When We Ask
"Why?"
Sooner or later each of us suffers. When we do, we all ask the same three questions:
Why me?
Why this?
Why now?
If we look and listen, we see and hear these questions being asked all around us:
On the day of his retirement dinner, the vice president of a corporation is informed that he has cancer. With the anticipation of travel and leisure usurped by emergency surgery, who can blame him if he asks, "Why me? Why this? Why now?"
A young woman who has sacrificed her career with a major accounting firm to work for a pittance in a Christian organization is informed that she must resign her job and change climates because she has multiple sclerosis. As she gives her last timely and accurate report on finances, her enthusiasm overrides the questions through which she is working, "Why me? Why this? Why now?"
Ten days before graduation from seminary, a thirty-year old student,
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his wife, and baby are confronted head-on by a loaded gravel truck that swerves into their lane. Spinning the wheel to save his wife and baby, Tom receives the full blow of the crash. A crushed head and a broken body threaten his life, his mind, and his ministry. While waiting and praying in the emergency room that night, we ask his questions for him, "Why me? Why this? Why now?"
A brilliant international student is accepted for doctoral study at Harvard. Coincidentally, his sponsor informs him that he can no longer give him financial assistance. Restrictions on his student visa force him to do menial work at minimum wage and he cannot even support his wife and baby. All of his dreams collapse under demands for tuition payment and the approaching deadline on his visa. The loss of face is more than he can bear. Just short of self-destruction, he sinks into severe depression, physical exhaustion, and spiritual bitterness. In counsel with me he asks, "Why me? Why this? Why now?"
An executive of a Christian publishing company is heading home with his son on Christmas Day. Along the road they spot a hitch-hiker whom they had seen thumbing ride in the same place the day before. Compassion mingled with curiosity causes the driver to stop and ask if the man needs help. The story is poured out of a jobless, penniless, hungry, and helpless hitch-hiker trying to get back home on Christmas Day. Despite the interruption to the Christmas plans for his family, the executive takes him home, feeds him, clothes him, and lets him share as they open their gifts around the fireplace. Waiting until the last minute, the modern Good Samaritan gives money to the man whom he found alongside the road and hurries him to catch the only bus that will take him home on Christmas Day. In their haste, they dampen the coals from the fireplace and put them in a trash can in the breezeway between the house and the garage along with the wadded wrappings from their gifts. Moments later, the wife smells smoke, opens the kitchen door, and is driven back by a wind-whipped wall of flames. While he is on a mission of mercy, the executive's home burns to the ground and everything is lost. Who can blame the son who asked his
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father if he understands the economy of God? Honesty causes the executive to shake his head "No." Together, they ask, "Why us? Why this? Why now?"
A well-to-do financier reflects on the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Thieves have robbed his home and escaped with his wife's jewels. In full seriousness he reasons, "I work hard, try to be good . . . and then this happens. I just don't understand it . . . and to tell you the truth, I'm bitter." Even the suffering of lost luxury provokes the question, "Why me? Why this? Why now?"
Only human beings can ask "Why?" Created in the image of God, it is our nature to reflect upon our suffering, put it into perspective of experience, and pose questions that probe into the very heart of human existence. In truth our question goes deeper than our God-given nature. Intentionally or not, when we ask "Why?", we also challenge the nature of God — His justice, His wisdom, and His power.
Why Me?
No matter who we are, saint or sinner, when we suffer our first question is, "Why me?" To whom do we cry? Unless it is a meaningless shout to the four winds, the object of our cry is God Himself. Whether we are victims or culprits, innocent or guilty, we feel as if our suffering is unfair. When an innocent two-year-old child is stricken with leukemia, we ask, "Why her?" But we cannot forget that a seventy-year-old man who is dying of lung cancer caused by smoking two packs of cigarettes a day for more than fifty years will also ask the question, "Why me?" After all, thousands of two-pack-a-day seventy-year-olds are still alive and free from cancer. Therefore, "Why me?" is a question that we ask no matter who we are. Whether the cause of our pain is unknown, self-imposed, accidental, or deliberate, we believe that we have been singled out to suffer. Furthermore, we refuse to believe that we are victims of a cruel trick of chance. "Why me?" is a cry that questions the justice of God. We believe that our suffering is unfair.
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Why This?
No matter what we suffer, we also ask, "Why this?" Another gift of our divine creation is the ability to perceive ourselves as distinctive individuals. We transfer that same perception to our suffering. Even though millions of others may develop the same disease, face the same pain, or sense the same anguish, our suffering is unique.
Six weeks after my sixty-nine-year-old father passed a medical exam without a trace of problems, a massive heart attack and eleven minutes without oxygen left him a vegetable. When my sister arrived at the hospital room, the attending physician met her at the door with the frightful warning, "If this man has a son, warn him that this kind of heart attack is hereditary." Heeding his warning, I have become a jogger on a self-imposed regimen of periodic treadmill tests. The doctor has complimented me for having the heart of a twenty-year-old and yet the specter of heredity hangs over me. If it happens, I will still ask, "Why this?"
The truth of the matter is that we cannot understand why, of all the kinds of suffering, we are victimized by one particular kind. Again, "Why this?" is an implied threat that God doesn't know what He is doing. If He were wise as well as just, He would have chosen for us a more tolerable kind of suffering. Whatever we suffer, it is unique.
Why Now?
No matter when we suffer, we ask "Why now?" Only human beings are endowed with a sense of continuity in time that extends into eternity. Not only can we remember our past, but we can anticipate the future. Perhaps that is why suffering is always untimely. To be human is to have plans for the future. Not even the most glorious memories of the past can compensate for the disruption of dreams about tomorrow. My ninety-year-old mother-in-law is in a nursing home. Senility has robbed her of most mental functions, except that she still anticipates her meals. For illness to disrupt Mom's meals is as upsetting to her as it is to the person whose plans
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for world travel and retirement are quashed by cancer. Whether young, middle-aged, or old, when suffering comes we ask, "Why now?? Behind our question is the hidden fear that God may not be fully in control. If He really cares for us, we think to ourselves, why doesn't He arrange a more convenient time for bad things to happen to us?
Few of us have the perspective of Jim True, the owner of the racing car which Bobby Rahal drove to victory in the Indianapolis 500 in 1986. Jim was in the last stages of virulent cancer at the time of the race. Reporters asked him how he responded to the prospect of imminent death. Jim True answered, "My goals haven't changed; only my time schedule." A more typical answer, at least when our problems first arise, is to ask with furrowed brow, "Why now?"
Our personal suffering, then, is always unfair, unique, and untimely. Our questions, "Why me? Why this? Why now?" arise naturally out of our humanity as challenges to the justice, wisdom, and power of God. In other words, suffering takes us to the outer edges of our faith, where contradiction gives us the option of growing in grace or festering in bitterness.
Job: Symbol of Suffering
Job is the person with whom we identify in suffering. When calamity after calamity strikes him down, he dares to ask a silent and hidden God, "Why me? Why this? Why now?" His questions push him to the frontiers of his faith where he confronts contradictions that he cannot handle. Bordering on blasphemy, Job questions the justice, wisdom, and power of God whom he both fears and trusts.
The outcome of Job's painful pilgrimage through suffering is a surprise. As I told the financier who asked if I had an answer to his question about bad things happening to good people, "Yes, God has an answer in Job. It may not be the one we want, but it is the one we need."
Job's journey through suffering has even more surprises in store for us. At its extreme, Job's suffering is partial and limited. He stands on the threshold of death, but never steps
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through the door. He is abandoned by friends, but never quite alone. He is almost forsaken by God, but finally hears His voice. From a human standpoint this is as far as we can go in understanding the meaning of suffering. Only someone who has experienced the ultimate suffering - in the fangs of death, without human support and forsaken by God - can fully assure us of knowing and feeling whatever anguish or pain we are going through. Jesus Christ is that person. With us, He experienced physical, mental, and emotional suffering. He, too, asked the human questions, "Why me? Why this? Why now?" But He and He alone went through ultimate suffering - abandoned by friends, forsaken by God, victimized by death, and assaulted by hell. In that sense, none of us can fully identify with Him as we can with Job. Yet because of Him we have the confidence that He knows and feels about suffering, whatever it may be.
Our journey with Job must always be taken with our mind's eye looking forward. The more we study the Book of Job the more we sense that the story leans into the future toward Jesus Christ - His incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, and grace. Once we read Job with that view in mind, our spirits leap forward to realize that the Book is far more than poetry at its best. It is prophecy at its peak. So with our fellow sufferers, Job and Jesus, we dare ask, "Why me? Why this? Why now?"
