s presence in our suffering?
Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, 1986 Nobel Peace laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books. In his shortest book of only 120 pages and book of the shortest title with only one word, “Night” (Ref. 1), he recorded an episode reflecting some of his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. It conjures up unspeakable deep feelings in me as I re-read it during my Covid-19 pandemic lockdown period.
This is how the story goes: One day, three Jewish prisoners, one of whom was a boy, in chain and were about to be hanged and executed. Thousands of prisoners in the camp were ritually kept a close watch under the machine guns and were forced to go to the execution ground to watch the hanging. The executioner refused to take action, and finally three SS (secret police) took his place. The two adult prisoners yelled, “Long live liberty!” and soon died. But the little boy was silent. Perhaps because of his light weight, it was not easy for him to die, and everyone was paying attention to him. When he was hung on the gallows, he was pale, biting his lips, kicking his legs in the pain of death, struggling for more than half an hour, still alive. Elie heard a bystander whispering under his breath, “where is merciful God, where is He!” Few minutes later, the same person suddenly shouted with an increasingly desperate voice, “For God’s sake, where is God? Where is He?” Elie, who hated God because he witnessed evil, said he heard from his own mind a voice softly to his soul at his face, “Where He is? This is where–hanging here from this gallows!…Is there another place?” He later wrote, “At dinner, the soup tasted of corpses” (Ref. 1). Although Wiesel was not a Christian, he unwittingly spoke the biblical truth of “God being on the gallows! ” Did he not know that the crucified One in Calvary was God? I think the Holy Spirit inspired him to have such a thought that God is on the gallows.
The theologian Jurgen Moltmann, commenting on “God is on the gallows” spoken even from a non-Christian, asked a rhetoric question, “Can you find a more concrete example than the death of Christ to prove that God is with us in pain? The answer is obvious. Any other answer would have been blasphemous.” The evil cannot be understood through the eyes of the ones who crucified Him, but only through the eyes of the Crucified One (Ref. 2).
The renowned British pastor John R.W. Stott (1921-2011) admitted that suffering is “the only biggest challenge to the Christian faith.” But he has already come to his own conclusion as he said, “If it were not for the cross, I would never believe in God.” He then explained, “In this world where suffering is a reality, who would worship a god who is free from suffering himself? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different eastern countries and stood respectfully in front of the big statue of Buddha, I saw him sitting cross-legged, folding hands with fingers pointing skyward, his eyes were slightly closed, lips with a tranquil smile like a phantom, face exhibited a cold and lonely expression, it seems completely out of touch with the world’s distress. Every time when I watched him for a moment, I could not help but shift my eyes away from him. At the same time, in my imagination, I turned to a lonely, twisted, tortured figure; he was hung on a cross, nails pierced his hands and feet, the skin of his back was torn, his limbs were sprained, and his forehead was punctured with thorns to bleed, his mouth was intolerably thirsty, and the whole person seems to be thrown into a darkness abandoned by God. Yet He is the God who suffers for me! He gave up his immunity to pain. He came to this world in flesh and blood, experiencing tears and death. He suffered for us. In view of this, our suffering becomes manageable. Although human suffering is still a question mark, we can put a seal over it, this seal is the cross which symbolize divine suffering and God’s affirmation of his presence with us in our suffering. The cross of Christ is God’s only self-justification of Himself in this sinful world wherein we live” (Ref. 3).
Norman Geisler (1932-2019), American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher, has put it so well, “Christian does not have to claim that our present world is the best of all possible worlds, but it is the best way to the best possible world: If God is to both preserve freedom and defeat evil, then this is the best way to do it. Freedom is preserved in that each person makes his own free will choice to determine his destiny. Evil is overcome in that, once those who reject God are separated from the others, the decisions of all are made permanent. Those who choose God will be confirmed in it, and sin will cease. Those who reject God are in eternal quarantine and cannot upset the perfect world that has come about. The ultimate goal of a perfect world with free creatures will have been achieved, but the way to get there requires that those who abuse their freedom be cast out. (Ref. 4.)”
Where is God in our suffering? He suffers with us and promises us a perfect world. “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
In view of the current pandemic, let me show the fallacy of inference used by atheist John Stuart Mill’s (1806-1873) to argue against the existence of God. His logic went like this:
- If God is all-knowing, He has no excuse to say, “I don’t know your situation so I can’t help.”
- If God is all-loving, He should stop this suffering.
- If God is all-powerful, He has no excuse to say, “I can’t stop it.”
- Therefore, because suffering exists, God with these three attributes must not exist.
But to Christians, we have a stronger argument to make a case for God’s existence: it goes like this:
- God is all-knowing, He knows fully our situation.
- God is all-loving, He will end our suffering.
- God is all-powerful, He can end our suffering.
- Evil is not yet defeated.
- Therefore, God can and will one day defeat evil and suffering.
You see, the existence of evil in the world is seen to be compatible with the existence of an all-powerful, all-good and all-powerful God from Christian perspective.
We are bombarded 24 hours a day by the news and fake news from TV and all sorts of social media platforms, but the word “God” is rarely heard. Now, let’s go back to the two questions we post at the beginning of this article in dealing with evil such as Covid-19 pandemics:
- Q: what is our starting point? A: Our starting point is: God.
- Q: What is our spiritual-driven strategy? A: Our spiritual-driven strategy is: Maximize our life on earth for Christ, and meditate on the life-to-come with a joyful eternal perspective.
This article is an enhanced edition to one of my previous blog posts written in Chinese: https://hocl.org/blogs/tincheelo/?p=372
References:
- “Night” by Elie Wiesel; pp. 64-65.
- “Jesus Among Other Gods” by Ravi Zacharias, pp. 135-136.
- “The Case For Faith” by Lee Strobel, p. 54.
- “Who Made God?” by Ravi Zacharias and Norman Geisler, p. 37.
