Religion/Illness

I thought I would kick off this thread...



Something has been bothering me since my husband began his training....



I used to be a church-goer...even considered becoming a Lutheran minister when I was younger. But during my husband's training I became exposed to such TRAGEDY. I think that I know the day that my faith in any God truly died.



One of my husband's patients was a woman with one small child and a husband. She was being treated for end-stage breast cancer...It was a real tragedy. Within months of her death, the little boy was diagnosed with a stage IV Neuroblastoma....and was terminal. I began looking for some kind of a bigger picture. I can find absolutely NO way that something like this could be in some greater "plan". And if there is a God who chose this as part of a plan, I couldn't respect him anymore.



The tragedies seemed to grow from there. My husband was doing 18 months of oncology and watched young person after young person die of cancer. Women with small children, small children....and I really had to wonder if there truly was a God, how he could allow his children to suffer so much.



How do the rest of you reconcile these tragedies with your faith in a higher power?



Kristen

[Lisa]

Hi, Kristen! Thanks for the e-mail. We have tons of stuff going on around here and I'm swamped with things to do. I guess that's a good thing. Anyway....



You probably remember that you and I talked about this a little months ago when we first met. After thinking about it, I thought, "You know, I could go through all of the scriptures of how sin and all evil (including sickness and disease) came into the world, but you already know that as you grew up in church and have probably been taught that. I could point out passages that show that it was not God's plan for the world to turn out the way it did, that He is saddened at the evil in the world and that God did not CHOOSE human suffering as part of His plan, but you know, there will still be questions remaining. What it all comes back to is FAITH; faith that God loves us, faith that he has good intentions for our lives and faith that in the end, justice will be done."



The scripture is clear that humans were the ones that brought human suffering into the world through their disobedience to God. God did not choose to bring human suffering into the world as part of His plan. God's intention or His plan was for people to live in perfect haromony with Him, with their surroundings and in absolute innocence. He warned Adam and Eve what would happen if they disobeyed and they disobeyed anyway. But even saying that, you could ask, "Well, if God is all-knowing, why would he put that tree in the garden anyway if he knew we would fall as a result of the temptation? Why did he create humans in the first place if He knew that we would fall?" Well, no one has the answers to those questions. How can I, a fallible human with faulty reasoning, question the intentions, motives or reasoning of the ultimate God of the universe? I choose to trust Him and one day I believe I will see the big picture of why God created us. The Bible does NOT say, however, that human suffering is part of God's plan. God's original plan was for a perfect world and to have a personal relationship with man. God did not create us so that he could make us sick, make us suffer and then let us die as part of some cruel game. The Bible does say, however, that God will restore things and make "a new Heaven and a new Earth"..."He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." God does not desire that we suffer and at the appointed time, He will clean away all evil and bring justice and peace and everlasting life to those who endure.



A king of Israel wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. He had just about everything that life had to offer--wealth, wisdom, fame, etc., but everything ultimately disappointed him and proved meaningless. He asked what the point of life is. You work hard and someone else gets the credit. You struggle to be good and evil people take advantage of you. You accumulate money and it just goes to spoiled heirs and everyone rich or poor, good or evil all die. He seems to be asking many of the questions that people of today ask. A key phrase in this book "under the sun" which is repeated over and over describes the world lived on one level, apart from God and without any belief in eternity or an afterlife. If you live on that level, you may conclude that there is no meaning to life. There is this huge eternal picture and our lives here on earth are just a mere speck in that picture. The author of Ecclesiastes says, "God made manking upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." In the end, the lesson of Ecclesiastes is "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil." You could summarize this king's whole life in Jesus' one statement, "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?"



Job, in the span of a few days, experienced more tragedy than most people encounter in a lifetime. Job in his suffering sometimes questioned the character of God himself, as you, demanding a personal explanation. Job had saved up a long list of questions, but it was God who asked all the questions. He basically said, "Who do you think you are anyway? Can you take on the behemoth or the leviathan? If you can't take on one of God's fearsome creatures, then don't attempt to take on God." To try to explain the things Job wanted explained would be like trying to explain the secrets of the universe to a clam. At some point it requires faith in the justness of God.



Certainly, you knew that there was suffering in the world before your husband began training and before you lost faith in God. How did you reconcile human suffering then, when you believed and were even considering becoming a minister?



I know I have rambled way too much. I guess my wole point is, there are hard questions that we do not have the answers to; our minds are too small to comprehend them, but I trust God that He has the answers and that He is just. I will follow His commandments with faith that what He says is true and that my reward will be eternal life with Him.

I do remember talking about this with you....it is just a subject that I have trouble coming to grips with. I am not sure how I managed to come to term with this issue years ago...but it seemed to be less "real" to me because I was dealing in hypotheticals ... it was the exposure to all of this suffering that caused me to beging doubting...and I have struggled since then. It isn't even that I didn't experience my own suffering when I had such strong faith...I did....but that seems to be lost for me now.



I can't come to terms with the conflicting ideas that God is all powerful and all knowing...he knew that man would eat the apple and yet he tempted him anyway...he knew that there would be cancer, murders, rapes and suffering....and he created people and then said "oh, and by the way, if you don't do it my way then you will be spending the rest of eternity in hell"...Growing up I had always been taught that God was loving and forgiving. Those images don't mix to me anymore. Is he loving and forgiving? Can a person truly murder someone and then "find" God and be "forgiven" and go to heaven and then another person who lives in the African bush or something and has never heard of God will be "turned away" at the pearly gates for not believing...even if he was never told?



If someone commits suicide because they are mentally ill....regardless of how they became mentally ill..i.e environmental factors, brain chemistry...are they banished from "heaven"? We have neighbors whose father committed suicide. They were devout catholics who believed that their dad had committed the unforgivable in the eyes of God...and I wanted to say that any God not capable of forgiving this act is not worth worshiping...but I of course did not....



I know that we are taught that God did not bring sickness/evil into the world...but I begin asking myself WHY God created the earth then in the first place? A big experiment? Can I get those pesky humans to obey me? to do as I command? Of course, he already knew that we wouldn't obey...so maybe life is just a game?



These are all just sort of "existential" thoughts on the nature of religion/faith....not meant as an attack on any beliefs...just wanted you to know.



Faith is not something that I think comes without questioning. I believe that everyone goes through times of doubt or despair in their faith in God or anything really. But I think that discussing the issues and hearing other people's thoughts on some of your questions can help put things in a different perspective.

Wow, Kristen! I have been thinking about your post for a couple of days. You have a way of going right to the hard questions -- which is good! (no sugarcoating here, that's for sure!



The best answer I can come up with to your question of "why does God allow these things" is that I think He wants us to turn to Him for the answers -- in other words, He wants you to be asking the questions that you are. I think (know) that everyone struggles with these questions, whether they believe or not, and even belief does not make me immune to the seeming unfairness of life. Lisa is right, that faith in something bigger than me and way beyond the grasp of my intelligence is what finally answers the question for me, or more accurately allows me to rest in what I know about God so far and wait for the rest of the answers to come when I can ask Him face to face. God can take our doubt, our anger, our dissapointment with Him and use those emotions and the way we work through them to bring us to know Him more intimately. A really good author that I would encourage anyone (believer or not) to read is Philip Yancey. He has struggled with these same questions and writes about his journey through the doubts that we all have as we grow up and confront the realities of life in a world where there are no easy answers.



I think also that from our perspective, we tend to think of God as someone who should be helping us (mankind)out when we get in trouble, but really I think that it is the opposite -- that we were created for God and for His glory, and we sure haven't kept our end of the bargain! Our lives go by so quickly, from God's perspective, and the pain we suffer, or see others suffer,however horrific, is just the blink of an eye compared with eternity. He does love us and is more concerned with our eternal destiny than with this temporal one. With that in mind, I can rest easier when I hear the latest horrible tragedy, although there have been many prayers from me to God, with tears in my eyes, asking "WHY???"



I also have to balance all of the tragedies I hear about and read about (all of the atrocities that mankind has visited on itself since the beginning of time are enough to make me wish to be a cat or something!) with the blessings in my life and in the world and time that I live in -- electricity, vaccinations, penicillin, as well as the more personal -- my husband and children are healthy, they bring me so much delight, (not 24/7, but more often than not) He has blessed me financially, although my human heart always wants MORE...., He has blessed me to live in a time where I have had lots of choices about the path of my life, and with abilities that have allowed me to choose from a broader spectrum than many people. When I think of how temporary this life is and how much easier it would have been (in my way of thinking) for God to just say, "Oh, well, her life will be over in a few decades -- she will just have to get through it the best she can" I am struck by how awesome He is, that He would care enough about me to fashion many of the details of my life into something that speaks to my heart, even though to Him my life on earth is so short.



I guess my bottom line when I have these sorts of conversations with myself is -- If I had a God that I totally understood and could predict everything He was going to do, then I really wouldn't need a God, would I? I think God has to be unfathomable in some aspects to be God -- does that make sense? Anyway, I would encourage you to keep asking questions, and search out what abler people than I have to say about the same questions. God can take it -- in fact, I think He wants us to question in order to find in Him what we all are searching for.



Hope this wasn't too rambling.



Sally

Well, here's how I look at it!



I agree that you must have faith and I agree that what God allows to happen is beyond our comprehension. Let's face it, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. I'm sure everyone has experienced this! God is good. And although death can be tragic, death is in my belief just a separation. Children who suffer do not suffer without purpose. There is a purpose for each of our lives. And when a child dies, it is very sad, tears come to my eyes just thinking about it! However, in my faith in God I know that He knows what is best for He knows everything. He has created us, we are His creations! When a child dies, I don't think of it as a complete loss, for I have faith that he/she is in Heaven. This is Heaven's gain. Sometimes when I think of the loss of my dad's dear friend, a pilot, who died in his own plane, I think now why would God allow this spiritual man to die. We were graced by his presence. However, God sweetly reminds me in the kindest voice that He is in control and this man is now needed in Heaven. Heaven is packed with wonderful children of whom parents are missing. But there again I know that if my child were missing I would want him to be with God than any other. And when they die, there they are up in Heaven with my Precious God and Jesus, my precious Savior.



It is easy to be angered at God. Many times in the past I have asked why is this happening to me? I have said this is not fair (I sound like my 7-year-old), but I have learned the closer I am to God, the more answers are presented to me. When I am away from church or praying or reading the Bible, I question more why things are happening in our lives. When I walk my Christian life, God is right there beside me answering all the questions of which I am seeking answers to. I have a peace which passes all understanding. I have come to know that God does know what He is doing, and for me to question His expertise is unwarranted.



Oh, one more thought for the day is the person in the African bush Will Find God if he is truely seeking God. It does say that in the Bible. "Seek and you shall find [Him]." God does not come hunt you down and make you believe in him. You must seek and shall find. Pray to God to help you find answers and you will, just maybe not the ones you are wanting to hear. ~smiles~



Well, just my wee-bit of thinking!!!



Your friend,

Christy

Hi everyone,



I thought I would offer my experiences, as I think they are different than what's been stated so far. I have travelled from Christianity to a place where I now have no religion. The funny thing is, I am more at peace with life than ever before.



I was raised in a Christian family, with a Luteran minister father turned university theologian. My two grandfathers were also Luteran ministers and two of my cousins are the same. So, religion and the study of religions was a big topic in my household. I was taught as a child that God was all-loving, all-forgiving, and ultimately not to be feared but loved. I decided when I was about 16 that I didn't believe in hell, and that everyone went to heaven because God loved all of us, even the murderer and the non-believers. I suppose from this I felt a sense of relief from the fear that comes from worrying about whether you go to heaven or how you could persuade God you were worthy of eternal life. I simply didn't worry about it and felt secure in God's love.



As I grew up and studied at university, I became fascinated with nature. At first I was convinced that there must be a creator, but as I studied more, I realized that evolutionary theories did, in fact, explain many of the "mystery" I had given to a higher power. As I learned more about nature and environmental degradation, I was convinced that humans were no more than an integral part of Earth, and that lesser known species deserved to be preserved "for their own sake" and not for human benefit. I don't believe that we are above nature and designed to control it, but a part of it. I truly believe that humans got to this point only because of built in dominance, instead of being chosen. As such, I do not believe we have the right to treat the Earth the way we do, and that no tangible benefits will come from things such as global warming, ecosystem degradation, and species extinction.



Anyway, I gradually lost my faith in God and began to wonder about what will happen after I die. As I grew more appreciative and awestruck by natural ecosystems, I realized that if I ended up as fertilizer for a giant tree in some forest, that I would feel truly honored. That's where I am today. Rather than feeling lost, I feel I've found my anchor.



And I have experienced tragedy in my life, and these events really did not contribute to my current thinking. My sister died unexpectedly at the age of 23, my father suffered a personality-shattering brain injury, and my brother suffered the same when he was hit by a car at age 7. These things did not cause me to ask "why". So where did it come from, this lack of faith? I've searched my soul, and I think it is simply a progression to where I am at now and where I have been for so long.



Ultimately, I think of our natural environment as more impressive than humans, and that it really is more important in it's survival than we are. If we die, nature goes on. If nature dies, everything dies.



All this said, I do sincerely respect other people's religious faiths, but I do not feel that any one religion is "the correct one". Religion helps people make sense of a crazy, crazy world, and that is good. What can be negative about some forms of religion is when they foster hate based on non-membership, or when they cause divisiveness where there once was unity. I suppose my thinking is my version of a religion, in that I do look beyond my life to see how I fit into this world.



Respectfully,

Janet

[Lisa]

I hear this all the time, that if God really loves us and if he is all-loving, then he will send no one to hell. We seem to equate love with permissiveness, that because God is love, he will put up with our evil ways and will not punish and that he should even allow evil and sin to contaminate his perfect heaven. It's almost like a child believing that because a parent punishes misbehavior, then they must not love them and that they should be able to make their own rules and be allowed to do whatever they wish to do whether it be self-destructive or destructive to others; that they should be allowed to be rebellious to the end without consequence. God has given everyone a way to escape hell out of a desire that no one go to hell, yet we tend to resent God's authority, the one who set the planets and the universe in motion. God's universal laws were set in place before time began, but when he created us, we decided that God isn't all that He thinks He is and we have a better way of doing it.



According to the Bible, whether you go to heaven or not does not depend on how worthy you are, how good you are or how convincing you are to God of your goodness. The Bible is clear that ALL are unworthy to enter heaven. We are all born into sin and therefore, all are unworthy. That has already been established. The only way we can enter into Heaven is through God's grace and His mercy in the fact that he sent His son as the ultimate sacrifice to pay for sin that we could not cleanse ourselves from. This redemption will be afforded those who repent of their sin and believe in Christ. It is free to all and it is your choice to accept or reject. God will not choose certain people who he thinks are *good enough* to receive it. Salvation is for all. Many times people tend to get confused and think that we will enter heaven as a result of living a moral life. Rather, living a moral life is a result of receiving Jesus into your heart and being born again.



True, our bodies all die and become "fertilizer", but what's more important is what happens to our spirit. I'm sure all of us here marvel at the wonders of nature and the life cycle and humans are definitely and obviously part of that. The Bible says these things are temporal, though, they will all end one day and that there is an eternal, spiritual realm that will last forever. It says that our bodies die and go back to the earth, but our spirit will live forever. More important than what will happen to my fleshly body when I die is what will happen to that eternal part of me, my spirit. How things in nature work together, the fascinating aspects of how living things grow and die, cycle, and how matter changes from something living to something dead and is then "recycled" into something new is fascinating, but the spiritual should not be ignored.



I appreciate all the posts, so far. I feel that it is important to discuss these things and I appreciate hearing everyone's experiences. I just could not help but point out a few things that I have heard a lot over the years that many church-goers believe, but are totally not biblical. I do understand, however, that we come from different perspectives in that the believer says, "I don't trust in my own thinking, so I will choose to believe in Jesus and submit to God's authority and laws", whereas the non-believer chooses to rely on what they can see with their own eyes and reason with their own mind and on what makes sense to them. So, the things I say are coming from my perspective as a Christian.

I need to think on the last couple of posts before I answer.....I just don't want anyone to think I am ignoring the thread. It is quite thought-provoking.



Kristen