Where Is God When it Hurts/What's So Amazing About Grace?

own as well as that of all believers—can crush instead of liberate.”

In his book Guilt and Grace, the Swiss doctor Paul Tournier, a man of deep personal faith, admits, “I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that religion—my

Too often we more resemble the grim folks who gather to eat boiled bread than those who have just partaken of Babette’s feast.

The woman was reading Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, the book that has stayed on The New York Times Best-Sellers list longer than any other.

Grace came to Norre Vosburg as it always comes: free of charge, no strings attached, on the house.

Suppose, contrary to fact, that this world were a paradise from which all possibility of pain and suffering were excluded. The consequences would be very far-reaching. For example, no one could ever injure anyone else: the murderer’s knife would turn to paper or his bullets to thin air; the bank safe, robbed of a million dollars, would miraculously become filled with another million dollars (without this device, on however large a scale, proving inflationary); fraud, deceit, conspiracy, and treason would

and perils which—subtracting man’s own very considerable contribution— our world contains it would have to contain others instead.
To realize this is … to understand that this world, with all its “heartaches and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” an environment so manifestly not designed for the maximization of human pleasure and the minimization of human pain, may be rather well adapted to the quite different purpose of “soul-making.”3
In some ways it would be easier for God to step in, to have faith for us, to help us in extraordinary ways. But he has instead chosen to stand before us, arms extended, while he asks us to walk, to participate in our own soul-making. That process always involves struggle, and often involves suffering

somehow always leave the fabric of society undamaged. Again, no one would ever be injured by accident: the mountain-climber, steeple-jack, or playing child falling from a height would float unharmed to the ground; the reckless driver would never meet with disaster. There would be no need to work; there would be no call to be concerned for others in time of need or danger, for in such a world there could be no real needs or dangers.
To make possible this continual series of individual adjustments, nature would have to work “special providences” instead of running according to general laws which men must learn to respect on penalty of pain and death. The laws of nature would have to be extremely flexible: sometimes an object would be hard and solid, sometimes soft.…
One can at least begin to imagine such a world. It is evident that our present ethical concepts would have no meaning in it. If, for example, the notion of harming someone is an essential element in the concept of wrong action, in our hedonistic paradise there could be no wrong actions—nor any right actions in distinction from wrong. Courage and fortitude would have no point in an environment in which there is, by definition, no danger or difficulty. Generosity, kindness, the agape aspect of love, prudence, unselfishness, and all other ethical notions which presuppose life in a stable environment, could not even be formed. Consequently, such a world, however well it might promote pleasure, would be very ill adapted for the development of the moral qualities of human personality. In relation to this purpose it would be the worst of all possible worlds.
It would seem, then, that an environment intended to make possible the growth in free beings of the finest characteristics of personal life, must have a good deal in common with our present world. It must operate according to general and dependable laws; and it must involve real dangers, difficulties, problems, obstacles, and possibilities of pain, failure, sorrow, frustration, and defeat. If it did not contain the particular trials

have said that the megaphone of pain makes it difficult to accept that we have been placed on this “groaning” planet to pursue hedonistic pleasure. But if our happiness is not God’s goal, what, then, does God intend for this world? Why bother with us at all?
To help understand, think of an illustration from a human family. A father determined to exclude all pain from his beloved daughter’s life would never allow her to take a step. She might fall down! Instead, he picks her up and carries her wherever she goes or pushes her in a carriage. Over time such a pampered child will become an invalid, unable to take a step, totally dependent on her father.
Such a father, no matter how loving, would end up failing in his most important task: to nurture an independent person into adulthood. It would be far better for the daughter herself if her father stands back and lets her walk, even if it means allowing her to stumble. Apply the analogy directly to Job who, by standing on his own in the midst of suffering, without the benefit of soothing answers, gained powerful new strength. As

Rabbi Abraham Heschel has said, “Faith like Job’s cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.”