On The Mystery of Suffering in the Face of Silence

When God is silent while we are experiencing suffering it is easy to become angry. Perhaps we feel abandoned by him, unheard, uncared for, or unloved. Yet it is in this place of silence that God may be up to something deeper. C.S. Lewis describes this reality as he reflected on grieving the death of his wife, Joy, “When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But rather a special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’” In those moments of confusion, we desire for God to give us answers or the feeling of peace. God, thankfully, knows our deepest needs. Our “felt needs” and our real needs are sometimes mingled together, yet the Lord is able to separate them. We desire comfort, peace, understanding. But when those desires get in the way of deep fellowship with God, He may take them away that we would press into Him further. Orual (in Lewis’s Till We Have Faces) had distorted loves that needed to be revealed and redeemed, Job needed to trust God even when his circumstances did not make any sense. These lessons do not come through peace, but through fire.

In our search for answers in the midst of suffering we misunderstand our longing. What we think we desire is merely answers, but what we truly desire is an embodied Answer — Jesus, who is “the Truth.” In search of a solution we find a Person, and it is in this Person that both our mind and our soul is satisfied. Even in the midst of a silent relationship with the Lord, questions fade before Him because questions are fulfilled in Him. Orual reflects on this, “I ended my first book with the words no answer. I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

The Lord desires our trust, not just our intellect. Because we are finite, we simply cannot know what remains a mystery about the Divine Being. If we could understand everything about God and what He does, we would have no need for worshipping him. Indeed, we would end up worshipping our own intellect. But we are made for God, and our longings are satisfied in Him alone.

In the face of the suffering, God provides silence. Not because he does not care, but because being with God is better than answers from God.