Questions without Answers

Friday, March 10, 2006

Recently I’ve been asking a lot of questions. Sometimes I get so confused that I can’t even phrase my questions into logical sentences. I debate in my head. Play devil’s advocate. I struggle with things I’ve known all my life and the constant search for truth. I ask questions and seem to end up much more confused then before I started. I feel lost. But I don’t want to stop asking why. Even if I don’t ever figure out the answer, I’d rather passionately question that be ignorantly silent.

One thing, I’ve always struggled with how an amazingly good God could let so much evil happen in the world. Essentially, the basic question: “why do bad things happen to good people?� I guess I just got sick of hearing the almost pre-recorded Christian response of free will; choices and consequences. To me that answer is getting old, it almost seems like a cop-out. But maybe I’m just too cynical. Anyway, I guess I just read the news, watch television or walk out my front door and am bombarded by so many examples of oppression, victimization, suffering and death. And on days when I actually let it sink into my brain, it really affects my thinking.

A lot of times we blame God for our suffering. A lot of times I blame God. I look around and think, why? I mean it’s easy. It’s God’s fault. He’s easy to blame; a perfect scapegoat. If God is all powerful that means He has the power to stop the bad things, and he doesn’t. That must make Him responsible.  

Often times when I’m going through a struggle it’s not a battle to figure out how to get through it, but why it’s even happening in the first place. If God loves you and is pleased with you, how can someone who is loved by God, suffer? Then comes the temptation is to doubt that God is good. He can’t be good if bad things are happening. If you are suffering, God let you down. How can someone be loved by God and suffer? Isn’t it a dichotomy? One or the other. Which one is it? Suffering must mean that God isn’t good. Suffering or God, you can’t have both. Or can you?

There is something deeper to life than the avoidance of suffering. People that are deeply connected with God suffer. Heck, Jesus suffered! Jesus is the Son of God, is God, and he suffered more greatly than I ever have, and will ever. Jesus shows me that the Christian faith is not about putting on a happy face and pretending things are okay, its brutal honesty about how life really is.

Albert Einstein once said that “the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." I still don’t have many answers to the tough questions that fill my brain. I’m still searching, still asking, still questioning. I don’t know exactly why bad things happen. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that one figured out. I doubt it. But I think just writing it down help. It encourages me to continue to ask questions in an attempt to know God better, and maybe that’s the point.

posted by Rachel Pede @ 12:59 AM   1 comments