September 20th, 2015

As a brief forward, if you feel that you have ever expressed the sentiment that “God is teaching a lesson through some hardship,” please don’t take this blog post personally. Some people may take comfort in such an idea. Just because I personally cannot does not mean that you should not feel free to express your own opinion, or comfort others in a way meaningful to them. Just don’t expect me to agree with you on this one.

When I reflect, as I did last week, on some of the lessons I have learned during my experiences with cancer and cancer treatments, I could easily fall prey to the frightful notion that God inflicts unpleasantries upon those who need to learn valuable life lessons. Thankfully I have not, or I could worry myself to death wondering what I should be learning, and hoping that I had learned it well enough to leave this past year, well, in the past. Under such a schema I would likely view any future relapse of cancer as a failing on my part, as my fault for not really learning whatever it was God was trying to teach me. Not only would that be terribly unhealthy and unhelpful for my own mental state, but it would lead me to a very warped view of God, or more accurately and much worse, to a view of a very warped God. A God who doles out cancer and other hardships just so we may learn something about the nature of life flies in the face of everything I know about God. It goes against logic and reason, against my own relationship with God, and against any teaching of Jesus’ that I know.

If God were to hand out hardships for the sake of personal growth, then we would be right to grumble about who gets how much. Surely someone like Donald Trump could do with a spot of affliction, for the sake of teaching him humility? Perhaps God only cares about some people then, and cares so much about them that God smites them with obstacles, out of some weird tough-love. As Tevye laments in Fiddler on the Roof, “We are your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t you choose someone else?” As someone who believes that the redemptive work of Jesus was done for all humanity though, I find this idea troubling. Since Jesus came to expand God’s message of love to all people, no matter who or what they may be, it seems very unfair of God to bless some of us with hardships that make us better while letting others coast by in their immaturity. This, to me, is not unlike how unfair it would be if God made some people with Heaven in mind, while creating others merely to be fodder for the flames of Hell. (Sorry, church of my upbringing, no I’m not exactly Calvinist anymore, but no, you did not fail me!).

But this leads me to my other point. People don’t absolutely need hardships to grow. Plenty of great thinkers and mature, wonderful people have gotten by without cancer, famines, extreme poverty, or other afflictions, and have still been very decent, mature people. The obvious question to ask God, if you believe God causes hardships so we may grow, is “couldn’t you have taught me this an easier way?” And the answer is yes. I didn’t absolutely need cancer to learn what I have the past year. I certainly have learned much more—and far quicker than I otherwise might have—though. But one does not need to be so blatantly confronted with one’s mortality to gain a better perspective on life. Couldn’t a 16% chance of living 5 years after diagnosis have also taught me the same lessons equally as well as my 15% chance? Probably.

The darker side of the coin is that hardships do not always help people grow or mature. Plenty of people break under the strain of difficulties. Suicide, for some, seems to be the only escape. Others may begin downward spirals of increasingly selfish thought, learning to ask only “why me?” when they receive yet another piece of bad news. And it is certainly not my place to blame them. Sometimes life really is hard, and seems impossible. If the problems of seeing hardship in this world as punishment or a lesson from God are not yet clear, let me try a different tack.

Job, my favorite book in the Bible, says much about suffering, and is in my opinion far too-often overlooked. Job’s three friends are less-than-helpful in their attempts to rationalize and explain Job’s suffering. Rather than help their friend, they in fact add to his misery as he is forced to defend themselves against their attacks, their claims that he has brought disaster upon himself somehow. We learn though that everything afflicting Job is not some divine retribution for misdeeds, nor is it all a painful lesson. It simply happens. Another passage that you may find interesting, if Bible passages interest you, comes in Matthew 5:45. Apparently sunshine and rain happen, whether you deserve either or not. As nice as a personal weather system rewarding us for our good behavior and punishing us for our wrongdoings might be, that just isn’t how it works here on Earth.

The God I know and love has taught me many things through my trials of the past year. Many of the life lessons I learned (really, am still learning) could not have been taught more effectively than by my hardships of the last year. So can God use things like cancer to teach people lessons, to help them grow? Absolutely. No matter how dire our circumstances may seem, they are never beyond God’s capacity to work good in this world. Did I need cancer to learn the lessons I have learned this past year? Sorta, yeah. Could I have lived happily, and still matured some, without learning these lessons as vividly as I have? Yes, definitely. You see the beautiful balance here, I hope. God by no means causes our afflictions so that we might grow; rather, through our afflictions God grows us.