Bad things happen. And when they do — especially when they happen to good people — one question seems to lurk beneath all the others: Where is God?
There have been many reasons to ask that question of late. And whether we’re trying to process violence on a Utah college campus, a light rail train in Charlotte or at a school Mass in Minneapolis, “Where is God?” is a question we’ve been hearing a lot.
Senseless violence, like what we’ve been witnessing, causes us all to question. But “Where is God?” is the question of the unbeliever — the taunting refrain that amplifies doubt and mocks whoever believed in the first place. “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’…As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?'” (Ps 42).
Trauma distorts how we see the world. It paints a picture of reality in which the stakes couldn’t be higher and survival is anything but certain. In this context, it’s tempting to believe that God is far from us at best, and, at worst, uncaring or cruel. In that dark place, some lose their faith entirely. And when they do, it’s because they find it easier to reject the existence of God than to assume the burden of having to make excuses for him. It’s easier to say there is no God than to keep looking for him amid the rubble and in the dark.
Suffering — even when it isn’t ours — dislodges us. It moves us from where we’ve settled, either closer to God or further away from him. But when suffering is close to us, when the pain is ours, it is the silver platter on which a very clear choice is presented to us: to believe in God — and trust him — or not to.
That choice was tangible at an interfaith prayer service organized to reflect on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Two decades later, the emotions remain raw, and the overwhelming losses are still keenly felt. But those who ultimately responded to the damage they sustained with faith, aren’t wondering where God was in the storm. They know he was right there with them, and that he still is.
“We may have lost things,” thundered Brandon Boutin, senior pastor of United Fellowship Full Gospel Baptist Church. “We may even have lost people. But we did not lose the presence of God.”
Our faith teaches us that God is present in every circumstance, in every place and time — without exception. God is never absent, not even in the darkest, most horrific circumstances we struggle to imagine.
If all that is true, we should be able to see evidence of it even in a Nazi concentration camp. Anyone who thinks that’s stretching it should see the new film “Bau, Artist at War,” opening in theaters on September 26.
Holocaust romance isn’t exactly a well-developed genre, but that is what Joseph and Rebecca Bau’s compelling real-life story is. I won’t risk any spoilers. But shortly before his death in 2002, Bau was asked, “How did you find the strength to get through the holocaust?” His answer turned the question on its head. “It isn’t about strength,” Bau replied. “It’s about love.”
Faith doesn’t just change the answers to our questions; it changes the questions we ask. To be clear, believers still have questions — plenty of them. But instead of wondering where God is, or if he is, the person of faith responds to tragic circumstances with an entirely different line of inquiry. “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?” (Ps 139). The answer the psalmist reveals in the verses that follow is simple: nowhere.
God is present in today’s news, in trauma we would rather not remember, and in events long relegated to history. God can be found amid shards of bullet-shattered stained glass. He can be encountered on a rooftop surrounded by water stretching as far as the eye can see, and he lives in the crevices between concrete and barbed wire.
Because God is love, the setting does not matter. Every story can be a love story. We don’t need strength or resilience to get through the worst circumstances imaginable. We only need love. And no matter where life leads us, love is already there waiting to meet us.
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a sinner, Catholic convert, freelance writer and editor, musician, speaker, pet-aholic, wife and mom of eight grown children, loving life in New Orleans.
