Earlier this month
the news came out that Bart Campolo, son of the very famous evangelical, Tony
Campolo, no longer considers himself a Christian, but a secular humanist.
I paid attention
to the news because I had met Bart at the height of his inner-city ministry.
His message changed how I thought about living out my faith. And when I read about the journey that led him
away from the cross of Christ and towards the arms of humanism, I understood it
all too well.
I read the
HuffPost article Sunday afternoon after listening to a sermon on Job that
morning. We are working our way through the book, examining a biblical
perspective on suffering. I listened with tears in my eyes, feeling the light
of understanding shine in some very dark corners of my soul.
From the account
that I read, it seems that the Church failed Bart by offering a thin theology
of suffering. A lifelong Christian, son of a world-renown pastor, and educated
in his own right, Bart could not reconcile the suffering he encountered with
the loving God he thought he knew. I know that this is where the church has
failed me.
The Church –
mainly the American church – has a shallow theology of suffering while the prosperity
gospel runs deep. Too often people
dealing with inexplicable pain are left lacking. The prevailing message (in
church and in our culture in general) is that good things come to good
people—so what does that mean when suffering beats down your door? What is the
faithful response?
For Bart, the article says
his departure began when a church told a girl who was gang raped that it was
somehow God’s will. For me, it began when I was helping some refugees seek
asylum in the United States and I read their accounts of torture.
My education about
human suffering continued as I worked in the relief and development field. I
saw suffering I could not reconcile with a loving God. And when two friends and
mentors of mine were buried in the rubble of Haiti’s earthquake, suffered long,
and died difficult deaths, the first nail in the coffin of my faith was
hammered deep.
My path follows
Bart’s only this far. I did distance myself from God for a time, although I
knew God did not stray far from me. God’s presence was palpable: when I was
married, when my son was born two months early, when the right kinds of
provision came to our family at just the right time. I knew God was there; we
just weren’t on speaking terms.
I sought help,
understanding and comfort in my church and among my Christian friends, and
there were only platitudes in response. My pain, my questions made people
uncomfortable. I don’t blame them, my encounters with deep suffering left my
faith fractured and I wouldn’t want to draw someone else who was ill-prepared down
with me.
Do we know how to
sit with someone who is suffering – not just from a bad day, but someone whose
child has cancer, or loved one was murdered, or has survived atrocity beyond
our imagination? Do our wells of faith run deep enough to hear their stories and
listen to their questions? Can we sit with them in their sorrow, even when we
have no answers? Are we willing to journey with people who are hurting deeply
without fear that it’ll shatter our own understanding of who God is?
We need a theology
of suffering that goes deeper than platitudes and is rooted in God’s
infinite, incomprehensible and unwavering love. Without it our faith is thin
and vulnerable. God did not fail Bart,
the Church’s rose-colored glasses did.
