A man in an iron mask
Only an idiot or an insensitive clod will walk all over the hurting hearts of poor souls that groan in misery. But we must face it, some pain can’t be removed! A lot of our pain exists because we love people with all our hearts and unless we get a lobotomy the price we pay for the privilege of loving and losing (via death or some other death-like means) is grievous pain.When the pain is maddening we cry out—and it’s perfectly understandable that we should—we cry out and ask "why?" You might remember that in Dumas' movie The Man in the Iron Mask a man is grabbed by the authorities, taken against his will to a secluded island, taken to the deepest dungeon of the prison on that island and an iron mask was fitted over his face. No one speaks to him, no one tells him why, no one answers his questions or responds to his protests. He’s left in the dungeon, the jailer is forbidden on pain of death to even speak to him and through a barred window he watches the assault team row away. In an awful heart-wrenching cry that echoes in the dungeon and out across the water to the cold-hearted men in the boat he howls, "Why? Why?" Just to make sense of it—that’d ease the pain.
Hearts are the same in real life as they are in profoundly good fiction. Profoundly good fiction is precisely that because it touches on the depths of the human heart in a way that we all recognise. When a hurting soul lifts his or her eyes to heaven and mournfully asks, "Why?" they are being authentically human.
But it’s clear that even if it's possible to offer reasonable part explanations and an underlying ground for trust where knowledge fails, the hurting heart is not prepared to accept "answers". The shattered heart wants the devastation undone! In their awful pain they don’t want to hear that there are "good reasons" why the awful pain should continue. They want it stopped! It doesn’t matter that God wants it to go on! It doesn’t matter that God "allows" it to go on! It doesn’t matter that wondrous things are happening in and through the pain. Stop it!
Tell me, then, why does any truly suffering Christian remain faithful to God?
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