"Sometimes facing reality can be quite discouraging."

The title of today's blog is a quote from the book "How Could a Loving God...?" by Ken Ham which I picked up last weekend during our family trip to the Creation Museum. Ham confronts the book's sub-title, Powerful Answers on Suffering and Loss, by combining Scriptural references and his own experience of dealing with the untimely death of his younger brother and ministry partner, Rob Ham.

As I began to dig into the book, I was honestly pretty disappointed. Ham takes a majority of the first three chapters, almost 60 pages, to tackle to logic of pain and suffering in this world. He begins in Genesis and moves through the fall of man and explains how sin is the ultimate reason for suffering. He reiterates over and over that when we look at loss and suffering through a "big picture" perspective, uncertainty surrounding trials seems almost silly. Though true and logical, these explanations don't offer a lot of insight into the more emotional and "human" side of suffering, which were promised in the extremely moving foreword and summary on the back of the book.

This morning, the light at the end of this "tunnel of logic" finally presented itself as Ham began to echo my own thoughts:

While the "big picture" put "the question" into a biblical framework, many other issues needed to be faced: What then should one expect out of life? Is this fair?

Throughout this chapter, Ham looked for advice in coping with his brother's degenerative and terminal brain disease by actually listening to a sermon Rob had given years earlier that focused on sin, sickness, and healing. Rob began this sermon much like his brother began this book, explaining that all sickness and death on earth is caused by sin, and although God does not promise exemption from disease to believers, He does "promise to comfort and strengthen us." Rob explains that "outside the Garden, the consequences of sin [not God's perfect design] dictate our destiny."

Ken continues the chapter discussing how some sins do see direct discipline on earth, but most disease and suffering are "simply" caused by sin in general, and though there are times when we suffer things that we didn't "earn" we are never sinless anyway. He continues this line of thinking for a few pages (now here's the real reason I am even discussing this), and makes this conclusion:

Fueled by frustration and feelings, these thoughts were tossed around in my mind. But as I continued to stand back and see the big picture (putting our specific situation into the broader biblical perspective), I was led to a conclusion that reflected God's perspective rather than my human one. Did Rob deserve to suffer the way he did? The answer is "yes."

Last night I had the privilege of seeing Star Trek at the drive-in with Mom and Nick, and today as I sat at Krista's reading this, I couldn't help but identify with poor Spock, torn between Vulcan logic and human emotion. Yes, what Mr. Ham is saying here is true, we deserve death (the ultimate suffering) for our sins, Romans 3:23 lays that out clearly, but do I really believe that anyone deserves the slow and painful death Rob Ham experienced? Could I look at a twenty-something girl torn apart by an abusive relationship or young father facing the loss of a premature baby and tell them that I truly believe because they are sinful they deserve what they are experiencing? The logic is sound, the scripture leads us to a sensible conclusion, but I don't think I can separate my emotion from this one. Suffering doesn't compute for me; I don't like when life hurts. I know it's necessary, I could probably even lead you through the apologetics of it all, but I don't think I will ever understand the "senseless," those things I see on the nightly news or read in the papers that make my heart break.