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."
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