And God keeps silent

In the face of so much human suffering, in the face of so many natural disasters, so many tortures and deaths of innocent people, so much evil, bloodshed and absurdities of life, God keeps utterly silent. What kind of God is it who allows such abominable wickedness to happen - the cruel passion of his own Son on Golgotha, the infamous holocaust of six million Jews at Auschwitz, the genocides of innocent people in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the deliberate atrocities and murders in Iraq and elsewhere?

The Catholic author of The Bells of Nagasaki was greatly taken aback by this incomprehensible silence of God before the suffering and death of more than 100,000 civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. This attitude is even shared by each one of us when we are under severe pain or a grave injustice has been inflicted on us, and God just looks on passively, he just stays put. In the face of this 'irresponsibility' on the part of God, one cannot blame Ivan Karamazov's petition to the Creator to let him return his entrance ticket to a world which is so much in distress.

The fictitious biblical figure of Job also passed through this intolerable situation of God's silence when he appealed to him to justify his innocence before his accusers who were putting the blame on him for his undeserved misfortunes. The whole book is an interesting debate on the suffering of innocent people. Job, who was a blameless man of exemplary piety, just couldn't understand why God was punishing him. On the other hand, his accusers, acting in accordance with the doctrine of retribution, couldn't believe his innocence; for how could God justly punish innocent people?

After bitter lamentations for having become the laughing stock even of his own wife, Job appeals to God himself to solve the problem, but God does not give a clear answer. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding..." (38.4) And thus follows an endless list of the admirable wonders of his creation. God is here insisting on his transcendence which is beyond the grasp of human reason. And the Lord said to Job: "Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it."(40.2). However, Job is here not contending with God, for he knows that he is "of small account" and humbly lays his hand on his mouth and questions no more - he simply wants to know the reason that justifies his suffering.

The conclusion of this beautiful book is this: the reason for the suffering of innocent people is wrapped in sec-recy and obscurity. And that is why it remains a primal human problem which can sometimes cast us into despair. That is what happened to the American Rabbi Harold S. Kushner when he lost his son to a tragic illness. In his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People he abandoned the notion of God's omnipotence.

But a God deprived of his omnipotence would cease to be God, and an arbitrary and cruel God is even more intolerable. And since no theodicy (a justification of God in the face of all suffering) is a way out of this dilemma, a theology of 'silence' would seem to be the best attitude to adopt, for "if I were to know Him, I would be Him." goes a Jewish saying. "And Aaron held his peace" says Leviticus when Aaron learned of the death of his two sons.

For in the absence of a theoretical explanation of suffering, both Chris-tians and Jews look for a practical answer in their respective Scriptures: the Jews in the figure of innocent Job, who, although he was tried by dire and undeserved misfortunes, remains finally confident in the goodness and justice of God. But in his trials Job laments bitterly and passionately to God:

"Why didst thou bring me forth from the womb?

Would that I had died before any eye had seen me, and were as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave." (Job 10.18)

God understands such human protest (not despair) against suffering, but like Job, he expects from us an unshakable trust in him who finally redeems us from suffering not necessarily in this world with a happy ending like Job's story. Besides the figure of Job, which is 'fictitious' after all, we Christians look up to the cross, to the 'historical' figure of Jesus, the suffering and dying 'servant of God' (Isa. 52.13-53.12). "He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him...

He was despised and rejected by men: a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hid their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed him not."

Jesus, who was an 'innocent' man of grief, was scourged, mocked and nailed to the cross on which he died a slow and torturous death. He was forsaken by his disciples, lost his humanity, and even felt abandoned by God: "Elo-i, Elo-i, lama sabach-thani?" (My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?). Thus Jesus cried out his bitter lament over his God-forsakenness.

The question is this: Did Jesus' death have a meaning? But how can the 'meaningless' suffering and death of innocent people have a 'meaning'? Isn't such a thought a contradiction in terms? Humanly speaking it is, but not in the light of belief in the "Resurrection" of Jesus to new life through and with God on whose right hand side he now sits. But isn't this an easy solution, a deus ex machina of this hopeless situation? The other alternative is that of the unbeliever.

But does Godlessness explain human suffering any better? As if Auschwitz were not largely the action of god-less criminals! For the believer God remains the light despite abysmal darkness. Out of bitter experience, thus spoke the apostle Paul: "For I am sure that neither death, nor life... will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 8.31,38).

Belief in our resurrection does not mean trivialising our suffering or accepting it impassively, without feeling. It can be recognised and confessed in protest and prayer knowing all along that God is hiddenly present.

I conclude with the last page of the book of Revelation which contains the eschaton, the last thing of all, as a testimony of hope:

"And God himself will be with them; he will wipe away all tears from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away" (Rev. 21.3).