God Is Good, Part 2
God is good. All the time. Not because of my circumstances. But because of His character. Yet, in our North American, Western culture, we've lost sight of that in so many ways. Understanding God's goodness apart from my circumstances... viewing my circumstances through the lens of God's character rather than God's character through the lens of my circumstances, is not just a matter of perspective. It's a matter of theology.
What strikes me, having spent an entire month in East Africa, is how we Westerners question God's goodness because of our circumstances. It is a question many around the world don't really get to ask.
Modern day slaves, the global poor, and people living in oppressive cultures know nothing of our intolerance for suffering. Their lives epitomize suffering; they have rarely experienced anything else. And, for many of them, the suffering is considered a consequence or punishment...something they deserve. They aren't questioning God's goodness... the god (or gods) they worship offer no such luxury. We aren't questioning God's goodness on their behalf, either. If we're comfortable, then we have no problem with God's goodness.
This topic is so sensitive for me that I actually got up and walked out of church a few weeks ago. The pastor wasn't preaching bad theology. In fact, I'm sure his theology was fine. But I couldn't sit and listen. The realities of the suffering I've seen are too vivid in my mind to listen to someone try to explain why God is still good to a room full of people who don't understand how good their lives really are. Because for so many people in the world, life is really hard.
Afuwa, whose glassy eyes look up at me through a fever-induced haze, wasn't asking about God's goodness as she lay on the packed dirt floor of the "sick room" where she went to school. Hope wasn't asking that question as she lay in my arms, too weak to even hold a water bottle to her lips; her mother wasn't asking that question either, though she had ample reason. The third wife of an older man, her existence was harsh and defined by hard work.
Daniel (not his real name), a tiny baby boy whose fragile body wasn't strong enough to withstand the rigors of abandonment, never had the opportunity to ask such a question; he died before he was six months old. Mama Madeline is a strong woman, standing close to 6 feet tall, which is very tall for a Rwandan. Her confident steps, aided by the cane that belies
Rwandans probably have the greatest reason of all for doubting God's goodness. They have just wrapped up the 24th observance of their "Days of Remembrance," the 100-day period where they acknowledge and contemplate the horrors of the genocide. Their "Liberation Day" coincides with our "Independence Day," though for them it is a much different kind of commemoration. What they say, however, is so different than what the average American would imagine... over and over I heard people say, "Everyone else left Rwanda. God never did." They also say that God may visit other places during the day, "but He sleeps in Rwanda."
These beautiful, broken people understand something that privileged Americans somehow struggle to embrace; suffering doesn't diminish God's character. God is still good, even when life doesn't feel good.
A recent post on Facebook, attributed to Elizabeth Elliot, struck me. It put into words what I haven't been able to express about suffering:
I think that may be the secret of my beloved African friends... whether Rwandan, Ugandan, or Kenyan; they have an absolute confidence in God. They have to. Their life situation doesn't afford them the luxury of doubt or confusion or distraction. Learning to look at life through the lens of confidence in God, instead of through the lens of how comfortable life is, may be the secret to their joy.
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