In many ways, I have spent my life as a perpetual student. As a young child, I
was always hungry to learn new things—not necessarily facts, but information,
new tools to help me solve problems. At the time, my focus wasn’t on academic learning so much—I wanted to
master ideas and dreams. My parents
thought of me as a dreamer. Mother, still does, I think. My teachers and at least three academic advisers encouraged me, especially during my late adolescence and twenties, to take
hold of a subject area and become an
expert at a particular field of knowledge. But it seemed I was becoming a experimenter of much and an expert of nothing. As I've concluded and am comfortable with at seventy two; God
created me to never focus on a single pursuit for very long.
What I didn't anticipate, than, but do now, is after college and dabbling in graduate
school and seminary, was that very few people were ever interested in my
intellectual knowledge. Sure, many were interested in what basic and helpful information along with antidotal experience I would
transmit through workshop presentations, seminars and lectures. But, what I'm constantly most amazed and humbled about was how the Gospel, preached,
transformed so many individual lives. It
was well on into my pulpit ministry that I discovered that my persona had
little to do with the affect the change of individual’s lives took and everything to
do with the spoken anointed Word of God.
But I digress. The more and more I began to interact with individuals in
my pastoral role, I soon realized for the most part, the questions were not
purely biblically academic, but arose from the deepest places of the heart.
Academic questions concerning the proofs for the existence of God did not arise
as much as questions about whether or not God cared and was involved in human in
their live, at that moment. If academic questions arose, they came as a result
of personal experience with suffering of one form or another. When fervent
prayers did not prevent the cancer from spreading, or the child from dying, or
the plane from crashing, or the marriage from failing, the questions came like
water bursting through the dam. Is God really there? Does God even care?
If God cares about me, then why doesn't God intervene?
Unfortunately, these questions are not unique in my generation. They have been asked for millennia and still being asked by the Millennials today. The academic term for the problem of suffering is called theodicy. Theodicy is a word invented in the seventeenth century by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the great intellectual thinkers of the Enlightenment period. Theodicy attempts to explain how and why there can be suffering in the world if God is all-powerful and loving.
Yet behind the intellectual wrangling over this problem, the experience of suffering in light of both the goodness and power of God has caused great difficulty for people who have faith and for those who do not claim any faith. It is reasoned that if God does not prevent suffering and if God does not care about the sufferer, then God does not exist in any meaningful way.
In Mark's gospel, a simple story about a boat caught in a terrible storm provides an altogether different kind of theodicy—one that involves far more than an academic answer. When evening had come, Jesus and his disciples got into a boat, most likely on the Sea of Galilee, in order to go over to the other side. In the course of their travel, a fierce storm arose suddenly and violently. It was so intense that the waves were not only breaking over the boat, but the boat was filling with water and on the verge of sinking. Jesus, asleep in the stern of the boat, was resting soundly when the disciples roused him with their fearful, first question: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Jesus doesn't answer their question, but instead answers the wind and the waves, "Peace, be still." His exhortation to the natural elements of wind and water was nevertheless intended for the disciples as well, for he returns their question with a second question: "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" To which the disciples reply to one another with the ultimate question, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?"
It is not difficult for me to surmise that the presence of Jesus in the boat would preclude any kind of suffering or disaster. But suffering does come, and the wind roars and the sky turns black, and the storm of all storms appears to envelop the disciples in darkness and terror. And this is the human experience in suffering. I confess: I've been afraid at times. I've feel alone at times. As I grow older, sometimes I do wonder if anyone cares that I am drowning. I've asked at times: for me, as one of Your followers, Jesus, don't you care that I am perishing, and is probably an incredulous statement to anyone who might hear me, because of the assumption that as Christian I should be immune from the troubles of life. But Jesus's answer reminds me that faith does not insulate me from life's storms. Indeed, as Craig Barnes has written in When God Interrupts: "Faith...has little to do with our doctrines or even with our belief that Jesus could come up with a miracle if he would only pay attention. Faith has everything to do with seeing that we have the Savior on board."
Father, God, Lover of my whole being, I thank You that in the midst of my questions about suffering, —there is Jesus in the storm of doubt, in the tempest of despair, in the gale of defeat, resting calmly in the assurance of Your care in the storm. His presence with the disciples in the storm gives a provocative theodicy; Jesus is neither removed from suffering nor does He always prevent suffering. My request, this morning, Father, that whoever may read this journal entry and stand on either side of the problem of suffering, will ask the more important question: Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
Unfortunately, these questions are not unique in my generation. They have been asked for millennia and still being asked by the Millennials today. The academic term for the problem of suffering is called theodicy. Theodicy is a word invented in the seventeenth century by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the great intellectual thinkers of the Enlightenment period. Theodicy attempts to explain how and why there can be suffering in the world if God is all-powerful and loving.
Yet behind the intellectual wrangling over this problem, the experience of suffering in light of both the goodness and power of God has caused great difficulty for people who have faith and for those who do not claim any faith. It is reasoned that if God does not prevent suffering and if God does not care about the sufferer, then God does not exist in any meaningful way.
In Mark's gospel, a simple story about a boat caught in a terrible storm provides an altogether different kind of theodicy—one that involves far more than an academic answer. When evening had come, Jesus and his disciples got into a boat, most likely on the Sea of Galilee, in order to go over to the other side. In the course of their travel, a fierce storm arose suddenly and violently. It was so intense that the waves were not only breaking over the boat, but the boat was filling with water and on the verge of sinking. Jesus, asleep in the stern of the boat, was resting soundly when the disciples roused him with their fearful, first question: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Jesus doesn't answer their question, but instead answers the wind and the waves, "Peace, be still." His exhortation to the natural elements of wind and water was nevertheless intended for the disciples as well, for he returns their question with a second question: "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" To which the disciples reply to one another with the ultimate question, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?"
It is not difficult for me to surmise that the presence of Jesus in the boat would preclude any kind of suffering or disaster. But suffering does come, and the wind roars and the sky turns black, and the storm of all storms appears to envelop the disciples in darkness and terror. And this is the human experience in suffering. I confess: I've been afraid at times. I've feel alone at times. As I grow older, sometimes I do wonder if anyone cares that I am drowning. I've asked at times: for me, as one of Your followers, Jesus, don't you care that I am perishing, and is probably an incredulous statement to anyone who might hear me, because of the assumption that as Christian I should be immune from the troubles of life. But Jesus's answer reminds me that faith does not insulate me from life's storms. Indeed, as Craig Barnes has written in When God Interrupts: "Faith...has little to do with our doctrines or even with our belief that Jesus could come up with a miracle if he would only pay attention. Faith has everything to do with seeing that we have the Savior on board."
Father, God, Lover of my whole being, I thank You that in the midst of my questions about suffering, —there is Jesus in the storm of doubt, in the tempest of despair, in the gale of defeat, resting calmly in the assurance of Your care in the storm. His presence with the disciples in the storm gives a provocative theodicy; Jesus is neither removed from suffering nor does He always prevent suffering. My request, this morning, Father, that whoever may read this journal entry and stand on either side of the problem of suffering, will ask the more important question: Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
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