The Comfortless Question, “Why?”
My father used to say, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens!” He wanted to be healed of his brain tumor. He wanted to live another ten years, like his mother and father did. He didn’t want to leave his ministry, his wife, or any of us. He fought against this outcome. We had all asked God for his healing. Some questioned the goodness of God asking, “Why would God let his own leader suffer?” It seemed like a loss for Jesus. And yet, God let him die. As my dad wrestled in his final struggle with Jesus, I wrestled with him too. The experience of my father dying brought me through the “why” question and into real comfort. I want to share it with you.
You know, my father never asked why? I never heard him ask it anyway. I didn’t ask it either. Our struggle was different. He fought death. I wanted to accept it. He wanted to talk about the next thing on earth. I wanted to talk about the next thing in heaven. At times I was frustrated with him even when I was soaking in every last minute. But his struggle suited him. He wanted to live while he was living. He wanted to live - period. In his struggle, and mine, I got to know him, my family, myself, and God in a way I would not have without it. It wasn’t pretty. It was the threshold of grace.
on a lunch date during his cancer treatment
I wrestled with how to answer those who did ask why. Perhaps, in the aftermath, I’m asking it myself? A year later, I am compelled to share the comfort I’ve received because there is too much death and too much fear of it for me to ignore. I can write about little else these days. As I write, dear friends just lost their son due to an overdose. He had become addicted to pain killers after a basketball accident two years ago. As I write, a recent grave stone stands in the cemetery near our house to a daughter who died at ten months. Her family engraved on her stone: “We will always kiss you goodnight.” As I write, a beloved mentor of my husband has just been diagnosed with glioblastoma, the same as my father. Jesus made a promise to save us from sin, death, and the devil. We do not yet see this promise fulfilled, fully. We live in the hope of it but in the pain too. If you relate, you are not alone.
Scripture is full of the anguished cry to God. Job had this fight with God “Why had you made me your mark?” (Job 7:20) “Why did you make me this way?” the Jews cried out from exile (Isaiah 45:9). Jesus himself quotes Psalm 22 from the cross: “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” Jesus put himself through the same anguish and cried out on our behalf. Why in this way? Why me? We join the chorus of every generation. In the face of suffering, we will always ask why, and God will never answer. Thank God. We need comfort, not explanation. My father’s dying brought this home to me.
We have a history of asking, “Why?” in the face of suffering. Augustine of Hippo (4th Century AD Bishop) wrestled with this “why?” Why would God allow us to turn away from him in the first place? Why allow evil? Why allow sin? If he is all powerful, all knowing, all in-control, why evil? Augustine wrote this regarding sin: “What will its cause be? If you ask this question, I will have to answer that I do not know. While this will sadden you, it is nevertheless a true answer.”[1] In not answering there is actually comfort: God is bigger than us; his thoughts are higher than ours. That is a good thing. He does not answer the question but he does answer our cry. Augustine goes on to write of the certain hope and love given us through faith by the “right hand of God stretched out to us from above, even our Lord Jesus Christ.”
God refuses to answer why evil exists. He refuses to give us something to fix, to work on, to walk away with. He is always bringing us to himself. Instead, he gives us Jesus who got into the mess, the disappointment, the anger, the accident, the sickness with us. He doesn’t answer why. He redeems it.
We ask why because we want a reason… did I deserve it? Did they deserve it? Or I didn’t deserve this! Thus God must be wrong or unjust! Job got himself into that messy triangle of saying God must have been wrong. He suffered sudden catastrophic loss and then asks why because he didn’t deserve this. Steven Paulson explains Martin Luther who said that is “going to the Law with God.”[2] God will not explain himself or the evil you suffer. If he did, it would kill you. None of us is without sin. Were he to stoop to explain it, he would not be a God worthy of worship. He comforts Job by showing how big he is yet attentive to Job’s pain. Job sees how he approached God all wrong—even if God did answer his “Why?”, he would not be comforted by it. The fact that God does not answer directly, yet explains how powerful, sovereign, and yet attentive to Job he is does relieve Job. He is so comforted that he repents “in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). He prays for his friends who are trapped in understanding God through the “why” question, through legal demands. What Job said earlier, he now believes: “For my redeemer lives” (Job 19:25). Redeem this, Lord, he now says from faith. Why demands a legal reason. Faith demands mercy. That is why God is silent towards the why – he is driving us to faith. He is driving us to himself.
Asking God, “why?” replaces mercy, it interferes with faith. God overcomes our last cry of faithlessness, our last cry of self-justification by showering it with promises. When Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, he was nailing the final cry of faithlessness [LH1] to death. He was actually being forsaken so we never would be. Faith does not ask why? Law does. It craves a report card. Faith cries out: Save me! Have mercy! Jesus’ death overturning death becomes desperately real to us. I don’t know why glioblastoma happened or why my dad wasn’t healed on this side of heaven. But God rained down mercy at every turn. I understand grace more than ever. I learned to cry out.
The perfectionist in me then concludes, “Okay, so when my guts are being ripped out, I shouldn’t ask God why?” It would add one more “to do” when I am at my lowest. The perfectionist would want to boil this down to her choices. But God rips that to-do list out of her hands and says this is about His sovereignty, his action. He often uses pain to do it. If you’re like me, tell that familiar law-loving perfectionist that she can scream why? all she wants. Get it out of her lungs. God will move her, and you, through that. He’s not unfamiliar with faithlessness. He will move you through it to the cry of faith: you’ve got to come and save me because I am so passed it. That is where he is always saying yes.
In Isaiah 45, the people cry out to God, “Why did you make me thus?” They contend with God. I love what Steven Paulson writes in Luther’s Outlaw God, regarding the preacher he sends to them. God sends Isaiah to drown out the sufferer’s question – “Why?” – with promises.
“Instead of answering why, Isaiah cries out, ‘shower righteousness down, crack open the heavens” (Isaiah 45:8)… Get rid of evil, don’t explain it. The preacher means to have Israel cease seeking a silent God (the question “Why?”) and listen to the one who is speaking…”[3]
The one who is speaking is the Son of God hanging from the cross saying “I have redeemed this.” Jesus then sends his preachers (of the most unusual kinds) to speak his promises over and over in our place of dying.
God himself is our companion in ground zero. It feels like he is entering into our suffering, but we are actually entering into his. He suffered the loss of us in the first place. He knows the trauma story each of us has …all the way into death. He buries our question, “why” in his tomb and resurrects us to life with him.
visit PeterCMoore.org to read more about my remarkable dad