Our Perfectly Benevolent God

I submit to you all a humble, garbled reflection on confronting the hardships allowed in our lives...

Last week, I read A Grief Observed by CS Lewis, his personal reflection on the emotional journey he walked while mourning the passing of his late-in-life wife, Joy. Lewis hopes not to provide a philosophically foolproof argument on anything about pain or suffering but rather present his own experience of dealing with the loss of his beloved.

Lewis' thoughts are the honest words of a man who feels beaten up and beleaguered. And amid the roughness, he provides a wonderful insight on the nature of this God of ours.

So many times people question how God can let bad things happen to good people or even let bad things happen at all. The gut response is that "things happen for a reason." While this isn't entirely wrong, it isn't the best way to respond to the problem. Check out this passage of Lewis that struck me leading into Holy Week and its special invitation to penitence and reconciliation:

"The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable that a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed--might grow tired of his vile sport--might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't." (From A Grief Observed, p. 674-675 in The Complete CS Lewis Signature Classics)

Forgive me if I take Lewis' words pretty much at face value without dissecting the philosophy and argument of it all... The way I have come to understand this reality of pain and evil in the world is that God can find good in ANYTHING. God is the omnipotent, all-knowing Creator of this world, of us, of everything.

My belief in God says that God can and will find good in anything. I think that the things we understand to be "bad" or negative or unattractive are just opportunities for God to prove the profundity of His love -- i.e., using the weak to shame the strong, etc.

So, too, with our crosses: those difficult negative patterns of behavior, speech, and thought that plague our lives and consciences are opportunities for God to show us His love. We may question the wisdom of the specific hardships that arise, especially death, sudden tragedy, natural disasters to name a few. However, we must recall that our God is the perfectly benevolent surgeon that only gives us what we can handle, what we can go through in order to come out stronger, wholler, more aware of His love.

The process may suck, a lot. But it is up to us to remember that God is present all the while (call to mind the Footprints poem that demonstrates Christ's companionship so beautifully!). We simply must harness the power of prayer to remember the unwavering love of God that is with us all the while and find our strength there.

So in this time of penitence, let us reflect upon these truths of God:

1. God gives us, or allows us, only experiences that we can handle (with Him!)

2. God is perfectly benevolent.

3. God never abandons us.

Let our examinations of conscience be honest and thorough as we bring our sins before God in the sacrament of reconciliation to access the grace and forgiveness of Christ won through His perfect sacrifice on the cross.