Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
I am sure that with me your heart was heavy at the death, pain and suffering of so many families in Beslan in Russia as a consequence of the recent terrorist outrage there. At times like this many people find themselves asking why? They also ask: "If there is a God why does he let such terrible things happen?"
During this Autumn season our Churches will be celebrating Harvest, and inevitably thinking about those people around the world for whom harvest is not a time for celebration but a time for tears, for lost hopes, for hunger and for despair, and we find ourselves asking why?
It was Victor Hugo who wrote in a time of black thoughts:
O God, thy world is dark! The music of the spheres
Is made of sighs and sobs no less than songs, I think.
So what is the answer? I think its important to recognise that God didn't make us robots programmed to live a life of luxury and without a care. Although, he did, as the first book of the Bible - Genesis - tells us, create for us a wonderful paradise where everything was perfect, but it was sin, greed and temptation that was our undoing, and so often it is human weakness that is at the heart of human suffering. Yet we still find ourselves blaming God for our suffering.
In the "Long Silence" billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Some of the groups near the front talked heatedly -- not with cringing shame, but with belligerence. "How can God judge us?" said one. "What does He know about suffering?" snapped a brunette. She jerked back a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!" In another group a black man lowered his collar. "What about this?" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. "Lynched for no crime but being black! We have suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved ones, toiled till death gave release." Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering He permitted in His world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where there was no weeping, no fear, no hunger, no hatred! Indeed, what did God know about what man had been forced to endure in this world? "After all, God leads a pretty sheltered life," they said.
So each group sent out a leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. There was a Jew, a black, an untouchable from India, an illegitimate, a person from Hiroshima, and one from a Siberian slave camp. In the center of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather simple: before God would be qualified to be their judge, He must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth -- as a man!
But because He was God, they set certain safeguards to be sure He could not use His divine powers to help Himself: Let Him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of His birth be doubted, so that none would know who is really His father. Let Him champion a cause so just, but so radical, that it brings down upon Him the hate, condemnation, and efforts of every major traditional and established religious authority to eliminate Him. Let Him try to describe what no man has ever seen, tasted, heard, or smelled--let Him try to communicate God to men. Let Him be betrayed by His dearest friends. Let Him be indicted on false charges, tried before a prejudiced jury, and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let Him see what it is to be terribly alone and completely abandoned by every living thing. Let Him be tortured and let Him die! Let Him die the most humiliating death--with common thieves.
As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the great throngs of people. But when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. For suddenly all knew -- God had already served His sentence.
Christians realise that God does understand human suffering because He has experienced it at first hand. He does, therefore, suffer with us as we suffer. He wants to be with us and to share our feelings and to reach out to us, in order to bring us hope and comfort in our time of need. That is the kind of God we believe in - a God who loves, who cares, who shares and who understands us better than we understand ourselves.
May God bless you all.