When There Are No Answers

Sometimes life can kick you right square in the teeth, and the pain can be totally overwhelming. Such an event happened December 5, 2009, when my perfectly healthy, three week old grandson was found limp and lifeless in his crib. The emotional pain this brought into our lives was beyond description. I've decided that physical pain is nothing in comparison, for physical pain ceases when the cause for it ceases. Emotional pain, however, sometimes has no "cause" that can be confronted. What is the cause when a healthy little baby is taken suddenly in death? Who is to blame? God? The devil? Some kind of "syndrome?"

Forever seared into my mind is the picture of my daughter standing at the back of the ambulance, sobbing, shaking, and pleading with God. Later I would see her literally collapse in the hospital waiting room as someone with no training in the matter told her that her son was dead. "No, God, no! My baby. Oh, God, my baby," she screamed, falling into a heap. My pain was nothing compared to hers, but my insides were being torn to pieces in that moment. We all would have to remain strong for her sake, the baby's father, grandmother, and myself. But, we all just wanted to fall on the floor and weep and wail with her. The worst cruelty of all, perhaps, was that my daughter, in a tiny bit of fitful sleep before dawn, dreamed that this whole night of horror had been just a nightmare, and that upon waking, everything would be restored. She awoke, but her baby was still gone.

The next few days were a non-stop crying binge. All the family came together, and friends came by bringing food and words of encouragement. We hugged one another constantly. We cried until there were no tears left. Our noses were literally rubbed raw by endless boxes of tissue. We ached for our loss, but more than anything, for my daughter and son-in-law. Only three weeks earlier, my son-in-law had delivered his son himself, the birth coming before the midwives could arrive. There were times we would laugh, only to weep incessantly again. Finally, on the third day, there was a noticeable change. It seems that everyone's brain had somehow simply shut down. There was only so much pain that could be endured, and we had all reached that point. God mercifully gave us a brief time of total numbness, so that we would not be grieved beyond our endurance. A brief respite, a re-grouping, then we would cry again.

Everyone wanted to know the same thing, but only my daughter openly asked the question. Why? Why did this happen? Of course, she blamed herself. It was the old "if only" game. She thought, if only I had laid him on his back instead of his stomach. If only I had laid him on his side. If only I had checked on him earlier. If only I hadn't laid him down at that particular time. If only I hadn't laid him down at all. If only, if only, if only. The answers, if there were any, would not come through this maddening form of self-torture. The Bible, too, was mentally searched for "the answer." Job lost ten children in a single day. David and Bathsheba lost an infant shortly after birth. Herod killed a host of infants around Bethlehem. Where was the definitive answer to this horrible event?

New questions arose. Before the funeral and burial, many people came together to pray for the baby's restoration to life. Fervent prayer was offered to God. Faith was present. A lot of faith. But, the baby did not return to life and was buried on December 11, 2009. Why didn't God bring that baby back to life? A different version of "if only" came into play. If only more people had prayed. If only more leaders had been present. If only the right prayer, in the right intonation, with the right words, and the right accompanying Bible verses had been offered. If only the right persons, saying the right prayers had brought about a kind of spiritual critical mass. If only the right button to provoke God into action had been discovered and pushed, then the baby would be with us today. This, too, was another form of self-torture.

It's now been more than three weeks since my grandson died. The definitive answer as to "why" is no closer to knowing now than it was back then. I think that we all know intuitively that some intellectually satisfying, heart warming answer is not going to be known on this side of death. It is not going to come in a dream or a vision or an angelic visitation to someone who can then share it with the rest of us. We won't be saying in grateful response, "so THAT is why this happened." Though we know the definitive answer is not forthcoming, we find no comfort in well-meaning platitudes such as, "God's ways are not our ways."

In the final analysis, we are forced to deal with the unknown by reviewing and reaffirming those things that we do know. There is no other reasonable way to sort through the pain, the anguish, and the aching loss. We confront that which is unexplainable by what we know with certainty. It begins with our faith in God and it ends there as well. So many things cannot and will not be answered, but what things do we already know beyond the shadow of doubt?

First, we know and are persuaded of the absolute goodness of God. His blessings to our family have been far too many to comprehend or count. Shall we accept all these blessings for so many years, only to decide in one moment of tragedy that God can no longer be trusted. Does he go from merciful, loving Father to dirty louse in one moment of time? No. God's goodness and his mercies toward us are without end. We maintain a heart of thankfulness toward him, not for tragedy itself, but because his goodness and love toward us supersedes even death.

We also know that not everything that happens in this universe is God's perfect will. Too many Christians have bought into a pathetic theology that tells them that since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, then whatever happens in life must be "his will." How could it be otherwise, they ask? The illogical, but inescapable, conclusion of this perverted thinking is that God must somehow want and desire all the wars, murders, mayhem, bloodshed, destruction, rapes, robberies, terrorism, and death since Adam and Eve to the present. These Christians have created a schizophrenic God who doesn't quite know whether he wants to be good or evil, so he's alternately both. One day he blesses a family with the joy of a newborn infant. The next he makes sure that someone else dies in a head-on collision on the interstate. Both are equally "his will" in the minds of some Christians.

The truth is that our all-knowing, all-powerful God does not get everything he wants -- at least not immediately. Obviously, this is by his own choice. He permitted sin to enter into a creation that he himself had declared was "very good." And, through that sin, death entered into the world. Thousands of years later we find an entire creation that "groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Simply put, God's creation has run amok, and God has allowed it to to be so, even against his perfect will, until the times of restitution of all things. The alternative was to create a race of robots incapable of sin or disobedience, but then we would hardly have been created in his image and after his likeness.

So then, we understand that there are two principal powers at work in the universe, one absolutely good and the other absolutely evil. God is the absolutely good side of this equation. When my grandson was taken in death, it was not God playing the evil tyrant on odd numbered days. Yes, God "permitted" his death, but on this side of his soon-coming Kingdom, God does not attempt to rectify every single wrong that occurs throughout the world. One day he will, but not now. Until that occurs, all of humanity will know seasons of joy and sadness, blessings and suffering, good and bad, life and death. Rain has a way of falling on both the just and the unjust. The world we live in has remnants and reminders of its original perfection, but there are also the painful reminders of sin, death, and our fall from paradise.

Jesus Christ was manifest to destroy the works of the devil. Until the present, this has been a process, beginning in the hearts of men and women throughout the world. The glory of God is seen in the transformation of their hearts and lives by the power of God's Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel. Lives are literally transformed from the kingdom of darkness into God's kingdom of light in a moment of time. One day, with the literal and physical coming of Jesus to this earth again, he will begin the final restoration of all things, culminating in the destruction of the last enemy, death. It is then that will come to pass the Scripture, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." We know this for certain. It is an eternal truth. It is reality.

Finally, we know beyond any doubt that we will see my grandson again. His spirit and soul left his tiny body and was taken by angelic escort into the presence of Jesus himself. A great loss for us, but certainly not for him. We then placed his body into the earth, like farmers planting a grain of wheat. We did this as an expression of our faith in the resurrection of the dead on the last day. Jesus himself is the Resurrection and the Life. Until that glorious day, there will be other joys, heartaches, blessings, and losses, because that is the nature of life in a fallen world. But God is greater than all these things! Thus, in everything and in every situation, whether in life or in death, God ALWAYS causes us to triumph in Christ Jesus. The evidence of this was quite apparent, when my daughter herself sang a beautiful song praising God at the funeral of her son. Some things in life are beyond understanding, such as the death of an infant. But, when there are no answers, there are things in Christ Jesus that we surely know and can stand upon forever.