He was rushed to a hospital where, after being strapped to a gurney for seven hours, a doctor broke the bad news: “Your neck is broken and a bone fragment may have nicked a major artery.” Then the doctor said, “This is a life-threatening situation. Here’s a phone. You may want to contact your loved ones and tell them goodbye.”
Yancey is still with us, still asking and answering the tough questions. But it was the questions he asked himself as he lay in pain, strapped to a board, speaking what could have been final words to loved ones that gave life to his latest book, What Good is God?
Yancey traveled to some of the pain-ridden locations on the planet and asked people who had been broken in body, spirit or both: Does belief in God really matter when life gets tough?
Their answers form the heart of his new book. The people Yancey profiles include former prostitutes trying to escape the sex trade in Thailand, leaders in the underground church in China, and members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
When the editors of Conversations: A Forum for Authentic Transformation, decided to do an issue on theodicy titled “The Problem of Pain,” we could think of no one we would rather hear from than Philip Yancey.
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GWM: Philip, you’ve written a lot about issues of theodicy (Where is God When it Hurts, Disappointment with God, Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference, and What Good is God?). On a personal level, what has motivated you to write so much in this area?
PY: I’ve mentioned in some of my writing that my father died of polio just after my first birthday. Five thousand people in a prayer chain were praying for him, and those closest to him believed he could be healed. With his own consent he was removed from an iron lung and, a few weeks later, died. My entire childhood was lived under that cloud of unanswered prayer and the apparently meaningless death of a twenty-four-year-old missionary candidate.
Later, as a young journalist, I began writing “Drama in Real Life” articles for Reader’s Digest, and I heard from my interview subjects again and again that after a life-threatening tragedy, “the church made it worse” with confusing and contradictory counsel: God is punishing you; No, it’s Satan; No, it’s God but out of love not punishment, for you’ve been specially selected to demonstrate faith.
I didn’t know how to respond to those people, and when I don’t know something I write a book about it. That affords the opportunity to go to experts and libraries and the Bible in search of answers. I wrote Where Is God When It Hurts—my first book, really—at the age of twenty-seven, a rather audacious age to be investigating theodicy, but I needed answers for myself. In the process of writing that book I came across Dr. Paul Brand, who had a unique angle on the subject of pain, and we ended up writing three books together.
GWM: Thank you, Philip, for being so transparent. I had a similar experience with the “unfair” death of a loved one. I was older, about twenty-one instead of one, and it was my cousin, not my father. But it caused me to do some investigating of theodicy. I describe some of that experience in the front page of this issue of Conversations and I introduce three of the “classic” models of theodicy: Augustinian, Iraenean, and Kushnerian. I cannot say that I’m a fan of any one of these models. What are your thoughts?
PY: Frankly, I have problems with each of these classic formulations. Augustine’s is too simplistic and doesn’t really hold up in light of what we know through science. Creatures such as the tiger and the vulture and many others depend on death for their very existence, and always have. Also, as I’ve tried to show through my work with Dr. Brand, pain is integral to healthy life on this planet; take pain away and you have the dangers of the disease leprosy and all the resultant problems of living with painlessness.
GWM: And you call yourself a Presbyterian?
PY: Well, I do agree with the basic Augustinian approach that, in C. S. Lewis’s phrase, Earth shows characteristics of “a good thing, bent.” Creation demonstrates the brilliance of original design, yes, but one distorted by some disruption that has marred God’s intent, a stain that will only be removed through a divine act of restoration. With that macro-view, I agree. Look more closely at the specifics of creation and the Fall, however, and the position is more difficult to defend. I believe pain was present before the Fall: God told Eve her pains would increase in childbearing. And normal life on this planet needs the protective warning system of pain. Most probably death was present in creation as well, for nature depends on it, and perhaps God’s warning about eating the fruit applied to spiritual death, not physical death.
GWM: That is a very interesting line of thought, Philip. And what about the other two positions?
PY: The Iraenean approach has some support in the Bible, which indeed describes an ongoing spiritual warfare. Yet it offers cold comfort to parents who have just lost their two-year-old to leukemia, or to people whose town got flattened by a tornado. It seems more an abstract approach to the problem, and suffering never comes in the abstract.
Rabbi Kushner’s approach has great appeal—witness the success of his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. But I fail to see biblical support for it. The Book of Job, the Bible’s classic investigation into theodicy, concludes at the end with the Bible’s strongest defense of God’s power, not weakness.
GWM: Do you have a preferred personal theodicy?
PY: It’s easy to critique others on this topic, I know. I don’t have an airtight “answer” to theodicy, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims to. I have some general principles, beginning with the basic trilogy of creation/fall/redemption: the world is good (including the magnificent protective mechanism of pain and the beauties of nature); the world is bad (evil, suffering, “Nature, red in tooth and claw”From “In Memoriam A.H.H.” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.); the world can be and will be redeemed (with a part played by those who establish settlements of God’s kingdom and a larger part played by a cataclysmic act of restoration as described in the Prophets, the Epistles, and in Revelation).
Perhaps more importantly, I turn to Jesus, who avoided questions of “Why?” and emphasized a response of faithful trust, and who never lectured on pain as punishment but rather responded with compassion and healing to those who were suffering. More, Jesus voluntarily took on pain himself, dignifying it in a way and, as Hebrews mysteriously comments, learning in the process.
GWM: Yes, you mention in your book that the Jews, schooled in Old Testament prophecies, had a saying: “Where Messiah is, there is no misery.”Philip Yancey. What Good is God?: In Search of a Faith That Matters (Nashville: 2010), 27. After Jesus you could change that saying to, “Where misery is, there is the Messiah?” What does that mean to you on a personal level?
PY: In our incorrigibly ranking world, it is very easy for someone living in poverty or with a physical disability to feel inferior, and for someone in travail to feel that God has abandoned him or her. Jesus went out of his way to elevate such people: the woman with an issue of blood, leprosy victims, a widow who lost her only son, even a Roman centurion whose servant had fallen ill. Jesus gave God a face, and it was streaked with tears, literally, on at least three occasions: when Jesus lost his friend Lazarus, when he faced his own great trial of pain, when he looked out over Jerusalem and—like a grieving parent—realized the fate of those who continued to choose self-destructive behavior.
After getting to know this Jesus, when I experience pain, such as my broken neck a few years ago, I spend no energy wondering whether God is punishing me. I remember the face of Jesus and realize that, yes, where misery is, there is the Messiah offering comfort and hope.
GWM: I love that; thank you. Philip, how did the pain of your near-death experience change the way you live on any random Tuesday?
PY: For the first few weeks I walked around in what I call a “daze of grace,” staring with wonder and gratitude at simple things like trees and clouds and common birds. I had experienced a second chance at life, and I embraced it with the enthusiasm of a child. It’s impossible to sustain that kind of spirit—or, I should say, impossible for me. The gutters leak, the computer acts up, the car has a flat tire . . . life grinds me down.
As I say in the book, while lying strapped to a backboard uncertain whether I would live through the day, I came up with only three questions worthy of my attention at such a time: (1) Whom do I love? (2) What have I done with my life? and (3) Am I ready for whatever is next?
Since then, I have indeed tried to keep those questions at the forefront. I’ve been married some forty-one years, and the four years we’ve shared together since the accident have been more intentional and more rewarding than most of the others. I no longer write whatever comes to mind; I choose what I must get down on paper before my life does end. I learned the obvious lesson, yet one we often neglect—that we can’t count on anything more than the breath we just inhaled.
GWM: Thank you for that. You write a lot in What Good is God? about AA and a memorable friend, George, who’s found a lot of help there. What do churches need to learn from AA?
PY: Honesty and dependence. I wish church would reward us for honesty—yet too often it punishes us. Church can create its own ladder of superiority or “righteousness,” which fosters hypocrisy. If you’re feeling deeply guilty or deeply doubtful, church can loom as a barrier. Oddly, those were the very kind of people attracted to Jesus. And those are the kind of people who cling to AA as if to a lifeline.
If we are indeed honest with ourselves, we must admit we need help from others and from God. The Twelve Steps spell that out so clearly, and I wish more churches would present themselves as refuges for thirsty beggars coming to a place where grace flows on tap.