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My wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, and underwent an operation followed by chemo, but sadly took a turn for the worse last Christmas and died in February. I miss her lots.
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Neither the priest nor the nuns in the hospital offered any proofs about why God allows suffering, …
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I got up from bed as I couldn’t sleep, which is why I’m on the forum at this time. Basically I was angry with God at what I believe to be gross unfairness in my own life, particularly in the vocational area.
I haven’t lost my wife, but I have lost all my direct family members (father, mother, sister). My sister died of leukemia in 2005, aged 45. For me it wasn’t unexpected as I’d previously had a wise prophetic pastor who said to me, literally, “I think your sister mightn’t live very long.” And I’m pretty sure he mentioned leukemia.
So I wasn’t surprised. That didn’t make it easier, but at least the prognosis didn’t come as a shock. In fact i was almost expecting it.
I don’t really have the answer to suffering or why God is unfair. And the fact He’s unfair to a lot of people on this life. You get people like the Kardashians who get huge amounts of money for doing stuff all, while other people starve to death in third world countries, or spend their entire lives in refugee camps.
I get a bit tired of having to defend God all the time in the face of this obvious unfairness. He’s big enough to take care of Himself.
To quote a more personal example, I once shared digs with a young bloke who had alcohol foetal syndrome (his mother was alcoholic and he looked a bit like he had Downs Syndrome). But through the guidance of the same old pastor above he went from being a kid sleeping in park toilets due to his parents’ alcoholism, who was arrested by the state with his two brothers. He and one brother were put in a Boy’s Home, which was a cruel place (run by the Anglican Church this time), and put out at the age of 15 with no real prospects, no family, no home, no sense of belonging anywhere, limited intelligence, limited education etc.
But due to the pastor’s guidance, he persevered with a mundane job most of us would have hated; he eventually owned his own home, and retired in his mid 50’s or earllier, due to frugal living and putting a lot of money into superannuation.
Yet all the time he still had this sense of God.
His brother however, almost a twin, who was in the Boys Home with him, died at the age of about 23, when his remains were found washed up on a farm fence. I think he took shelter under a bridge to get away from flooding rains, but the floods caught him.
He never had a chance. Was God fair to him? No way in the world!
Now this next bit is private revelation, so you can do what you like with it.
At one stage i had a brief vision, and I think it may have been him. I only met him once that I can recall personally. But he seemed to have died, and some frightful looking creatures were approaching him. He was in fear. But just then a being of light (for lack of a better word) appeared and said to them, “Leave him alone!” They shrank back and disappeared. Then he turned to the young bloke, and said, “I haven’t been fair to you at all!”
And that was pretty much it. The scene disappeared.
Take it or leave it. But I think in the long run, we’ll have to wait for death before real justice is revealed. I mean if we’d been the disciples and watched Christ being arrested, scourged and crucified, we’d have somewhat cynical about God’s justice.
Until Christ came back to life. But He had to die first - unjustly. And unfairly.
I notice you mention nuns in the hospital, so I’m wondering if your wife was in a Catholic hospital or hospice, and that’s how you met the priest, even though you’re Baptist.
I’ve been Protestant, and even today I went to my wife’s Baptist Church. I went to mass later tonight at my own church (one of three in our parish). One thing I’ve noticed is that Protestants tend to emphasise the glorified risen Christ, whereas Catholics tend to emphasise the suffering dying Christ.
In this world, Christ suffered and died, so I suppose the short (and no doubt not very useful) answer to your question is that as Christians we are expected to suffer and die with Christ in this world. And like Christ, be resurrected and glorified in the next.
Meanwhile, I’ve yet to read any book or thesis that adequately addresses the problem of the immense amount of suffering in this world, not only by humans by also by animals, the environment, the ecology of the planet, and society.
In particular, I’ve yet to seen anything that addresses the issue of unfairness.
My wise old pastor said that too - “He (God) is unfair to a lot of people”. And that’s a fact.
I suppose it boils down to the nitty gritty of whether we’re going to continue to trust Him in the face of all this unfairness. That’s where real faith comes in - it’s not just an intellectual assent to believe God exists.
Meanwhile I’m no closer to solving my frustration with vocational issues (or the lack of them) and you’re probably no closer to finding out where God was when your wife died.
What I think her death might do is to get you to think and read more about suffering in general, and perhaps provide a balance to the Protestant tendency to glorify the risen Christ, and soft pedal the suffering Christ.
Anyway that’s my very early morning response when I couldn’t sleep. Before I went to bed, I sat up late and watched the Australian Hockey team defeat the Netherlands in the Hockey World Cup, beamed direct by satellite, with teh Dutch royal family in the grand stand. Great for the Australian hockey team! But then there are thousands of refugees streaming out of Mosul in Iraq. Who cares about them?
Would you say that’s fair?
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