Asking God, "Why Me?"

The Tl;dr version of the Problem of Evil

photo courtesy of John Marcus

“Heavenly Father, why do you let bad things happen?

More to the point, why do you let bad things happen to me?”

-Book of Mormon, the musical

These lyrics often ping through my brain when I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself. Elder Price, at the top of his class of Mormon missionary recruits, sings them after he is sent against his will to a war-torn part of Uganda. The irony is thick, of course; Elder Price is sent to minister to people who have problems from parasites to warlords to AIDS, while not getting to go to Orlando and some lost luggage constitute his own “suffering.”

Is it self-indulgent to ask the question, “why me?” especially when so many people have it objectively worse? Is it better to bear up stoically, accepting life’s many downs as they come? Or is that just giving in to the trap of comparative suffering?

At an intellectual level, many of us can accept that some suffering must take place. If no one died, Earth would quickly be overrun; if we never knew sadness, fear, anger, or shame, we wouldn’t be able to experience joy, peace, love, and belonging. But knowing those things doesn’t help us in the moment of pain.

Likewise, Christian explanations fall short. Either it’s humanity’s free will that causes so much trouble, or it’s “all part of God’s plan,” or, my least favorite saying when someone dies, “they are in a better place.” These answers feel inadequate, arrogant, like they are conveniently ignoring the reality on the ground: if God does have a plan, it seems like that plan involves a lot of people getting shot in shopping malls.

This is the Tl;dr version of The Problem of Evil: how can a supposedly all-good and all-powerful God stand by while the innocent suffer? Many conclude that the existence of such suffering is incompatible with the idea of an all-loving, all-powerful God. Either God does not exist, or God is not worth worshipping. Our fate seems completely arbitrary—many wicked people live long and prosperous lives, while one of Seattle’s beloved community organizers was recently gunned down in a road rage incident. It’s not fair, it’s not just. If God really cared, wouldn’t God do something about it?

It was only in reading Scott Samuelson’s Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering, that I came to understand this is a fundamentally modern proposition behind this idea that God should fix our suffering.

In the ancient world, suffering abounded and there was little that could be done about it. Roughly 50% of children born in the pre-modern era died before reaching adulthood. The predominant attitude towards suffering was acceptance because things could not be fixed. The Book of Job (which, at nearly 4000 years old is likely the Bible’s oldest book) shows a man railing against the injustice of suffering, but coming to accept that life is mysterious, and that even when he gets God on the line, no explanations for his suffering will be forthcoming.

It was only as science advanced that humanity started to be able to alleviate suffering effectively—we could improve farming techniques and sanitation practices and started understanding things like germ theory. We moved from a “face it” attitude to a “fix it” one.

Into this age of scientific advancement, Utilitarianism was born. This moral philosophy states that if you can alleviate suffering, you are morally bound to do so. In Peter Singer’s famous example, if you see a child drowning in a lake, you must try to save them, even if it means ruining your shoes. To do otherwise would be evil.

According to Utilitarianism, God is standing by with a life preserver, watching us drown. Isn’t it unfair that God does nothing while children are slaughtered and climate change is cooking the Earth?

But then we come to the problem of “I Think I Should Get More Credit for Killing Hitler.” Go read it, it’s hilarious. If someone went back in time and killed Hitler, the rest of us would never know it, and the same could go for God. Imagine God picked something like parasites or Hitler and decided to eradicate them. The floor of suffering may move up a few inches, but then we’d just be suffering from something else. There’s no possible world in which all suffering is wiped out.

But even as I puzzle through these issues, I realize that these are intellectual answers to what might primarily be an emotional question. And I think that’s because asking “why?” is a normal part of the grieving process. We long for justice and fairness, and when we lose someone or something precious, it’s normal to be angry.

I laugh at Elder Price and myself all while knowing how suffering can silo us—we become so focused on our own pain, we can’t see that others have it just as hard as we do. There’s some part of us that demands to be witnessed in suffering; we won’t be quieted by comparisons or reassured through logical explanations of why this suffering might be necessary. I think of the time my then-three-year-old son tried to run through a mirror maze—one of the most tragic and simultaneously hilarious things I’ve ever seen—as he smashed headlong into one mirror after another. Afterward, even as I struggled to contain my laughter, he angrily demanded to sit on my lap and be comforted.

Too often we are like Job’s companions, trying to rationalize each other’s suffering instead of joining in each other’s grief. One of my favorite podcasters, Kate Bowler, says that the best thing a friend said to her upon her terminal cancer diagnosis was, “This feels hard because it is hard.”

Maybe thinking of God’s plan comforts you when you’re suffering. Maybe, like Job, your suffering brings you closer to God. Or maybe you’re comforted by the parable of Kisa Gotami, who was told by Buddha that she could resurrect her son with white mustard seeds from a house which had never known death; the catch being, of course, that no such house exists. Rich or poor, good or evil, suffering unites us all. When we stand witness, we can be each other’s comfort.

Journal/Discussion Questions:

• What do you think—is there a point to asking “why me?” in the face of suffering?

• What/who comforts you when you’re suffering?

• What’s more offensive: The Book of Mormon’s “F— you, God” song, or its use of African stereotypes? Is it a problematic fave?