By Ricardo Márquez
We struggle to understand, to answer questions that arise from desperation and heartbreaking pain. To see images of people fleeing from one place to another, with their few possessions in a cart or crammed into a car, fearing they will be bombed; to hear the cries of those who lost the house they struggled to build to a tornado; to learn about the deaths of defenseless elders and children in indiscriminate attacks … all provoke cries that sadly do not have immediate responses.
Our humanity has lived similar times when death, plagues, violence and natural catastrophes made themselves present. The Bible gathers in the psalms those universal screams of pain and despair that emerge from the depths of this existence: “O God, why have You cast us off forever?” (Psalm 74:1); “Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me” (Psalm 55:5).
These are the moments in which we ask ourselves or we are asked: “Where is God?” or “Where is your God?” These moments of doubt and confusion challenge our conceptions and beliefs about the mystery of God. Everyone relies on the arguments and beliefs that they learned and cultivated. It is not easy, nor are there simple formulas, to navigate these theological storms because the issue of human suffering is not a problem that is resolved with logical responses, like someone putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or coming up with an answer after an exhaustive analysis. Suffering, like love and death, is a mystery; it does not inhibit our rational capacities, rather we’re given an opportunity to face it and experience it.
We can even choose to accept – to embrace – unavoidable suffering in our lives. The experience of faith and the intimate experience of friendship and communion with the Lord allow us to have another perspective on the meaning of suffering and to transform it into a channel of God’s grace, as happened with Jesus on the cross. Neither suffering nor death had the last word in the life of Jesus. We are condemned, yes, but to resurrection. Suffering and death continue to be real in our existence, but the horizon and promise of life prevail over them and give them a new meaning.
It is easier to believe and sustain faith when it is acquired in a stable context or in a Christian culture, where the environment supports and promotes the message of the Gospel, such as at church or traditional celebrations.
But today, in the so-called “post-Christian” culture, reality is very different. Many of the “supports” that helped us to walk in life no longer work, and it scares us to let go of them and just submit to the always new mystery of God.
Crises, disasters and storms challenge our beliefs and conceptions about God. These are new and surprising invitations to experience an intimate relationship with His mysterious reality, which is revealed to us even in the midst of thunder, wars and storms, that continue to call us in the dark of night because He is always with us and we are inseparable from His reality. We can be blind, oblivious or have turned our back to the mystery of God, but we exist in Him.
The story of Job in the Bible is revealing for these times of crises and storms. In it, we can see reflected the suffering, doubt and confusion of today. In light of the tragedy that he’s had to live, Job argues, protests, demands and defies God. Job speaks honestly about his personal experiences. His friends respond with answers from the past, with preconceived ideas about God, forgetting that the Biblical God is always surprising us, driving us to live in the mystery of His love.
From tragedies and storms, paradoxically, we can have a new and intimate experience with the mystery of God. There are signs that our grieving humanity is audaciously beginning to search once more beyond conventional ideas and manipulations to say, individually and collectively: “I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5).
Be it so!
Ricardo Márquez can be reached at marquez_muskus@yahoo.com.
