God’s Bad Gifts

My girlfriend and I have recently been watching the HBO series Game of Thrones. She had read the books but never watched the show, and I had never seen the show all the way through. While this is probably old news at this point, the end of the series isn't very good. Individual lines of dialogue are less interesting than in earlier seasons, actions no longer seem to have logical consequences, and overall character writing flattens otherwise dynamic figures. I don't actually recommend watching this show, especially if you don't like violence, foul language, and sexual content. However, there is one particular problem this show shares with a strain of theological thinking that has persisted throughout much of church history.

In Game of Thrones, one major character is the victim of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse throughout the series. By the end, she has become a wise political actor, wary of manipulation and capable of controlling information in her own ways. At one point, another character tells her that he could have taken her away from all that abuse. If she would have gone with him, none of it would have happened. However, she responds that she wouldn't be the person she is today without that treatment. As much as she hates what they did to her, she knows that she wouldn't be the shrewd and capable leader she is now without it. In some dark way, one could say she is appreciative, perhaps even thankful for the abuse.

Of course, one could charitably argue that this is her way of coping with her terrible circumstances. This isn't supposed to be read as advice, but rather an expression of a broken person trying to make sense of her brokenness. However, it doesn't get commented on in that way within the show. She doesn't act broken after this point, just powerful. The implication of the show is that the way to make a powerful person is to subject them to abuse. Hopefully, no one takes parenting advice from such implications!

I recently went to a chaplain retreat. The two presenters each gave three short lectures throughout the day, but the last one bothered me. He talked about gratitude and seeing all things as gifts from God. One example was a man who used a wheelchair for most of his life after a rare blood condition damaged his joints. Though he couldn't walk, he still was beloved by his community, who saw him as a particularly empathetic person. Because he struggled with mobility, he could connect with the struggles of others. It took him a long time to thank God for his condition, but eventually he did, finding this challenge as a way for him to help others. This is certainly a touching story, and I certainly affirm this as his way of thinking. My problem is with trying to get others to adopt this same way of thinking about their hardships.

You might say that this is a Biblical idea. In Romans 5:3-5, Paul argues that our afflictions ultimately lead through endurance to hope. However, we don't need to assume this is true for all hardships. Certainly, being persecuted for your faith and enduring deepens your trust in God, but some things neither kill you nor make you stronger; they just hurt. When a little child suffers simply because their father is a physically abusive alcoholic, what hope does that produce? Is a victim of rape really stronger because of their experience? Should they thank God that they can never hope to have a normal relationship, that they are afraid to be touched, that they will always struggle to trust people? Maybe one could try the empathy argument. Because of their horrific experience, they can empathize with other victims of abuse. But what should we say then, should sexual abuse continue so that empathy may abound? By no means! Surely there must be a better way to learn to be kind and listen to people. And if we can be empathetic without being abused, then misery isn’t a gift worth having from God, not when God’s other gifts are good things, like salvation by grace, the Bible, and the Sacraments.

Now, someone might try to salvage this situation by saying that victims of abuse can see God in their abuse. We can lovingly approach them with the good news that God is always with them and that God suffered with them, but as much as I appreciate the theology there, if we are trying to turn abuse into something to be thankful for because it is a reminder of God’s presence, I think we will still run into a dead end. If we tell a victim of rape that God was with her during that horrible experience, she may respond, “Then why didn’t God stop it? Why didn’t God do anything?”

We could get into theological answers to this question, but none of them would probably be satisfying at that moment. A person who has experienced something traumatic may come to find peace in it through seeing God’s accompaniment in their life, but if they haven’t made that move themselves, we don’t need to force them there. Some things are just awful, and we don’t need to treat them as if they are secretly gifts from God.

There are a lot of useful tools in Lutheran theology to help us navigate these challenging theological problems. We often talk about grace alone and faith alone. We talk about Law and Gospel. We talk about Christ alone as our savior, but there is another tool that comes in handy especially in this particular case. In the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther distinguishes between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross. “A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” There is a beautiful simplicity and honesty in this way of doing theology. We don’t need to dress up awful things to make them more presentable. We can let evil be evil, and fight against it.

I don’t want to take useful coping mechanisms away from people who need them; however, the church should not be in the business of forcing such theological frames on people who don’t want them. Perhaps a better way of looking at horrible things like abuse is simply calling it what it is: evil, the gruesome consequence of living in a world dominated by sin. Not everything is a gift from God. Not everything makes us stronger. Some things are just evil, and we should call them such. And while we may not thank God for these things, we can always praise God. Even when the world is cruel, we praise the God who has overcome the world, and hope for the day when all is fulfilled and God’s kingdom comes.