This page was created on March 1, 2005
This page was last updated on March 23, 2005

Even though Indonesia's disastrous tsunami happened nearly three months ago, Mike's column about it has been particularly relevant to me over the last week. For the fourth time in the last six months, my wife Jenn, who normally writes for After Eden, has been hospitalized for complications related to a condition called gastroparesis. Jenn talked about her illness a bit in her December column. When Jenn comes home from the hospital tomorrow, she'll have spent nearly thirty of the last 180 days in hospital beds and emergency rooms. It's been tough on her, and it's been tough on me.

Now Jenn hasn't died, and there's absolutely no immediate danger of that happening. But the ongoing grief I endure as she continues to suffer has led me to the very same questions that Mike addresses in connection with the tsunami. As C.S. Lewis documented in A Grief Observed, grief can lead even the staunchest defenders of the faith to question their beliefs-or even worse, as Lewis himself worried, not to question God's existence but to believe very much that He exists, and that He's an ogre: a cosmic "vivisectionist."

But if we read Lewis closely, we may observe that it's precisely when we are in the midst of grief that we are least capable of adequately understanding God, His nature and His purposes. Our judgment is impaired. Physically, we are drained. Emotionally, we are taut, sometimes past the point of breaking. We have no perspective, and little ability to get it.

So that's where I'm at right now, and have been for some time, really. Friends who have read my contributions to this journal over the last few months have noted that my mood is unnaturally dark.

But something else happened over the last few days that has helped put things in perspective for me a bit.

I ran into a colleague last weekend at a conference. Back in 1972, when I was in fifth grade, his brother (whom I will call Bill) took me under his wing. Bill was one of the young men in the church, twenty or so years old. I was a screwed up, terrified kid who desperately needed friendship. One week while I was at summer camp, Bill sent me letters. I kept one of them, one which was particularly creative and funny, because to me those letters were literally a lifeline. The friendship was only for a season, of course, but that season was a bleak emotional winter.

In 1982 or thereabouts, I got word that Bill had died from AIDS. At that time, no one really knew much about AIDS or about the global epidemic it would become. But we did know that in Bill's case it was contracted through homosexual activity.

Bill's death ripped his family apart, and the controversy over Bill's closet homosexuality ripped them from their church. The wounds were raw and deep. No one seemed to remember that Bill was kind and good-hearted.

When I saw Bill's brother last weekend, I was reminded of that letter and took it to him the next day. I told him that I wanted his mother to have it, as a token of my gratitude and respect.

Bill's brother read that letter out loud, and he laughed. And then he cried. I hugged him. When I left him, he was on the way to the men's room to cry some more.

Tragedy rips us apart, tears us up and throws us in the dust bin. But without our own personal tragedy, those around us would never have the opportunity to show us grace, compassion and tenderness-even thirty years later.

While we grieve, will we always notice the hand of God in the actions of those around us? No, because we're often incapable. But it doesn't mean the loving hand of God isn't there.

And that's the point, really: In our grief and anger, we are only too willing to perceive God's fist crushing us. And that's natural. But the reality of God's hand lies elsewhere-in you and in me, and in how we treat others.

To Mike and Greg's credit, they don't sandbag the assumptions behind their efforts to find meaning in suffering. And if I bought into their assumption that there really is a God behind all of this, their line of reasoning wouldn't sound too bad. But I'm not so sure I do.

Nonetheless, I also find in myself a strong, almost desperate desire to find meaning in human suffering, whether or not such meaning really exists. After all, suffering is unavoidable.

But let's consider for a moment an alternative view, one propounded by atheist Bertrand Russell in his book Why I Am Not A Christian. Russell points out that in "the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was ... every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people." He goes on to assert that religion has always been a roadblock to science and to any form of progress. So in terms of tsunamis, AIDS and other disasters, Russell would probably argue that religion does little to really alleviate or find "meaning" in such suffering, getting in the way more than it helps. Like with Terry Schiavo. Ahem.

As to my own overwhelming desire to make meaning out of my suffering, Russell would likely argue that it is merely symptomatic of very strong early associations that were religious in nature—and that such early associations are far stronger than later, more reasonable associations, naturally standing in the way of healthy, rational conclusions about suffering.

Now, we should be aware that Russell thought he knew what a Christian was even though he wasn't one, and even had a very poor working definition of "Christian." Imagine the ubiquitous TV doc Sanjay Gupta writing a book titled Why I Am Not A Lawyer. Who besides doctors (and those who hate lawyers) would find such a book very credible? Okay, maybe a lot of gullible people would.

But whether we agree with Bertrand Russell, or with Mike and Greg, we can say this about all three: they've all got very nice theories about things that they fundamentally can't understand. At least Mike and Greg seem to admit as much.

In 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul speaks of Christianity as "the ministry of reconciliation."⁵ By this, he means that the central story of the faith is the reconciliation of Man to God through the blood of His Son, Jesus. Christianity, then, is the ministry of reconciliation because all who claim the name of Christ are ministers—literally, servants in the Greek—of God's specific conciliatory purpose.

But Christianity is not only the ministry of reconciliation—it is the ministry of all things godly. One of the other theological terms applied to the act of Jesus' death on the cross is redemption. In conceiving Hollywood Jesus, David Bruce understood that Christianity is also the ministry of redemption—and in particular, it is the redemptive hope for our culture: not through legislation, stone-throwing or critical negativity, but through showing us the godly things already embedded in our culture. For God reveals Himself through all that He has created, even the things that we may not particularly like.

After Eden is dedicated to this redemptive vision. We believe, as G.K. Chesteron put it, that "humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea."⁶ That's not a reality we endorse. We'd like to help salvage the gold from the gutter, and rescue the diamonds from the sea.

Mike Gunn is a pastor at Harambee Church in Tukwila, Washington, and was cofounder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

Jenn Wright is a writer with degrees in literature and theology. She is co-writing the Narnia coverage for Hollywood Jesus, which has debuted this fall in anticipation of the first movie's 2005 release.

Hollywood Jesus Senior Editor Greg Wright is a writer and ordained minister of the dramatic arts. He teaches English Literature at Puget Sound Christian College, and is author of Peter Jackson in Perspective: The Power Behind Cinema's The Lord of the Rings.

Editor Dave Stark is an ordained minister and former Microsoft manager. He is now a partner in Restoring Hope Construction.

The Devil's Advocate is a composite personality of our consultants and editorial staff. He may look like someone you know—and probably thinks like a lot of them.

A Sri Lankan
On Surviving

Without my wife I don't want to live. But because of my child, I will.¹

Matthew Parris
On Cataclysms

Yes! Sweep them away! Show us how small is Man! Show us how easily this Universe can make matchwood of our dreams!²

Claire Short
On Tsunami Relief

Only really the UN can do that job... It is the only body that has the moral authority.³

Fred Phelps
On the Tsunami

We sincerely hope and pray that all 20,000 Swedes are dead, their bodies bloated on the ground or in mass graves or floating at sea feeding sharks and fishes or in the bellies of thousands of crocodiles washed ashore by tsunamis.⁴

Chesterton
On Perception
It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men... have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.⁷