God, Disease, and Glibness

When I was a Calvinist pastor (23 years) I could glibly site all the Bible passages that made God responsible for sickness: Exodus 4:11, Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Deuteronomy 32:39, There is no God besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand. Ecclesiastes 7:14, When times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Not to mention a hundred other proof texts for the sovereignty of God concerning plagues, disease, calamity, destruction, trials, tribulation, and all manner of abysmal conditions.

Now that my wife is terminally ill I'm not so glib. Times are bad. Unlike Job's wife I'm not inclined to curse God and die. Atheism would certainly solve the theodicy problem but theism is in my DNA, not to mention creating a host of new problems (namely, the problem of good, beauty, and meaning). For existential reasons I choose faith despite this apparent reason not to believe.

But neither am I, in true evangelical fashion, able to say with glib confidence that her Alzheimer's is to teach character, bring glory to God, the result of sin, or the consequence of the fall of Adam. I'm a child of Adam and I don't have this disease. There is a category of illness in the Bible called, "sickness unto death" but that still doesn't answer the "Why her?" question. I try not to dwell on this too much; I have trained myself rather to ask the, "What do I do next?" question.

Yet I can't avoid asking the why questions. I'm pounded every day with a clash between a God I want to love/trust and visits to see Vicki. I'm not enamored of the One who put my young wife in a nursing home. (If you want to know what I see there, read Ecclesiastes 12:1-7. Or wait about a year until my illustrated version comes out).

Which brings me to the impetus for spending five months (with more to come) creating a graphic novel based on the book of Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth touches something deep within me. Despite his glowing endorsement as a wise man of God by the editor in chapter 12:9-14, I doubt that his brand of doubt would garner him any ministry positions in a modern evangelical church. Certitude (glibness?) seems to be a litmus test for orthodoxy. Yet here's a Bible writer wracked with anxiety due to the clash between his theology and the evil he saw all around him.

I can understand why Ecclesiastes isn't popular. It's gloomy! And I also see why when Ecclesiastes does get air time Qoheleth's tensions are sanitized by glib dismissal, relegating his words to the trash bin of secular humanism, and thus easily ignored.

But the guy wasn't a secular humanist. He was a sage puzzled by the problem of evil. Ecclesiastes University is my attempt to come to grips with this very personal issue.