The Lady was elderly, sweet, fiercely independent and lived on her own, in the house she grew up in.
In her own cheeky way she spread joy, and people instinctively took to her and trusted her. She liked having people around, and people like being around her.
She was relentlessly inquisitive, always one more question, and it made people smile and preachers scratch their heads.
One night someone broke into her home, mistreated the Lady, probably threatened her, beat her and left her for dead.
She was only found some time later and rushed to hospital.
The doctors were pessimistic and offered her palliative care.
The Lady never regained consciousness, she never again opened her eyes nor spoke.
And then, the Lady died.
Succumbed to her wounds is the official terminology.
There will be a trial, if not in this life, then in the next.
Her family and friends were sad and angry, the congregation she belonged to was sad and angry, the local policy was angry, people who hear about the way she died are angry and sad.
The Lady had great faith, she had been very kind and she had lived by a straightforward theology: why can’t we all just get along?
Why can’t we all just get along?
Why do people do the things they do?
Why do people do bad things to each other?
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why does God allow for bad things to happen to good people?
These questions must be asked.
These feelings of anger and despair, frustration, anxiety and sorrow, helplessness even must be openly voiced.
Never trust a preacher who claims they have all the answers, or no answers at all!
Some of the answers may be helpful, but many most certainly won’t be.
“It’s God’s will.” they might say.
The Lady never believed that when a drunk driver hits and kills a pedestrian that was God’s will.
But if that’s not God’s will for us than what is?
German rationalist and optimistic philosopher Gottfried Leibniz posited that our universe was “the best of all possible worlds” God could’ve created. God, who is good
-and by extension, who means well- had chosen from infinitely many universes the best possible one to create. In other words, we start off with the best possible situation, in the best possible environment.
In this world, Leibniz distinguished three forms of evil: moral which is sin, physical which is pain, and metaphysical which is imperfection or limitation. God permits moral and physical evil for the sake of greater goods. Metaphysical evil in return is unavoidable since any created universe unavoidably falls short of God's absolute perfection. After all, God oversees everything and therefore has the ‘insider information’ we don’t.
What we perceive as evil is part of the bigger picture, a bigger picture we who are limited can’t see. Should a world without evil prove more perfect in any way, then evil wouldn’t have happened and the world without evil would be our world instead.
For us to understand goodness, we need to contrast it with evil. Once we understand evil and good, it gives us the ability to produce -like God did with our world- the “greatest possible good”.
While this theory fits with the traditional tenets of classical theology of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God -though the Bible itself doesn’t use those descriptions- from a pastoral point of view it’s admittedly problematic.
It’s problematic because it’s optimistic, and very often people who are suffering, regardless of the way they’re suffering, don’t want optimism and they definitely don’t want theology or philosophy, they need answers and preferably actions.
Real, concrete answers which preferably lead to real, concrete actions against the suffering they’re experiencing.
Where do we turn for this ‘concreteness’ when the suffering and rage are threatening to engulf us?
God?
The Church?
A psychologist?
Victim help groups?
The Law?
Etc.
These are all equally valid options (even the Etc.), and the only people who have the right to chose from these options, or chose not to chose one, are the people concerned.
Often, people chose not to experience their hurt, they refuse to grieve, it’s too intense, too overwhelming.
Instead, many escape into the business of their lives, their jobs, studies, hobies, addictions... Often they escape into happiness.
They hide.
They might hide, because they might feel God’s hiding too, because solutions seem absent, justice seems unattainable.
The condolences of others seem superficial, complacent, their offers of help seem rather obligatory and perhaps even fake.
Perhaps they feel that they’re being restricted, that they’re being forced to act and feel in a certain way.
Maybe they feel that there’s no point in grieving because it won’t solve and change anything. Grief, anger, sadness seem futile and unproductive.
Perhaps the preacher could just say: God finds your feelings productive and worthwhile, even if you decide not to feel them. When you decide to hide, God will hide with you, wherever you wish to go and for as long as you want.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, many chose to grieve deeply and for an extended period of time.
Hope to go on, optimism to go on, feels like a betrayal to the person who was the victim of evil, a betrayal to the own lived experience. Grief then becomes a modus operandi, a way of life. And when they do decide their mourning is over, they’re not always able to come out of it.
Society has a very complicated and duplicitous and hypocritical part in this, because it more often than not expects it from people.
We expect tears and depression and melancholy, we expect a compulsory sorrow.
However, should the dejection persist, don’t bother us with it, don’t bother us when you can’t get out of the depression, if you cannot shake off the melancholy.
We’ve demanded a certain role from you, a kind of grief and pain circus we feel comfortable with, we’ve told you how to be and act and feel, now we demand you stop.
We demand you switch it of like a machine, some robotic creature we wish to manipulate.
How disgustingly inhumane!
Perhaps the preacher could just say: we’re sorry and repent of all our sins.
And then the preacher might want to leave it at that: enough said.
For Martin Luther, the German reformer, the place where we see and meet the hidden God is the cross, and this encounter is real and physical.
Christ on the cross: physicality, abandonment, death.
We cannot skip ahead to glory, to heavenly bliss, we must go through the cross first. We’re human beings, and we all have to experience our humanity in its fullest, deepest, rawest.
This is why, according to Luther, we’re constantly being harassed with trials and struggles (Anfechtung). Life is a life of Anfechtung; it’s he same for all humans.
It’s not always clear to us, when misery and pain and death strike in our lives, but God is at work there: the hidden, veiled God in a hidden, veiled work (opus alienum).
God stretches our faith in the troubles and uses the temptations from God or the devil (we don’t know which) towards change for the better, even if we do not always recognise God at work. Again, to go through these dark places is intrinsically human.
For Luther, those Anfechtungen are meant to break us, to humble us to our knees in prayer, to make us realise we cannot do things by ourselves; it empties us and then we are open to God and God can create us anew; there opens up a space, a void for God to fill, for faith to trust. Death and resurrection.
Prayer chooses God’s side, and as such Creation’s side, and therefore life’s side. It’s a continuing creation and it requires continuing prayer (oratio continua).
When we think prayer is far away and seems difficult, that’s when it is the closest to us (Not lehrt beten).
Prayer becomes the place where this happens, and Luther was adamant to point out that Christ prays with us, as we pray through him, and because of him prayers are answered. Our prayers are intertwined, united and incorporated with Christ’s own prayers; human and divine together, like Christ’s own two natures.
God will not let go.
How is this supposed to be helpful?
Perhaps the preacher could just say: we cannot skip over our humanity, it won’t be ignored or glossed over or limited. Our humanity will not be disproved because it is our core identity, and that’s a very difficult thing to come to terms with. But it’s genuine.
We were created human to be human.
It’s ok to feel sad and angry, these emotions are part of our human identity!
The Psalms of the Bible are one place where we can find words to say or perhaps just read about our human emotions.
People are often very surprised to learn that the authors of the Psalms argue and shout at God, even swear.
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine;
Domine exaudi vocem meam.
Eloi, eloi, lema sabachtani!
Perhaps the preacher could say: your feelings are genuine and valid, we won’t demand of you to hide them in etiquette and acceptable social theatre. We won’t demand you grieve in the way we want you to. We won’t ask this of you because neither does God, we know from Scripture that he doesn’t.
Isn’t this all too much theology, too much theologising?
Is theology appropriate at times like these, in a situations like these?
Is just being there enough? Is just being present in silence enough?
Or are people entitled to pastoral theology if and when they chose to turn to the Church?
Is theologising a valid way of pastoral care?
That’s the question for theologians and pastors to be asking themselves, candidly and constantly. Yet, only those suffering, those grieving or not grieving are allowed to answer it.
Where do we find comfort, where do we find justice?
Is there comfort in justice (justice, mind, not revenge)?
The Lady suffered. Her death was violent, untimely and unjust.
There will be a trial, if not in this life, then in the next.
But is that a comfort to those who suffer, those who are left behind or left alone? Even if the theology fits. Do we need to put more effort into a theology of justice, a legal theology as it were? Perhaps even a criminological theology?
In the 2010 TV version of Murder on the Orient Express, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot confronts the murderers, 12 in total, of an evil and unscrupulous man, a child killer.
The scene is expertly acted and filmed, and it formulates the dilemma in its most honest and disconcerting profoundness.
Caroline Hubbard (the grandmother): “We were good civilised people, and then
evil got over the wall, and we looked to the law for justice, and the law let us
down.”
Hercule Poirot (the detective): “No! No, you behave like this and we become just...
savages in the street! The juries and executioners, they elect themselves! No, it is
medieval! The rule of law, it must be held high and if it falls you pick it up and hold
it even higher. For all of society, all civilised people will have nothing to shelter
them if it is destroyed!”
Greta Ohlsson (the nanny): “There is a higher justice than the rule of law, Monsieur!”
Hercule Poirot: “Then you let God administer it… not you!”
Greta Ohlsson: “And when he doesn’t? When he creates a Hell on Earth for those wronged? When priests who are supposed to act in his name forgive what must never be forgiven? Jesus said, ‘Let those without sin throw the first stone.’”
Hercule Poirot: “Oui!”
Greta Ohlsson: “Well, we were without sin, monsieur! I was without sin!”
Forgive and forget.
Try to forgive, never forget.
I will never forgive you!
I’ve forgotten about it, archived it away.
I’ve come to terms with it.
Closure perhaps.
Is there comfort in the fact that the Lady didn’t fear death and that she was very curious about that part of living, of existing, after this one?
Does the fact that she wasn’t afraid of dying, help us to not be troubled by her death?
Does her confidence and excitement for the life after life, the living after living, give us peace, a peace this world and its demands and expectations of grief cannot ever give?
Pax vobiscum
Does it help to be told that we don’t have to pity the dead?
Is it helpful when, in our sadness and anger, we insist on our humanity to be our pastoral theology?!
The Lady died.
Why does God allow for bad things to happen to good people?
Very often life’s light is snuffed out unexpectedly, very often it’s being dimmed excruciatingly slowly.
Where’s the justice, the fairness in that?
Perhaps the preacher could just say: I don’t know. I honestly wish I did. I believe, and believe means trust, not knowing but trusting. Will you trust me when I say that I promise to stand by you, that I will accept your anger and you sadness, that I will not demand from you but support you. I trust God will remind we that you’re entitled to your sorrow and pain, and I trust God will correct me and the Church when we fall short in our care of you.