Yancey says God is on the side of the suffering

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Where is God when bad things happen? It’s a question that countless people ask when tragedy strikes and one that best-selling author Philip Yancey has contemplated his entire career.

It was the focus of Yancey’s first book, WhereIs God When It Hurts?, written 37 years ago when he was a young man of 27. Since that time, he has been asked to speak in the aftermath of tragedies around the world. He spoke to students, parents and community members after a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University left 33 dead in 2007 and he has tried to bring comfort to thousands of others in times of crisis.

In his latest book, The Question That Never Goes Away (Zondervan), Yancey once again tackles the question of why suffering exists. He shares stories from some of his more recent travels to speak to those in mourning, including to the shell-shocked residents of Bosnia who have seen their country torn apart by war and to the survivors of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan that left more than 19,000 dead. Perhaps the most heart-wrenching is his time in Newtown, Conn., where he spoke to a shattered community following the shooting deaths of 26 people, including 20 elementary school children.

“Indeed, it is the question that never goes away,” Yancey said. “When I wrote Where Is God When It Hurts?, I wrote it to work out my own faith.”

Yancey’s early life was marked by tragedy. His father, Marshall, was a young missionary stricken with polio and was being kept alive in an iron lung. His friends and family became so convinced that God would not let him die that they removed him from it and relied on prayer. But despite their fervent prayers he died. Philip Yancey was only a year old at the time. He didn’t learn about the details of his father’s death until he was a teenager and read about it in a newspaper clipping.

“It was one of those family secrets that people never talk about because they were wrong,” he said. “They thought they knew God’s will and they were wrong. So what I experienced is that the people I knew who were involved in that … never got over their disappointment with God and their anger. I think it affected their view of God.”

The lesson Yancey learned was “to be really careful projecting what we think is God’s will” and be careful offering easy answers to the cause of suffering.

For his latest book, Yancey said, he looked back on his experiences talking with people who have gone through great tragedies and realized he had learned much from them that he wanted to share - what helps, what hurts and what to say and what not to say to those who are suffering. What he has learned, he said, is to keep his mouth shut.

“We want to immediately come in with answers and there is no answer,” he said, adding that the well-intentioned things people sometimes say, like “God wanted a new flower in heaven,” aren’t what the grieving need to hear.

“We have to consciously restrain ourselves,” he said. “The first thing is to be present and respond with a touch and shared compassion and grief. Let the grieving person, the victims, raise the questions and decide what they want to talk about.”

Yancey said those suffering will often say they must have done something to deserve the pain - a comment he is quick to refute.

“All we have to do is go through the gospel and see how Jesus responds to people who are suffering. He responds with compassion and healing,” he said. “What I’ve learned is that God is always on the side of the one suffering. God joined us in our humanity, which included a pretty painful life. That speaks as loudly as God could speak.

“If we wonder, how does God feel … he gave us a good answer and it’s a face streaked with tears,” he said. “That’s how God responds to those in pain.”

Even with all of his experience comforting those who are hurting, Yancey said he struggled with what to say in Newtown. He had been invited by a pastor friend to speak at his church and knew that the audience would include teachers and employees from Sandy Hook Elementary where the shooting had taken place, as well as first responders, parents and community members grieving for their friends and loved ones.

“I knew I had to do it but it was terrifying in a way,” he said.

At the time Yancey had been reading books by some of the so-called “new atheists” who promote atheism and secularism, such as Richard Dawkins. He said he tried to imagine what they would say.

“It would be pretty bleak, that we live in a random universe,” he said. “That doesn’t do a lot for a parent who lost their 6-year-old. I thought it would be a huge challenge to my faith but it was oddly an affirmation and I was able to, with some confidence, offer words of both comfort and hope.”

Yancey said Christianity offers hope in the story of Jesus and it’s that hope he shares when speaking to those who are suffering.

“Christian hope promises that creation will be transformed. Until then, God evidently prefers not to intervene in every instance of evil or natural disaster. Rather, God has commissioned us as agents of intervention in the midst of a hostile and broken world,” he writes in the book.

Yancey said he hopes readers will be able to take what he has learned and apply it to their own personal pain.

“Those focused events can produce insights and practical help that we can apply in our own situation, whether losing a friend or a parent with Alzheimer’s,” he said.

Yancey said the calls to speak after such heartbreaking tragedies are difficult, but he considers it a privilege and he hopes others find comfort in his words, spoken and written.

Following the shootings in Newtown, Yancey’s publisher offered his book Where Is God When It Hurts? as a free e-book. He expected a few people would download the book. More than 100,000 did.

“It encourages me that they are seeking help at such a time,” he said. “That’s when we should lean on each other. That’s why I keep writing books. I think the church should be the one holding the hands. I wish those wounded by the church, or skeptics, I wish they would perceive the church as a place to go when you are hurting. Sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not but I keep writing to urge Christians, ‘Let’s be the place of all comfort.’ That’s our challenge.”

More information about Yancey is available online at philipyancey.com.

Religion, Pages 12 on 02/08/2014