Where is God in the midst of so much suffering?

Words from persecuted believers and an excerpt from We Are the Body

How can we live our faith in a time of great difficulty? What can we do for those who are persecuted because of their faith? To ask these questions means above all questioning ourselves about the meaning of our faith. In order to be able to speak about the time of persecution, Christians must really know their own faith.

These words from Amel Shamon Nona are from the beginning of his essay Faith in a Time of Persecution, a letter from Iraq to Christians in the West a decade ago. In it, he recounts being appointed the Chaldean bishop of Mosul after his predecessors—a priest and a bishop—were gruesomely murdered.

He was tormented by the events that followed as members of his flock fled to hiding, many killed. And filled with questions, especially: How can we live our faith in a time of great difficulty?

Ultimately, he concluded: During a time of crisis and persecution, we must remain full of hope.

“To know that we may be killed at any moment, at home, in the street, at work” he writes, “and yet despite all this to retain a living and active faith—this is the true challenge.”

I encountered Nona's letter after I wrote the play We Are the Body about prisoners of conscience in Romania. The play asks similar questions.

It’s inspired by the life of Richard Wurmbrand, who suffered greatly at the hand of Romanian Communists when he was imprisoned for his work in the Christian underground. His book Alone with God is chilling. The slim volume is a compilation of sermons he constructed and memorized during a three year stint in solitary confinement, during which he was beaten constantly. Deprived of any other human touch, the sermons were his attempt to remain sane.

Like Richard Wurmbrand, the characters in the play tap out messages in Morse code from the confines of their lonely cells, the only way they can communicate with their unseen companions. The sounds trigger memories from their lives before imprisonment so that past and present collide as they to imagine a future without torture or faith.

This week, I wanted to draw attention to people suffering for their faith as we anticipate the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church on November 5. People we don't often hear about.

Gratefully, there are organizations who help believers who suffer for their faith and offer help and hope. Today I wanted to draw attention to the organization Wurmbrand founded, the Voice of the Martyrs.

And I wanted to share a passage from my play.

I don’t pretend to really know a thing about suffering for my faith. However, taking time to consider brothers and sisters who suffer is important. As you might gather, the title of the play comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

~ 1 Corinthians 12:26-27

I’m spurred to prayer when I take time to read stories like those about Richard Wurmbrand or letters from Archbishop Amel Shamon Nona. Their words cut to the heart and help push me beyond the comfort of my own life.

They also motivate me to navigate around the potential pitfall of avoiding prayer because I don’t face the suffering they encounter (read: guilt). They urge me to listen, learn and more importantly, to pray.

But beyond that, to have the courage to live out my faith!

Many people living in freedom from persecution, in countries without problems like ours, ask me what they can do for us, how they can help us in our situation. First of all, anyone who wants to do something for us should make an effort to live out his or her own faith in a more profound manner, embracing the life of faith in daily practice. For us the greatest gift is to know that our situation is helping others to live out their own faith with greater strength, joy, and fidelity.

~ Faith in a Time of Persecution

It’s not easy to imagine persecution, even though the world is full of horrors that make acts of persecution viscerally available. What I mean is that it’s difficult to pause and consider that our own brothers and sisters of faith face terrible suffering.

It can also be hard to believe, from the outside looking in, that God is right there, always there, with his people as they suffer. A truth Nona and Wurmbrand powerfully conclude in their writings.

I invite you to take time this week to learn a little more about the suffering Church around the world. Learn what challenges persecuted believers face. (Stay tuned for a few posts this week that can be resources for you).

Practical ways? Take time to read the Archbishop’s letter; find a copy of Alone with God. Check out the resources and stories from VOtM from or another organization.

A reading from We Are the Body

As a personal act of imagining the challenges the suffering church faces, I’m sharing a passage from We Are the Body.

This passage opens Act Two, in which Richard is at his lowest. His friends Micah and Elsie have gone silent, and he fears that he’s lost touch with them forever.

It grapples with the question: Where is God?

~ AK

A scene from the Burnt Thicket production of We Are the Body. Heather Pattengale as Elise and Tim Bratton as Richard.

“At a time when the planet is boiling over with religious conflict, We Are the Body dramatizes the redemptive power of faith in a way [that] is universal.” — Calgary Herald

We Are the Body couldn’t be more relevant and unsettling.” — Calgary Sun

ACT TWO // SCENE ONE

Lights up on RICHARD.  He seems an old pile of rags on the platform.

RICHARD

How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

He stands, with much effort. 

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death.

The effort has made him very weak.  

My enemy will say, “I have prevailed.” My foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

He takes to tapping.

Elsie, my daughter.  Are you there?

Silence.

Micah.  Child.  Anyone?  To fill the silence.  To pass the time.

It’s what we have here.  Time to think.  

How long, Oh Lord.  You see?  It’s the question the mind asks first.  Even in a country where we say there is no God.  “How could he?”

It’s all been taken.  My right to do what I want.  To be where I want.  Gone.  I have nothing left. My family.  My vitality.  My dignity - ha!  Just time.   

To think.  To remember.  Time to pray and I don’t pray.  The great tyranny of time now rules my life and the great cruelty is that there is so little to do with so much of it.  

And so I think How could God?  Like the psalmist wrote.  And that’s the trick, you see?  How could God, as if this was his doing! How could God, as if the hand that strikes me until my ribs break were God’s own hands. As if the hand that put its finger to the wick submerging me in darkness was his.

It’s the cruelest question they have asked and they ask it repeatedly.  “How could God, if he is real, allow all this?” And then they crack the whip.  “If this God you so blindly obey, if he exists and as you assure us, if he loves you, why does he allow your bones to be broken, your beard to be plucked, the candle that is your meaningless life to be so easily snuffed?”  

There is no arrangement of words I can give them that will answer this question.  I’ve tried.  There is no word that will stay their violent hand.  If it existed I would have shouted it from the depths of this cell.  

And then one night, as I lay on my back, conducting a sermon in my head, memorizing it so I could tap it out in Morse Code to encourage my brothers and sisters, awake like me in the dark. One night it came to me.  I had a sudden flash, more firm and striking than any Soviet fist.  

He starts to laugh, the laugh turns into a painful cough that racks his body.  He holds his side in agony but laughs again.

I had already given them all the proof of God’s existence I could and there was no more I could do to make the point.  I have taken every beating. Broken every bone. With every cut to my skin and every drop of blood I have proven that God exists.

The following statement is the most honest statement he has ever made in his life:

How could I be alive, after all this? Because no man could otherwise withstand such suffering.

His tears become laughter.

But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation!

One can only laugh at this.  

Lights up on ELSIE who lies on her side, despondent.  She tightly hugs her stomach. 

Please, God. Let there be no more silence.

He begins to tap out Code.

Elsie, Micah.  My children.  Are you there? 

About We Are the Body

We Are the Body had a public reading in Rosebud, Alberta in November of 2012. The play was developed in part through a Scripts At Work Playwright Circle led by Gordon Pengilly in 2012. The Burnt Theatre production of the play toured Western Canada in 2015. It was nominated for three Calgary Theatre Critics Awards, including Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Script.