Theodicy: A Piece of the Puzzle
If I had never suffered, could I minister to other suffering people?
Earlier this week, a friend of mine revealed a troubling fact: during a recent performance review, a Christian coworker (let’s call him John) absolutely trashed him. John attacked my friend’s performance in ways that were pretty nasty and (in my friend’s opinion, at least) unfounded. Adding insult to injury, John then texted my friend along the lines of “Sorry to tell your manager what an awful leader you are, but it’s for your own good.”
My friend brought this up because the insults were making him reflect on whether or not he lived his faith out at work. John, who apparently has a history of this kind of behavior, wasn’t living his faith out all that well, and my friend wanted to do better.
I suggested that if my friend was serious about living his faith out at work, then one place to start might be to minister to John. Perhaps he could sit down, thank John for his feedback and offer to listen to his concerns in more detail, and end the conversation by asking how he could bless his attacker.
My reasoning was simple: John seemed like the most broken person in the room. A lot of times, when we think about justice, we think about punishing or even locking away broken people so that they can’t hurt others. That can be important, but I think there’s another aspect of Biblical justice that we often overlook: ministering to the people who are most in need. I think that’s often where God’s heart is (Matthew 25:35-40).
My wife and I just rewatched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I was struck (as I always am) by the story of Edmund. He begins his journey by turning traitor and promising to sell his siblings to the White Witch in exchange for sweets. By the end of the story, he is a king of Narnia, and Aslann dubs him “King Edmund the Just.”
What is it, exactly, that enables Edmund to rule so justly? I think it’s the fact that he understands what it means to be a villain. He understands the feeling of being kicked and spat on, and the desire for vengeance which that can produce, and he also understands just how foolish it is to pursue that vengeance. I imagine his reign as one where he sought out and ministered to the most broken people in Narnia. That, to me, is (a big part of) Biblical justice.
And I imagine that Edmund could only do that vital and necessary work because his prior fall gave him the ability to empathize with other people who are drawn to villainy. He could understand them, and help them, in ways that someone who had never played the villain themselves might really struggle to.
What, exactly, does all of this have to do with the problem of theodicy? Theodicy (the question of how an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God can allow evil things to happen in the world) is a subject that has captivated me. It’s probably no surprise why: I keep trying to make sense of the abuse I dealt with when I was younger.
I don’t pretend to have an answer to the problem of suffering. But I keep seeing bits and pieces of an answer, and today I wanted to share one of those pieces.
If I had lived a perfectly happy life and had never suffered, I’m not sure I could do prison ministry. I’m not sure I could minister to people who came from broken homes, or who used to be so full of rage that they wanted to burn the world down, or people who turned to drugs in order to try and fill the hole inside of them. I just wouldn’t be able to empathize with these folks’ pain. It’s just like Edmund: if he had never been a villain, he never could have been a just king because he never would have developed an understanding of why other people turn to villainy or how to help them.
That doesn’t make suffering magically alright, of course. But I do think that God redeems our suffering by using it to equip us to help other broken people in the world.
Here’s a prayer that perhaps all of us could pray this week: “God, is there anything in my suffering (past or present) that You want to use to equip me to help other broken people in this world?”
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