Theodicy and Suffering, Observations of an Exhausted Physician.

I sit here in the aftermath of one of the hardest service months that I have experienced. Certainly, the rigors of providing ICU care play their role in this tiredness, but even more than that, my emotions have been drained. During my time, two children have died, their bodies diseased beyond the ability of medicine to correct. We tried every drug and machine that we thought would work, pulling out all of the stops to take control of the declining physiology before us. And in the end, we said that we did all we could, and comforted the grieving families through the process of letting go of a loved one. It is never easy, this work. For to be truly present to another human being facing the ultimate things of life is only possible in the end if you feel it as well. And in pondering this, I realized ( or re-realized actually) some important truths about God's way in this world.

Many would see these events as rime examples of the ruthless indifference of our universe. "There is no God," they say, "for how could God allow such suffering in those He claims to love. If He were truly real, then He would split the sky in anger, reacing into the world to alter these painful realities." But all to often the Christian does not understand the sentiment behind these thoughts. Seeing instead a threat to their worldview, great codices of abstract though spring up to logically defend the sovereignty of God in the face of this evil. Great treatises written on the sinfulness of man and its effectsd on the world, describing how the love of God could possibly coexist with the caprice of nature. Now don't get me wrong; these works are important, and provide a solid, logical foundation for much of what we believe. But as I sit and read works of this nature, seing them if just for a fleeting instant in the light of what these families have experieced, I notice that they are not so much incorrect as off the point. For in the end, those suffering do not wish for logic, but comfort; not information, but meaning. And all too often in the mids of this, we believers forget the crucial centerpiece of our faith, the Cross itself.

Too often we forget that most of the logical structures that past generations used in defense of these positions originated not with Christ, but with Plato, Socrates, and the Greeks. Again, I am a logician by nature as well, and truth is truth, no matter who speaks it. But the abstract reasonings and categories that we use so dispassionately in our defense of the truth oftentimes lose sight of what The Truth did. Hebrews tell us that our High Priest is not untouched by our infirmities, and in Phillipians, we learn that Christ, being God, dod not see Godhood as something to be held onto, but rather suffered death for us. In this trugh, the Infinite God who became man and died for our sins and sufferings, we see the truth. God is not in heaven as we suffer, benignly looking down on our struggles. No, he is there with us. His hands, pierced with iron spikes have felt the weight of a dying universe. His heart of love, riven through with a cold spearpoint, was broken for the suffering we experiece and the suffering we cause,. And tehre, in the dark hours during which the God-Man cried out to his Father, the festering sea of a wolrd's hatred, brutality, and victimhood was taken into the heart of the Godhead itself. There to be lost in the greater ocean of His unfailing love.

And in the end, it is us who live after the resurrection, after the ascention of the Son of Man to the right hand of the Father, who remain on earth to carry this message. We have been called the Body of Christ, and if this is so, then it is our hands that remain to be pierced, our hearts that now stand to be broken by the darkness of this world. If our Master, our Head, our Lord, was called to give everything for our salvation, who are we to do less? In the end, the answer to the great question of Theodicy is neither syllogism nor argument, it is the life of a member of His body, a life willing to take up its cross and pour out itself completely so that others might live. It is a life of sacrifice, lived in imitation of its master.

In the end, I may never know if I was able to do this for those grieving families, but I know that I tried. And in the future, when I again am called to stand at the edge of death with those I have been called to serve and they ask "Where is God in this?," I pray that I may answer them in faith and truth, "He is here, and His heart breaks as does your own."