Nicole’s e-Pistle
January 29, 2025
Hello, friends!
Last week, I introduced a topic on theodicy, which is our attempt to reconcile with a good and powerful God in the face of innocent suffering. I once again invite you to bear with me and to reach out to me privately in the next couple of weeks if anything I write makes you want to sit down with me one-on-one. I want this to be a safe space for you to wrestle with tough questions about God, faith, and the human condition…
On Saturday evening, I welcomed those who attended the DEO Concert by talking of compassion, which stems from the Latin com, meaning “with,” and passio, meaning “to suffer.” In Biblical Hebrew, one word for compassion is רָחַם (rah-KHAM), meaning bowel or gut, and signifies a deeply emotional response to someone or something. When Joseph saw his brother Benjamin for the first time in Egypt, he felt love and mercy for him in his gut. It is also the word used for how a mother feels about the child in her womb. In New Testament Greek, ἐλεέω (el-eh-EH-o) is to feel sympathy for the misery of another to the point of action – to be moved to alleviate the suffering of another.
In pastoral language, it means that when someone is in the midst of deep and profound suffering or grief, we as pastors should not offer wordy or patronizing theological language to explain away or provide artificial meaning for the person’s pain. Instead, we sit with them in their suffering and hold space for their own experiences and questions and perspectives. Yet, if we are indeed to love God with all our hearts (even when they are broken), minds (even when logically we cannot understand how a good God allows the innocent to suffer), souls (even when we feel spiritually drained), and strength (even when we are weary down to our bones), then there are times when it is appropriate and even necessary to wrestle with these issues.
The theists and deists of the Enlightenment period, who loosely believed in a Grand Architect kind of God, wrestled with the logic of theodicy by trying to reconcile the following four statements:
- There is a God.
- God is all-powerful.
- God is loving and good.
- There is innocent suffering.
The struggle with finding truth in all four statements simultaneously has led some to abandon the belief in God at all. Yet in his book, Thomas Long illustrates the fallacy of this argument with a husband who confides in a friend. He has always had a loving and affectionate relationship with his wife, but recently, she has become bitter and antagonistic. The friend asks if he suspects what might be going on, and the husband responds, “Yes, if my wife is good and loving, she must be powerless to stop this behavior, but if my wife is powerful enough to control her behavior, she must not really be good and loving, and, since she cannot be both powerful and good, I have decided that my wife doesn’t exist” (Long, What Shall We Say, pg. 52).
Friends, be assured that we shall dive into this a little further next week. We shall begin with the faith that God does indeed exist, and that God is good. He loves us and is active in our world, even now. Let us sit with one another in true compassion as we contemplate the evil and suffering in our world, and let us approach the throne of Grace with the confidence of children as we ask God, “How long, O Lord?”
Until next week, blessings and peace to you all,
