I’m just going to level with you up front: I cry easily. You might label me a punk for admitting that, and I won’t dispute those claims, but I can’t control the atmospheric conditions that aggravate my sensitive tear ducts.
Judgers.
I have to be careful with my “gift,” though. A while back, my roommate got the brilliant idea that we should watch “John Q” for movie night.
I refused.
The last thing I need is to feel like I’m the one who needs a new heart after the emotional agony from watching that movie again. Knowing the outcome doesn’t dam the flow.
I’d like to think it serves a greater purpose. For starters, my girlfriend seems to think that it’s manly. Although I’m not inclined to convince her otherwise, I believe something deeper lurks in the waterworks.
A few months ago, I was with a friend at a local restaurant when she confided that life was rough. Family relations were terrible, and she felt alienated from her father.
She wept as we spoke. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to cry in front of people, but that wasn’t the case this day. She looked up periodically from her exposition and saw that I was crying, too. She smiled.
She knew I got it.
I had this unshakable intuition that she’d be OK, but I felt her pain in that moment.
Let’s allow this to marinate for a second.
If you’ve read my previous columns, it won’t come as a shock that I am a fan of questions. However, none of them seems to stump people quite like the theodicy.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there so much pain, evil and suffering, especially if you believe in a god that is good?
I’ll be honest; I don’t have an answer or, at least, not one that fits neatly inside a column.
Perhaps none of us is as “good” as we think we are.
I know that offends most of us, and I’m not trying to be a troll.
I’ve realized that I have this peculiar way of purposefully excluding God when I want to do my own thing, only to attack him later with silly questions like “Where were you?”
In hindsight, that one’s not so hard to answer.
Perhaps he purifies us in hardship, like gold through fire.
Perhaps pain is God’s megaphone to a phenomenally deaf world, as C.S. Lewis so eloquently stated.
Perhaps he doesn’t owe us anything.
Perhaps he never promised us perfection in this life.
I find myself asking different questions these days, namely because I am smitten by Jesus’ life.
Why does the one who least deserved to suffer agree to suffer the most of anyone in history? What do you do with a god who incarnates himself in human flesh and bears the entire weight of our evil and pain?
I’m not diminishing our plight, but I feel as though we’re prone to asking the wrong questions. Maybe God knows suffering better than we can imagine, and perhaps we need the wake-up call sometimes.
God never promises that we won’t suffer.
In fact, he goes out of his way to state that hardship will come, especially to those who choose to follow him. His presence heals us now. His perfection lies in the world to come.
Still, I’m reminded of the story of Jesus meeting a grieving family before he raises its brother back to life. His response to their anguish is probably the most perplexing part of the proceedings.
Jesus wept.
It’s an odd move for one who knows how the story ends.
Ryan Galloway is a religion senior at UF. His column appears on Wednesdays. You can contact him at opinions@alligator.org.
