A mother's death: is this what God demands?

A death in the family, especially a sudden, senseless death, plunges the heart into mourning and forces a test of faith.

Thirty hours after our family's celebration of the arrival of our son's beautiful infant daughter, her mother died. Suddenly an unsuspected embolism extinguished the life of a wonderful young woman, just as she had fulfilled her long-awaited desire to become a mother.

In one dreadful moment her family and friends moved from ecstatic joy to deepest sorrow. Together we stumbled into a future forever changed.

We came home with our son and his six-day-old infant and began to cope--one day at a time. Fortunately, the out-pouring of love, support, and care from family, friends, and neighbors has been extraordinary.

By now our family has become mobilized in a household rearranged to take care of this precious new life. The darling baby girl appears to be an angel child, sent to charm and heal us by her happy nature. No wonder parents, grand-parents, relatives, and friends become besotted in their adoration. I had forgotten how completely babies deserve their royal status and how naturally they enjoy the worship of their delighted subjects.

But even as gratitude and wonder fill the air, so do the grievous questions aroused by tragic dying. Do we live on after death? Why do bad things happen to good people?

The answer to the question is settled for me. Yes, I believe with every bone in my body that Christ gives us eternal life. I can no more doubt existence of a unique resurrected identity than I can doubt my own bodily being. We go toward those we love and have lost. I also firmly believe in a just and good God's triumphant completion of creation; in the new Jerusalem, love will reign and every tear will be wiped away.

But a belief in God's gift of resurrection and eternal life does not do away with the pain of parting and the horror of absurd accidents and evil events. In the meantime, here and now, why is there so much unjust suffering and dreadful evil? How can a good, all-powerful God allow so much pain and sorrow in the creation? Job's complaint still moves us.

Our anguished cries of protest have pushed today's believers in new theological directions. At this point I can no longer accept the idea that there is some hidden divine plan or blueprint in which evil events are foreordained and/or knowingly sent to us for some greater spiritual good. True, human suffering seems to deepen character and make most persons more empathetic and wise. And yes, rising to the challenge of suffering in a courageous way can give meaning and dignity to life--after the fact. But what of those who are crushed, diminished, and destroyed by suffering? And can the lessons learned by those who learn them really be worth the price?

Moreover, the evil we experience can hardly be accounted for by humankind's freely willed choices or even by the potent social structures of sin which exercise abusive power in every society. Alas, there are too many random chance events beyond any human action that eventuate in too many senseless tragedies that appear bereft of any meaning.

If God is a good God of mercy and loving kindness, then somehow God must have become helpless to intervene and order this world and space-time we inhabit. At least an older view of a fallen world in thrall to Satan and evil powers provided some explanation. But while I have ritually in my baptismal vows time and again "rejected Satan," I have never actually wondered whether this mythical personification might be a way of symbolically converying to us that the universe is fallen and deeply awry. I've wondered whether scientific talk of alternate universes or prior creations, or other dimensions of time and space within black holes, could mean that the evil we experience here may be some form of toxic leakage from some other disordered reality. We can no longer believe in Miltonic depictions of rebellious angels at war in heaven, but perhaps there has been some other disastrous "fall."

Yet optimists propose a sunnier vision in which evil is viewed as an element inherent in a dynamic evolving creation, or as part of those groaning pangs of birth described by Saint Paul. Here God is the primary cause of all and is a Creator who creates and sustains the secondary causes of nature--which must be invested with their own inviolable integrity. Such a Creator cannot contravene the workings of creation. Random chance, along with lawfulness, are the secondary causes needed to allow spontaneity, flexibility, evolution, and most importantly, real human freedom and creativity. So God's self-limitation of omnipotence is a free and voluntary act of love.

In this theological picture God has emptied Godself into the processes of the universe and through the Spirit of Love empowers and consistently urges and lures the whole toward fullness of life. As Elizabeth A. Johnson expresses it, "Indwelling the world with the power of providential love, the gracious mystery of God is involved in suffering with the beloved creation as new life is created through death. Not the monarch but the lover becomes the paradigm" ("Does God Play Dice? Divine Providence and Chance," Theological Studies, March 1996).

Surely, Johnson continues, we can resonate to the idea of a loving, risk-taking creator God as "the master theatrical improvisor in live performance," who is "everywhere present and active, continuously interacting with the world to implement divine purpose while granting creatures and created systems a full measure of being and efficacy." This dynamic, evolving vision of divine providence creatively working through chance is preferable to viewing God as One who implacably sends suffering and special crosses with our names on them.

Yet in these new theological visions inspired by the new science and process theology there's still something missing. The blood of the Lamb perhaps? Doesn't this account airbrush from the picture the horrible reality of the excruciating and excessive disasters human beings suffer? I don't know. In a dark time, I'm at a loss.