Where is God when it hurts? I still ask myself this
question quite often, especially in light of the chronic daily tension
headaches that I experience. I wonder why God would not heal me of this tension
headache. I believe I must have prayed at least a thousand times asking God to
heal me of this illness. So why hasn’t God healed me yet of this tension
headache?
I can’t help but find my faith in God challenged
through this ordeal and hardship that I have found in my life. Does God exists
at all? I tell myself this sometimes. And there are indeed times when I say to
myself that God indeed does not exist. If he does, then why wouldn’t he do
something about my plight?
I suppose if I should be critical of myself, I should
have questioned the existence of God as critically as I am now even before I
suffered these tension headaches. After all, suffering amongst humankind is
pretty common. There are the periodical news report of some poor souls
undergoing some form of hardship or another. I remember reading about a kid who
died after he was kicked in the neck during a taekwondo sparring session. Then
there was the case of a newly wedded couple where one of them fell down and
died on his wedding day. The spouse committed suicide a few years later. Recently
in the news, there was a report of a girl who had to have her legs amputated
due to cancer, the news coming to her on the day when she got into the netball
team of the Singapore Sports School. She succumbed to cancer later, even though
she had underwent an amputation of her legs. I believe that she was Christian.
The mother was quoted as saying that she is somewhat relieved that her daughter
does not have to go through any more pain, and is in heaven with God.
I mustn’t be too surprised over my own experience. It
is perhaps much more common than what I am aware of. At least, if I should
consider my society as a whole, instead of just the communities which I
interact with on a daily basis. And even within those communities which I am
part of, I wouldn’t be too surprised that the respective individuals themselves
face one sort of ordeal or another, ordeals that are hidden from the surface
that can be observed by the eyes. But it can honestly seem like I am the only
undergoing such undue hardship when everyone else seems pretty happy around me.
I would like to think that God exist, and he is merely
testing me, or making me undergo trials through which I would become a better
person. There is this underlying belief I had even before I experience this
chronic tension headache, that suffering is God’s way of imparting divine
wisdom. When I see my plight from such an angle, it makes me question what are
the lessons or wisdom that God is trying to teach me from this suffering. Perhaps
I have become more empathetic to the sufferings of those around me, and of
other people in the world. I wonder whether I have been less than empathetic to
the plights of others before the start of my own suffering. It wasn’t like I
didn’t try to be empathetic, but I may not have been so intuitively pricked in
my consciousness of such suffering. I believe I was a little more simplistic in
the way I believe that God would be sufficient for those in suffering, without
being aware that suffering can be a struggle even with that fact. It is not unheard
of for me to hear people say in church that they are not afraid of suffering
because they believe that God would sustain them through it. I too might have
said to myself that if I ever were in similar suffering, I would not be
perturbed, but maintain an easy serenity to myself because God would be with me.
And that belief might have quite subconsciously made me less than empathetic to
the possible emotional turmoil that those in suffering undergo. I might have
told at least one or two of such people I know who lament about God through their suffering alot that they should count God’s
blessings, rather than focus on their misfortune. On hindsight, I guess that
might have been insensitive, even as it is well-intentioned.
I think I might be unfairly caricaturizing my past
self here, because I remember that I did try my best to be empathetic to those in suffering, but such belief-system mentioned above might have been in mind, somewhere in the subconscious
perhaps. Perhaps suffering brings such thoughts that lie in the subconscious to
the fore, and make us realize their folly, or uncaring nature. Perhaps one such
thought could be that when we read of someone else in suffering, even as we
express pity, we might have the subconscious belief that such plight only
happens to others and not to ourselves. Perhaps when we suffer, even if just a little,
and not as much as those we had initially read about, we might come to realize
that we are actually as susceptible to such misfortunes as they are.
That said, I still find myself angst at God. I ask God
why he doesn’t just tell me what he wants me to know if indeed my suffering is
a trial to make me a better person. And I can’t help but wonder whether this
idea of suffering being a means by which God imparts wisdom is a vanity in
itself. There are people who experience such suffering of the most extreme
sort, such that it robs them of the ability of conducting a basic decent life.
What comes to my mind was this video I saw on youtube of a boy who experience
something called the butterfly syndrome. His skin would tear and bleed at the
gentle rub of its surface. My heart certainly grieved for him when I saw the documentary
of his daily routine. Living through every single day is nothing short of an arduous challenge for him. And I doubt he would ever be cured of it. I doubt he
can ever look upon his ordeal, and tell himself that it is simply a way for God
to teach him wisdom, after which he would be healed. And I guess I can’t help
but also feel that even if it were the case that God intends to teach the boy
wisdom through suffering, he is being quite cruel.
So I find myself flip-flopping in my faith at times as
I reflect upon suffering. They flip flop according to the prevailing thought
that may be in my head at the moment. There are times when I find myself pretty
assured that the good Lord is simply giving me a temporary trial to teach me
wisdom. And there are times when I feel quite the reverse, that God is
malevolent, uncaring, or simply non-existent because I find it hard to
reconcile the existence of suffering with that of a good God. Moreover, this chronic daily tension headache has been with me for a long time now, about 3 years. And for the most
part, I find myself just being unsure of which is the truth. It is not that I
am comfortable with agnosticism, but I find myself more uncomfortable with professing
complete certainty of either the truth of Christianity, or of atheism. I still
go to church, and I still pray, though not as regularly as I used to, and not
as fervent and convicted in them as I may have used to be. I guess I find it
hard to put a label on myself at the moment regarding my religious beliefs. It
is a little of all three – Christianity, atheism, and agnosticism. Quite a
change from the exclusive Christian label that I would think of myself in the
past.
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