This week I have been puzzling over questions whose answers are not as clear-cut as I would like them to be. I feel desensitised in many respects when I watch the news or read what is happening in the world. The horrors reported from Israel, from Iraq, from other countries are told in graphic detail, but my response to them seems almost detached. It’s as if I cannot cope with any more atrocities, any further acts of barbarity, any more slaughter or torture. Instead of being moved and broken by these stories, I feel numb. as if anaesthetised to pain. My eyes register the horror; my ears hear the wails… and yet I feel like I have a heart of stone at times. Scripture urges us to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn (Rom 12:15). It urges us to remember those who are being mistreated as if we ourselves were suffering. (Heb 13:3) God clearly has little patience with the self-seeking and self-righteous; He urges us to ‘learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.Take up the cause of the fatherless;plead the case of the widow’ (Is 1:17), to ‘loose the chains of injusticeand untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed freeand break every yoke.Is it not to share your food with the hungryand to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe them,and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood‘ (Is 58:6-7), to rend our hearts and not our clothes. (Joel 2:13) The whole Bible rails against injustice and suffering with powerful imagery and fervent passion. My spectator reaction is not right.
Then I learned of the death of Robin Williams, an actor whose talents I have much appreciated over the years, and the tragic nature of his death and his struggles with mental illness and addictions instantly shocked and pierced me. Which led to further questions. How could I hear of the deaths of thousands of Iraqi Christians without weeping and yet be stunned into tears by the tragic death of one man? Why could one death move me when so many left me simply numb?
It is easy to castigate ourselves for the failings in our responses, but worldly sorrow simply leads to regret. I think questions often tell us more than answers ever do (‘Could It Be?’, Michael Card) and it is important to wrestle with the anomalies and shortcomings of our hearts without being overwhelmed by them (God is greater than our hearts, as John reminds us!) For me, part of the answer lies in the individual. Robin Williams is one person. I can empathise with his failings and shortcomings, with his struggles with depressions, with the aching, insidious nature of addiction. I can understand how one person can live with both joy and agony at the same time, how difficult it is to hear the voice of God above all the other voices shouting out to us or whispering snide suggestions to our hearts. I can weep with such a person and with their families because I understand the relentless, ongoing nature of mental struggles.
When we are faced with mass torture, rape and slaughter, when tragedies such as the Holocaust are taught in history classes, the sheer scale of the suffering overwhelms us. The only way we cope is to become detached from it. For us to truly be moved, we have to have some individual we can relate to rather than ‘humanity’. ‘Humanity’ is too impersonal for us. As we are individual, so we have to enter into suffering with individuals. Empathy cannot be impersonal.
Helplessness also freezes our responses. We feel powerless, useless, unable to do anything that can make the situation any better. We wonder if our signature on a petition (such as the one here) really will make any difference, or even if our prayers can change our personal situations, let alone world situations. Helplessness paralyses, which is why despair is so numbing.
God constantly affirms the value of the individual and the value of the individual’s response. Our individual prayers and individual actions are required if we are to see change in the world. As we wrestle with God over the state of our own concrete hearts, as we beg Him to soften our hearts and help us to see the world with His eyes, as we long to be like Jeremiah, a prophet whose eyes overflowed with tears (Jer 9:18, 13:17, 14:17, Lam 1:16), as we pray ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt 6:10), we hold on to the fact that the individual matters and that God knows each individual and cares for them. We may well have no answers. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t, nor does it mean He is not actively working in situations that seem, to our natural eyes, desolate and hopeless. God is sovereign and in control, even when we so clearly are not.