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Too
many bad things have happened to me in my life to trust God. What did I do
wrong? The reality is that God has abandoned me. How can I trust a God who
never answered my prayers?
 hen natural disasters and other
traumatic events occur, survivors, journalists, and relief workers can be
overwhelmed with horrendous sights and smells and profound scenes of human
suffering. But more often than not, in the midst
of devastation and helplessness, these persons can do nothing more than cast
weak sympathetic glances at each other, overlooking the greatest strength
of all: complete trust in God.
Moreover, in a tragedy even greater
than the original tragedy, many persons feel angry at God, saying, “How
could God have let this evil happen? The reality is
that God has abandoned me.”
In psychological terms, though,
the reality is that in our anger at God we confuse the psychological
realm of the imaginary with the realm
of the real—and in so doing, we
overlook the healing potential of the realm of the
symbolic. For those not familiar with
psychology, this needs some explanation, so follow along with me
here.
The
Imaginary
The
Realm of the Imaginary derives from the
pre-verbal state of childhood. As children, we need—and
desire—others to take care of our needs,
but, without language, we conceive of this caretaking imaginally; that is,
as images in our minds. Hence the realm of the imaginary is all in
our heads, so to speak; it’s all based in the expectation that our needs
should be fulfilled, and it provokes
anger
when our needs aren’t fulfilled.
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Now, when a parent
takes care of a helpless infant, the caretaking can be an act of
pure—rather than imaginary—love in which
the parent is concerned only for the infant’s ultimate good.
Once the child becomes capable of language and independent thought, however,
caretaking can then fall back into the imaginary realm and degenerate into
mere bribery, in which a parent “gives” only to manipulate the
child with game-playing and guilt into behaviors
more suited to the parent’s comfort than the child’s
well-being.
Even in adulthood the desire for romantic fulfillment
in another person resides in the realm of the imaginary because romantic
fulfillment depends on fantasies of someone giving you what makes you
feel good. As hard as it is to admit it, and as much as it contradicts popular
culture, romantic sentiment is based in
self-indulgence, not in a selfless love for
God.
Furthermore,
the pursuit of happiness, which characterizes secular culture (and corrupts
Christian values) also belongs to the realm of the imaginary. Whether it
be the “happiness” of drugs or alcohol or food or sexual stimulation
or extreme risk-taking or athletic triumph or political triumph or New Age
“spiritual” esctasy, it all points back to an infant wrapped in
unconscious bliss, protected—at least momentarily—from the reality
of its own vulnerability. |
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OK. So there is the realm of
the imaginary.
The
Real
The world is generally quite
stable. We go to bed at night and fully expect our slippers to be there,
right where we left them the night before, when we wake up. Without this
sense of stability we would be living in an Alice in Wonderland type
of craziness. We couldn’t function.
 Yet consider just how fragile this
sense of daily security really is. Any number of things—from a car crash
to an earthquake—could happen suddenly, without warning, and leave us
in chaos.
This is reality.
The
Realm of the
Real is therefore the place of our essential
fragmentation, vulnerability, and death.
It’s the “place” where every disaster leaves us, wounded and
helpless. It’s our wretched
reality.
To most persons, the Realm of
the Real is a terrifying place, and so most persons will do most anything
to hide this reality from their own awareness. We try to live secure and
peaceful lives in the moment while pushing away the knowledge that in the
next moment everything and anything worldly that we rely upon—our
possessions and our bodies—can be wiped
away.
Psychologically, then, when you
encounter
the real you experience a shocking disruption of your previously
secure—and imaginary—sense of self. Therefore, you will experience
a
trauma
if you encounter the real with nothing but symptoms and
defenses from the Imaginary Realm.
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In fact, the
psychological function of a symptom is precisely to hide reality;
a symptom hides an intangible and horrifying reality behind tangible mental
and physical manifestations such as anxiety,
insomnia, lethargy,
nightmares,
depressed mood, and so on. |
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Furthermore, this encounter takes
us right into all the psychological and spiritual dangers of
blame.
Blame
Consider here the story of Adam
and Eve, which explains the concept of Original Sin.
Adam’s part in this drama is seen most clearly not so much in his eating
the forbidden fruit but in his pointing to Eve and saying to God,
“It’s her fault! This woman you put here made me
do it!” In other words, instead of admitting his mistake and begging
forgiveness, Adam hid himself and blamed God; and
we have been making excuses, hiding in sin, and blaming God—and blaming
others—ever since.
“Why didn’t you stop
them from abusing me? Why don’t you stop the wars? Why do I have to
suffer pain? It’s not fair!” We blame God.
We blame the government. We blame anyone who doesn’t give us what we
want.
In all blame, we absent
ourselves—that is, we hide—from God. Yet in hiding from Him, we
make it impossible to trust in Him.
Trust in
God
Now, many people don’t know
what trust in God really means. They hear the words often enough,
but (to quote one person who has written to me) it seems to mean “something
different to everyone, in the sense that everyone has their own interpretation
of trust and everyone does it only to a degree and the one who does it the
most seems foolish.”
Well, full trust in God is composed
of two separate but interrelated components: trust in God’s justice,
and trust in God’s providence.
1. |
Trust in
God’s Justice. We have all encountered
individuals who commit offenses and seem to “get away with it.”
Although the irritation that we feel is justified, we can also be drawn into
the desire to take matters into our own hands and get revenge. If we remember,
however, that every crime—every sin—every
offense against love—that a person commits is
an offense against God that will be accounted for during his or her judgment
at death, and will be paid for either in Purgatory
or hell, then we can understand that no one can evade
God’s perfect justice. To trust in God’s justice, then, is to set
aside our anger for the injuries inflicted on us and to let God administer
His own justice according to His will. |
2. |
Trust in
God’s Providence. Some individuals
have the mistaken belief that “trust in God” means to sit around
doing nothing in the expectation that God will do everything for us. But
this false belief is based in an avoidance of our taking full
responsibility for living holy
lives that bear spiritual fruits.
To trust in God’s providence, therefore, does not mean that we do nothing;
it means that we believe that, in answer to our
prayers, God will guide, protect, and encourage
us as we take responsibility for developing and using our talents to serve
God. |
The Symbolic
Realm—and the Hope of Healing
The truth is, when “bad”
things happen to you, that is reality. But when you set aside complaining
and place yourself in God’s protection and voice your pain openly to
God in prayer—that is, when you really trust in God—you raise the
Realm of the Real to the level of the Realm of the
Symbolic. In the symbolic realm, the realm of language, horror
can be given containment through the Word, thus allowing us to draw wisdom
from pain and tragedy.
As your hearts
have been disposed to stray from God,
turn now ten times the more to seek Him;
for He who has brought disaster upon you
will, in saving you, bring you back enduring
joy. |
—Baruch 4:28–29 |
If, however, you’re angry
at God that your prayers haven’t been answered as you desire,
maybe you have been mistakenly seeking yourself, and your own
satisfaction, as a continuation of the smoldering sarcasm you learned from
your parents. Maybe you cling to your indignation as a self-consoling comfort,
fearing your own
wretched loneliness—fearing to die to the
Realm of the Imaginary—and ignoring your
Baptismal vows. But take heart, even Christ—in
His humanity and for our sake—had to confront and overcome this
fear:
My God, my God,
why have You abandoned me? |
—Psalm 22:2 |
When Christ cried out these words
from the cross, He was quoting the opening line of Psalm 22 to refer us to
the entire psalm. There we find that what at first appears to be loss and
failure actually results in the redemption of the entire world: For God
has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch . . .
the poor will eat their fill; those who seek the Lord will offer praise
. . . all the ends of the earth will worship and turn to the
Lord.
Through His
obedient acceptance of the cross, Christ overcame
death. The real cross, upon which Christ hung, is reality itself:
the ingratitude and contempt that humanity inflicts on God’s
love. The symbolic cross, upon which the
Word—and our very destiny—hangs, and which every Christian must
embrace, is the spoken acknowledgment of our brokenness, trauma, and death
that love alone can overcome. Christ offers us a share in the glory of His
achievement if only we accept His call to follow the same path—if only
we stop hiding the real behind empty
defenses, if only we openly admit our
pain to God, if only we let our prayer speak in
honest humility for us.
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O Lord, my God,
You are no stranger to those who do not estrange themselves from You. How
can anyone say that it is You who absent Yourself? |
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—St. John of the Cross
The Sayings of Light and Love, 50 |
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Therefore, in all of our
blame, anger, and
protest—in all of our hiding from God—we
never allow ourselves to hear—or proclaim to others—the final words
of Psalm 22 that express the triumph of the Word over the Realm of the
Real:
The generation
to come will be told of
the Lord,
that they may proclaim to a people yet
unborn
the deliverance you have brought. |
—Psalm 22:32 |
Spiritual Growth
through Tribulations
 Saint Francis of Assisi,
(the saint everyone loves to love and whom few are willing to imitate in
his austerity) knew this very well. He rejoiced in all things, beautiful
and ugly, life and death, and he taught his followers to
repent their sinful lives, live in chaste
purity of heart and body, and place total confidence in God alone, come what
may, good or bad, as the only path to holy life in genuine service to God.
Moreover, this same sentiment speaks to us through the Old Testament as
well:
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We should be
grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as He did our
forefathers. Recall how He dealt with Abraham, and how He tried Isaac, and
all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the
flocks of Laban, his mother’s brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord
put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has He done so with us.
It is by way of admonition that He chastises those who are close to
Him. |
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—Judith 8:25-27 |
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Breaking the
Cycle of Blame and Hatred
Whenever you
pray for divine guidance, answers will come through
encounters with mundane, daily events. As these events occur—however
difficult or disappointing they may be—ask, “What is God trying
to teach me in this?” Then open your mind and heart to what you need
to learn about yourself through your encounter with the event—and grow
in wisdom.
If your response is, “Yeah,
right. God is telling me that He hates me and that I’m just a piece
of garbage!” then your sarcasm reveals
the depth of your anger at your parents, the magnitude
of your resentment of others, and the pervasiveness of your unconscious tendency
to turn that anger against yourself in repeated self-sabotage. Truly, it’s
far easier to say that God hates you, as an excuse for your hating others,
than it is to listen to the depths of your pain and sadness and, in the process,
open your heart to genuine love.
It would be far better to step
outside this repeated cycle of hatred and ask yourself some meaningful
questions:
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“Do
I hide my emotional hurt behind a show of anger and a thirst for
revenge?” If so, maybe God is calling
you to face up to and admit your hidden
emotions. |
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“Do
I use pride as a way to hide my feelings of
vulnerability?” If so, maybe God is
calling you to set aside your pride and stop thinking
so much about yourself. |
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“Am
I harboring an attitude of resistance to
authority?” If so, maybe God is showing
you that this defiant attitude, which results
from hidden anger at your parents, has been crippling
you all your life. |
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“Do
I lack patience?” If so, maybe God
is telling you that, even though you think you live a devout life,
your “faith” is all in your head and you don’t really have
much genuine love for others. |
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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Read
an excerpt from a homily