8 min read

Why, God?

(By Michelle Snippe)

Unfortunately, suffering transcends every race, culture, and class. No one gets a free pass, God’s people included. In our suffering, it is natural – and not at all wrong – to ask the question “Why?” Many Bible heroes posed the same inquiry to their God, sometimes out of frustration or fear, sometimes out of despair, or gut-wrenching pain. Men like Moses, Elijah, David, Isaiah, Habakkuk, and more all asked the question, “Why?” And, let’s not forget Job. He suffered excruciatingly, and even though God adorned him with the praise of being “blameless and upright” he still cried out “Why?”.

Even more intriguing is our Lord Jesus Christ. He, fully God, fully knowing why He had to suffer such agony, hung on a cross asking His own Father, “Why?” And if He, God’s holy Son, asked that question, then I believe it’s ok for us to ask it, too. Asking “Why?” is not unspiritual. The Bible underscores for us time and time again, that it is ok to ask this of God. But asking “Why?” invites an explanation…an answer.

Because of suffering’s prevalence among us, the Christian community has worked hard over the years to try to explain it, to evaluate suffering’s layered facets and assign a formula to it.“You must be suffering because…” “God has allowed this for…” But, I don’t think we should do that. Because when we do, we tend to then attach seemingly cold theology to the box we create for suffering by saying, “Well, God is always on His Throne.” Even though that is the truth, in saying such things we can unknowingly burden those who suffer with the expectation that he or she should tidy their grief, that Christian mourners ought to “suffer well” and “buck up” in their broken-heartedness. In the face of pain, this can do more harm than help because suffering in itself is excruciating, and sometimes is simply a complete mystery. In attempting to explain it, we can fall so flat. On top of that, I wonder if, when we make the attempt, we are assuming a role that doesn’t belong to us.

Chapter nine of the gospel of John has been a long time favorite of mine, but never has it been for the reason I found myself forced to explore the last number of days. At the beginning of the chapter, the disciples ask a hard question regarding the blind man they had just encountered: “‘Who sinned that this man was born blind?’ they asked of the Saviour” (John 9:2). In essence, they were asking a question for all of us; the hard question of “Why?” And, really, their question gives all of us permission to ask the same of the hard-to-understand life circumstances we sometimes face. When all that is apparently right in our world gets turned upside down, we quickly – and by default – make the same inquiry, don’t we?

The passing of my sweet friend, Sarah Lynne, has had me asking this very question over and over again.

Why, God? Why take a woman so vibrant and full of life and love? Why take someone who so wholeheartedly loved and served you and so many others?Why take her, when she is still so desperately needed by her family? Why, God? Along with countless scriptures, many song lyrics and phrases have been running through my mind over the past few days, but a more contemporary track by artist, Austin French, seems to express well the parallel emotions many of us feel in the middle of the hard trials and tragedies of life. In the lyrics of his song, “Why, God?” French sings of some tough life scenarios that we don’t understand and in the chorus, he attests to the truth that what we don’t understand overlaps with a reactive, deeper understanding of our need for God. Here are his lyrics: