A Beginning of Sorrows

It seems hard to comment on what has happened in Japan without somehow trivializing it. Perhaps, like Job’s three false comforters, we would be better off to remain silent. Yet as those who claim to have a word from God, we are expected to make sense of the world. This is the kind of thing that prompts people to ask for an explanation and expect us to provide it. “If a loving God is in charge of everything, as you Christians like to say,” they demand, “how do you explain this?”

 Our choices are not enviable. We can opt for glibness. We can say that God is simply using this tragedy to get people’s attention, as if it were all a kind of divinely orchestrated publicity stunt. No matter that the cost in lives runs into the thousands. Advertising is expensive, especially if it is on a global scale. Or we can take refuge in mystery. God is in control. There is some good purpose in all of this. But we cannot understand it. It is a mystery.  Frankly, both explanations have a hollow ring in the face of so much suffering.

 Yet suffering on such a massive scale is not foreign to the Bible. The great flood, Sodom’s destruction, the fall of Jerusalem, and the collapse of the tower of Siloam are just a few that come to mind. It is not without cause that this kind of devastation is often described as being of “biblical proportion.” What is more, the Bible always explains such suffering in light of God. Jesus warned his disciples of this very thing when they asked him about signs of the end of the age and the approach of his return.  Among other things, Jesus warned, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains” (Mark 13:8).

 These are not glib words. Not when they are spoken by one who wept over the destruction of Jerusalem. Not when they are uttered by one who willingly bared his back to the scourge “for us and for our salvation.” They are not glib but neither are they comforting. Indeed, they were not meant to be. They were intended to be words of warning. They are Jesus’ solemn assurance that things will get worse before they get better. The collateral damage of sin–and the Bible teaches that the natural world writhes in the throes of sin’s effects as much as the human soul does–cannot be avoided. These things “must” happen but the end is not yet (Mark 13:7). The full cup must be drunk, even to the dregs. Redemption is coming. The day draws near when the earth’s groaning will cease and creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:21).

 But that day is not today. Today is a day for weeping. And for silence.