THE TEST OF EXPERIENCE
|
On our best days, we can be a voice of encouragement, hope, and help to others who are going through hard times. In our times of suffering, grief, and doubt, our own words of faith and hope can seem to taunt us. But it is precisely these times when we need those words most. And it is in these times that they will be tested by the urgency of our experience. This was the accusation made by Eliphaz—that Job had been able to give comfort and hope to others, but his fine-sounding words had collapsed under the weight of Job’s own experience. It was a challenge that his faith needed to be more than mere theory.
Christian author C. S. Lewis wrote extensively on the theological problem of pain—in a book called The Problem of Pain. Later in his life, when his brief marriage ended with the painful death of his wife, he reflected on the difference between theory, even if explained as carefully reasoned arguments, and our actual human experiences of pain and grief. “The stakes have to be raised before we take the game quite seriously. I know this is the opposite of what is often said about the necessity of keeping all emotion out of our intellectual processes—‘You can’t think straight unless you are cool.’ But then neither can you think deep if you are. I guess one must try every problem in both states.”* Good theology, understanding, and insight are important elements of sustainable faith, but they are not the same thing as trusting God when those formulations do not feel like they make sense. It seems the life that is both faithful and human has both theology and trust.
* C. S. Lewis, Prayer: Letters to Malcolm (London: Fount, 1998), 42, 43.
