Friday, November 05, 2010

Tragedy leads Jesuit to write about finding God in midst of pain

The God of Jesus Christ does not send people pain, tragedy and suffering, and people who are hurting need to know that, said Jesuit Father Richard Leonard.

The Australian Jesuit wrote the book, "Where the Hell is God?" after becoming convinced that his struggle and reflection in dealing with his own family's suffering could help other people hold on to faith in God when tragedy hits their lives.

The title of the book comes from a question that his mother, a daily Mass-goer, asked repeatedly in 1988 when her daughter, Tracey, was left a quadriplegic after a car accident.

In the book, published by Paulist Press, Father Leonard wrote that if he thought God was responsible for his sister's accident, then he would have to leave "the priesthood, the Jesuits and the church."

A God who would hurt a 28-year-old like that is not a God that Father Leonard can believe in, he said. "I don't know that God, I don't want to serve that God, and I don't want to be that God's representative in the world."

When his mother asked him, "So where is God then?" he wrote that he replied, "I think God is as devastated as we are."

Interviewed in Rome, where he is teaching a communications course at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Father Leonard said that after 20 years of thinking, praying and speaking about where God is in the midst of suffering, and ministering to people who were hurting or struggling to help others in pain, he decided to write the book.

"People walk away from faith over this stuff," he said.

Christians talk and talk about a loving and compassionate God, he said. But when tragedy strikes, too many of them automatically believe they did something to deserve God's wrath, or that God wants to test them or some other variation on the theme that God actively sent the tragedy, he said.

"I've come to believe that many people believe in God as a tyrant and that God's presence in our lives is tyrannical," he said. Those people pray and try to live good lives because they want "to survive the regime" of the tyrant-God.

"In their quietest moments, they just want God to be kind to them," he said.

In the book, he wrote, "It would be impossible, I think, for any of us to truly love a God whom we honestly believed kills our babies, sends us breast cancer, makes us infertile and sets up car accidents to even up the score. Even on its own terms, this God looks like a small god, a petty tyrant, who seems to be in need of anger management class, where he might learn how to channel all that strong angry emotion into creation, not destruction."

Father Leonard said that while his book is informed by theology, Scripture studies and Catholic tradition, it is not an academic work, but a way to share a personal and pastoral approach to questions concerning God and human suffering.

"I want to hold on to an ancient theology of a God who is completely present to us, who doesn't go to sleep, who is unchanging," he said. The God of the earliest Christian tradition is the God who is love and gives life, he added.

Father Leonard said he recognizes that some people may think his idea of God being his best friend, crying with him when tragedy strikes, is a presentation that makes God too small, too close, but "the contrasting view is a God who is aloof," he said.

Many people lose their faith at the darkest moments of their lives because, although they have claimed to believe in a God who is love, deep down "they've made God the architect of their suffering," he said.

Father Leonard said that in his ministry, "the rawest grief I've ever dealt with is the grief of parents burying a child."

He said he tries to help them understand that "God didn't take your child. God doesn't need another angel in heaven. God is as devastated as you are right now, and God is right now weeping with us."

Two points come up over and over in Father Leonard's book: "God does not directly send pain, suffering and disease" and "God does not send accidents to teach us things, though we can learn from them."

He said he wrote the book "for a searching person who is trying to hold on to Christian faith in a loving God in the midst of pain and suffering and tragedy in their life."

 SIC: CNS/INT'L