Peace Without Any Answers

April 14, 2022 | By Yoska Guta TD’25

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God allow evil? Where is God in the midst of suffering?

Growing up, my parents always taught me that it was okay, and even good, to ask questions about and of God. And although I wanted to believe them, I was convinced that if I questioned God’s character or His decisions, He would either meet me with wrath or be deeply disappointed. So, I made a subconscious decision to never question. Instead, I wrote off moments where I couldn’t exactly see God’s goodness, love, or sovereignty by saying “things always happen for a reason” or “maybe I don’t need to understand to believe”. But eventually these phrases no longer satisfied or subdued my doubts. I simply couldn't figure out why God didn’t step in to heal, protect, or rescue. 

Since coming to college, I have wrestled with this question more often than I’d like to admit. This past month especially, as I’ve been reflecting on the ways I’ve seen my loved ones suffer throughout my upbringing, I found myself asking where God was. At some points, this wrestling looked like anger, sorrow, frustration, and resentment. At other points, it consisted of me asking the believers around me for their perspectives on suffering, in hopes of finding an answer that could put my heart and mind at ease. But neither my emotional rollercoasters nor my series of interrogations brought me any comfort. In fact, in many of the conversations I had, people told me the very things I least wanted to hear: pray, ask God, lament, and draw near. None of these things felt like they’d bring the kind of immediate solutions I was looking for, so I distanced myself from God and justified my actions by saying things like  “I don’t think I can genuinely seek God right now”, “I’m not sure He cares,” or “prayer just isn’t working for me.”  

Eventually, when I realized that all my efforts were in vain, I did exactly as they suggested. As I was praying one night, asking God where He was and why He refused to answer me, He met me in one of the most jarring and convicting ways I’ve ever experienced. In that moment of prayer, I felt the Lord ask me: what would be a sufficient answer, Yoska? In your mind, what must I do regarding this situation to prove that I am still God? Must I bend at your will and give you all the answers before you can trust me? 

I was completely speechless. In that moment of prayer, the Lord revealed to me that my issue with suffering, though initially rooted in real pain, had become a means by which I became God in my own life. I had started using my suffering to justify making demands of God. I had decided that God would only be God if He either ended the suffering I was seeing or if He gave me an explanation for His actions that I deemed sufficient. I, a mere human, who is broken and sinful in more ways than I can count, was turning around and making demands to the King of the universe. 

The next morning I came across “Where Were You,” a song by Ghostship about the story of Job. The song starts with “Job” asking God how he should make sense of the world's brokenness. His chorus ends with him asking God, “Will You not say anything else to me?” 

In Job 38, God responds by asking Job what role he has played in creating, organizing, and sustaining the creation around him. Immediately after, in chapter 40, God follows up by asking Job the very question that clearly captured what was wrong with my heart posture:

“8 Will you even put me in the wrong?

     Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?

  9 Have you an arm like God,

     and can you thunder with a voice like his?” 

It wasn’t my asking or seeking that was wrong, but the fact that I had equated my inability to comprehend the existence of suffering with the absence— or worse, unjustness— of God. But, oh how gracious is He, that when I “uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know,” He met me where I was and answered me (Job 42:3). 

I’ve realized that I may never be able to find an answer to my initial questions. And even if I do, I cannot be sure that it’ll succeed in alleviating the pain that I feel. Instead, I’ve realized that my ultimate goal shouldn’t be to solve the riddle of suffering, but to seek out the kind of peace that surpasses it . Ultimately, I’ve found this assurance through understanding that while my circumstances may be far from ideal, I can rest  in knowing that God’s promises are true, God’s will is good, and God is with me.      

In Genesis 3:15, God makes His first promise to humankind. This promise, which theologians call the “protoevangelium” or the first mention of the good news, is God's promise to one day redeem creation after Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Though it took nearly 4000 years before mankind saw this come to pass, in the perfect time, Jesus Christ, God Himself, humbly entered this world clothed in flesh. And after 33 ½ years of life, this humble servant, “poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12). After three days, Christ resurrected, displaying complete victory over death, hell and the grave. And upon His resurrection, He was crowned with glory and honor and seated at the right hand of the Father, exactly as God had promised (Hebrews 2:7-8). Seeing as how the Father fulfilled every part of that promise to Christ and to creation, we can be confident in knowing that “there will also come a day when He will wipe every tear and when death, mourning, crying, and pain will be gone forever” ( Revelation 21:4).

In Isaiah, the Lord declared that it was His will to crush Jesus and to make his soul an offering for guilt (Isaiah 53:10). Upon first glance, one might accuse God of being evil or unjust for allowing such a horrific thing to happen to His only begotten son. Yet, when we look closer, we see that God made Jesus, who was sinless and pure, an offering for our sin so that we could be seen as clean and righteous before the Lord. Without the death of Christ, our sins wouldn’t have ever been paid for. And without His resurrection, which was only made possible through His death, new life would have never been possible for us. In Christ, God ultimately showed that His will, though sometimes beyond our comprehension, is always good. 

Jesus did not guarantee that we wouldn’t have trouble in this life. Instead, He urged us to take heart because He has overcome the world. As we continue to place our trust in His victory, we can also find rest in knowing that He will never leave us, nor forsake us. While we may never make sense of suffering, we can remain confident in what we know about God. And because those things hold true in spite of what we experience or see, we can have peace without necessarily having any answers.   

Yoska is a prospective MCDB major in her first year at Yale.