Questions Suffering People May Ask

Introduction

In this section, I am grateful for a couple authors who have already given thought to congregational care within a congregation. I recommend Building a Caring Church, by Tom and Janie Lovorn (Victor Books, 1986), if you can get a copy. They write to equip church members who are part of -- to use a sports concept -- a "specialty team" for church care. Century Baptist hopes to transform ourselves away from a model of care which assumes only specialized gifted persons perform care, into a more general approach which emphasizes care within and bubbling out from the community life groups. But certain aspects of care will always require additional, specialized attention and training. And so we use these materials in that context. I also recommend Peter Kreeft's Making Sense Out of Suffering (Servant Books, also published in 1986), and will be drawing from comments he made.

As you make visits, you will observe many different kinds of physical, emotional, and spiritual need. Unless you have received specialized training yourself, you will not be qualified to handle all the problems you discover, but you will be in the business of making those burdens lighter. Your thoughtfulness that you may show to the person you are visiting can have a lot to do with a person's recovery in suffering, or help the person accept problems that will not respond to treatment.[1]

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[1] Lovorn, p.56

When You Visit Those Who Are Sick

Some we visit, who are sick, may ask "Why me? Why do I have to suffer in this way?" There are 40 chapters in the Old Testament devoted to answering that genre of questioning, and while many of the answers attempted in those chapters sound plausible, God's final word is one of silence. He does not have to account for what He allows and does not allow -- not because He is capricious and uncaring, but because what He is doing is too big and too complex for our minds to fathom! Consider 1 Samuel 3:11, or even Habakkuk 1:5 :

"Look...and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." (niv84).

The book of Job is also a case study in how ineffective and off base our attempts at explaining another person's suffering can be, so we who visit a sick person will do well to remember and admit that we do not fully know (or even have a remote clue!) why God might allow illness in our friend's life. We can offer our friend hope, but we cannot presume to know fully why our friend is sick.

However, the Lovorns suggest we gently answer this question with another question: "Why NOT me?" As I read this I though two things. First, as the authors state, we must be sensitive and gentle as we answer in this way [2], especially if we ourselves have not suffered in the same or substantially similar way as the person asking the question. To help set the tone if we want to try this response, we might ask the question "why NOT you?" not to put someone in their place but to lift the person's gaze toward what God may be doing in the midst of his or her suffering.

If God is at work in the midst of a person's physical suffering, is it because He is punishing the person for some sin or infraction? Often in the Old Testament it seems God demonstrated His power and His justice in that way. But in the New Testament and today, rarely is that the case; only in places like 1 Corinthians 11:30 and James 5:14-15 do we find correlations between illness and the possibility of un-repented-of sin. As a practical matter, we also acknowledge that if we have lived a lifestyle which naturally will bring a consequence of illness, there should not be surprise that illness develops. I love potato chips, and I enjoy soda pop. But too much of the oils and I will develop disease -- too much of the sugars and I will develop illness. That would not be God directly punishing me, but it would be a natural result of my indulging in these things (not that chips or soda pop are sin, but gluttony IS sin). We could add any number of other materials a person may ingest (tobacco, alcohol, various drugs whether legal or not). All this is to say that God does not always deal with us in these days after Jesus' resurrection in the same way He is recorded as interacting with people in the Old Testament. There are reasons of theology which make this difference, but I will limit myself here to our interacting with someone who is sick.

In the instance where I am trying to encourage someone who is sick as a direct result of sinful or foolish lifestyle choices he or she has made, and who is asking the "why me" question, I do sometimes ask the question "why not?" if the opportunity for further conversation will lead the person's thinking positively into a "where to from here?" discussion. If however the person is combative in his or her attitude, despite the person having lived a lifestyle which contributed to illness for which the person now asks "why?" the response "why not?" is not likely helpful at first.

It is possible too, that when our friend whom we visit cries out "why" they are not as much challenging for an answer, and simply expressing the dismay and confusion which often accompanies the experience of disaster. The Psalms are full of such "why?" questions, but which are words given to feelings of despair or confusion. In these cases the person asking "why" may not be looking for an answer as much as looking for God's face and His presence in the midst of the crisis. Part of our role in visiting is to try and understand where the sick person is coming from.

Sickness can also be God's refining work within and though our friend. We will want to help our friend think of his or her difficulties not as divine punishment, but as part of God's perfecting work. And the perfecting work may not even be in the person who is directly suffering, but may be intended to teach or refine those around the suffering person:

"Some sickness may come so that we will learn how to help others in similar situations. Sometimes it may come to allow others to respond to our needs...." [3]

So illness could be because of poor lifestyle choices, either choices by the individual him or herself, or by those surrounding the person. Illness could be a tool by which God is wanting to get the person's attention either to come to Him or come closer to Him. Illness could be a means through which God is refining one of His precious children. Illness could be a means by which God is refining and perfecting those around the sick person -- we might agree with this if the sick person is a follower of Jesus, but it can be equally true if the sick person is not a follower of Christ.

So we recognize a multitude of possible answers to our sick friend's question "why me?" and maybe the answer is altogether different as well. But there are answers. Sickness is not meaningless, even if we do not understand it.

For us as we come visit the sick person, some scriptures offer encouragement:

• Psalm 56:3

• 2 Corinthians 12:9

• James 5:14-16

• Matthew 11:28-30

Whatever the reasons for a person's sickness, whether obvious or obscured, we are beckoned in our visits to point our friend's gaze to Jesus, who alone is our Source of hope.

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[2] Lovorn, p.57

[3] Lovorn, p.57