SOUL SEARCH

Unanswered Questions

Mary the Queen Parish, 05 February 2006

Fr. Johnny C. Go, S.J., School Director

Posted Tuesday, 07-Feb-2006 11:49 AM

     Many of us were shocked to learn about yesterday’s game show stampede at the Ultra that has killed—as of the last count—74 people and injured about 500 others.  Last night the evening news showed scenes of people weeping and wailing as they uncovered the remains of relatives who had been crushed in the stampede.  It was quite heartbreaking.

     It is also quite disturbing. The incident, happening so close to home, raises many questions:  Why do such accidents happen in the first place?  How can so many people get crushed to death in an instant?  And perhaps most importantly, where is God in all this?  Why does He allow bad things to happen to good, simple people?

     Given the magnitude of yesterday’s tragedy, the words of Job in the First Reading acquire great significance.  After describing the sorry state of his life, Job concludes by saying:  “My life is like a breath, and I shall not see happiness again.”  These desperate words might well have been the words of someone who had lost a loved one at the Ultra yesterday.

     And why not?  Job would understand.  A prosperous, upright man, Job himself has just lost all his property and more importantly, all his sons and daughters—all in an instant.  When he hears of this series of misfortunes, he rises, tears his robes, and falls to the ground, saying:  “The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!” 

     But as if to add insult to injury, he soon also develops ugly and painful sores all over his body.  His grief becomes so great that when three friends visit him, they could only sit with him on the ground, and for seven days and seven nights, they say nothing to him; they keep silence with him in his grief.

     When Job finally breaks his silence, it is not to bless the Lord, but to complain and to question God:  “Why?  Why have You allowed all this to happen to me, a blameless and upright man?”  The entire book of Job, in fact, is practically one long, painful litany of demands for God to explain why He allows the one kind of suffering that we can’t make sense of:  the suffering of innocent people.  It is easier for us to understand and accept the suffering of the wicked because we can say that in a sense, they have brought that upon themselves.  But the suffering of the innocent?  Think Holocaust.  Think 9/11.  Think tsunami.  Most recently, think yesterday’s stampede.  All that is meaningless suffering.

     “Why?” Job questions God and repeats his question almost all through the 40 chapters of the Book of Job. 

     Finally, the Lord speaks out of the whirlwind, but He does not answer Job’s question.  Instead He questions Job.  He asks him:  “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”  And the Lord does not stop there; He continues with His own litany of questions addressed to Job:  “Where were you when I created the universe, and placed the sun, stars, and moon in their places?” and so on and so forth.  God’s long series of questions has only one message for Job:  “Do not question me.  I know what I am doing.  I am the Lord.”

     In other words, the Lord refuses to answer Job questioning Him why—why the innocent suffer.  Instead He chooses to answer the question “Who?”—who He is. 

     Job’s big question remains unanswered.  In fact, the entire Old Testament does not provide any answer to this important existential question.  And so we turn to the New Testament, hoping to find some kind of answer there.  We bring our question to the Gospel, where today we find our Lord Jesus spending His days laboring and ministering to people, moving from town to town, healing as many people as He could of their sickness and driving away demons, hardly getting any rest.

     Some of us may be tempted to ask:  Couldn’t the Lord simply eliminate every conceivable disease and demon with one blow?  Why bother exhausting yourself going through the motions of healing others, one person at a time, ministering to each one when you have the power to wipe out every type of suffering with just one word? I’m pretty sure we would do that if we were God.

     I’m also pretty sure that if we were God, at the very least, we probably wouldn’t bother ourselves with small-time sicknesses. Wouldn’t we concern ourselves exclusively with the great epidemics and catastrophes of the world, for greater impact?  And yet in the Gospel reading today, we have our Lord taking time out to heal Simon Peter’s mother in law of—of all things—fever!  I don’t know about you, but there is something ironic and consoling about that image: That the almighty, all-powerful Lord would condescend to waste His time providing relief to a simple woman, healing her of her fever.  

     Truly God’s ways are not like our ways.  It seems that even in the New Testament He refuses to answer our big question why.  Again He insists on answering another question, perhaps a more important question:  Who God is.  

     Through our Lord Jesus, He assures us that no need is too small and no pain is too minor for Him.  For our smallest needs and most minor pain, our Lord Jesus will be there, present and near.

     Indeed like the sun, our God is so powerful that He keeps the sun, stars, moon, and the planets in their orbit, but He is also gentle and patient enough to ripen a bunch of grapes without burning them. 

     This is Who God is:  This is the God Who holds us in His powerful and loving hands.  This is the God Who invites us to entrust ourselves to Him—even if like Job, our big question remains unanswered. 

     Maybe we should ask ourselves:  Are we willing to entrust ourselves even if we do not understand completely, even if we have found no satisfying answer to our questions?

JOHNNY C. GO, SJ

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