In the spring of 2020, early in the COVID pandemic, most United Methodist churches temporarily suspended in-person worship services. On the first Sunday of the suspension, I decided to worship online with a large, out of state United Methodist congregation. After setting up my laptop to watch the service, I realized I had 15 minutes to spare, so I picked up the TV remote and clicked on CNN.
At the time, COVID was ravaging the state of New York, especially New York City. CNN projected the current death count on the screen, which rose dramatically by the hour. The segment I watched featured a New York hospital in chaos. The ER and ICU overflowed with people struggling with COVID. Things had gotten so bad that the hospital had to bring in a refrigerated storage unit to house dead bodies because their morgue had run out of room.
Martin Thielen
As I watched the horrific pandemic news on CNN, I realized it was time for the online worship service to begin. So I turned on my laptop. For a few minutes, the two events overlapped. On my television, CNN continued reporting on the COVID tragedy. On my laptop, the church began singing its opening praise song.
I don’t remember the specific song they sang, but it was based on Psalm 121, which affirms God’s providential love, care and protection. In this text, the psalmist promises the people of God, “The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm — he will watch over your life.”
For several minutes, I flipped back and forth between the live broadcasts. I muted the television and listened to the online praise band leading a song about God protecting us from all harm. Then I muted the online service and listened to CNN report on the devastating carnage of COVID.
Finally, the cognitive dissonance between what I saw on the television monitor and the computer screen became more than I could bear. So I turned off both the TV and the laptop. And then I began to cry. I cried for all the people suffering and dying from COVID. I also cried over my long-lost faith in the providential care of God, which I knew never was going to return.
“The cognitive dissonance between what I saw on the television monitor and the computer screen became more than I could bear.”
Bipolar theology
From the very beginning of my Christian journey, I attempted to believe in the providence of God. I wanted to believe in it. I needed to believe in it. But I also had my doubts. For example, when I was 16, my friend’s mother was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. When she told me the frightening news, I confidently told her, “The Lord has a reason and purpose for everything. God will defeat this cancer. He will not abandon your mom or your family.”
That evening, I wrote about the bad news in my journal, including my unquestioning affirmation of faith in God’s providential care. But in a moment of spiritual transparency, I added, “Sometimes it’s hard to believe this, even for the strongest Christian.”
Unfortunately, those doubts proved justified. Less than a year later, my friend’s mother died from her cancer.
For decades, I lived in a kind of bipolar theological quandary concerning the providence of God. Part of me believed in God’s protective care. Part of me wasn’t sure. But over time, my doubts began gaining the upper hand, as you can see in the following journal excerpts.
Notes from a pastor’s journal
When a 51-year-old man in my community was killed by a falling tree branch on his farm, I heard people say things like “God took him home,” “God must have had a purpose,” or “God works in mysterious ways.” I wrote in my journal, “I don’t believe God had anything to do with this man’s death. I think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
When a businessman in my church claimed God saved his business from a fire, I wrote in my journal, “I wonder why God didn’t save the business next door to his?”
When farmers in my agricultural community asked me to pray for rain, I wrote in my journal, “I know a little bit about science. Weather patterns, not acts of God, cause rain. I’m their pastor so I’ll pray for rain. But it troubles me to do so.”
When a church member’s wife died at the of age 48, he said to me, “I guess the man upstairs knows what he is doing.” I wrote in my journal, “Does the ‘man upstairs’ really kill off 48-year-old women? If so, he’s not doing a very good job.”
When I read a news story about a 2-year-old girl attacked and killed by an alligator in Florida I wrote, “You would think a powerful and loving God could create a kinder creation.”
After watching a nature show on public television I wrote: “The show featured a story about beautiful red crabs. As soon as they hatch, their instincts tell them to head to the beach and the safety of the water. But, as they move that direction, aggressive ants attack them and eat their eyeballs so they cannot see what direction to go. Then the ants eat their brains and other soft tissue, leaving thousands of dead crabs in their wake. Why would a loving, providential God create such carnage? And this is just one microscopic example of the overwhelming brutality of nature. It hardly fits with the hymn, ‘This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought, of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; his hand the wonders wrought.’”
When an 18-year-old boy in my congregation (whom I deeply loved) died in a car wreck the day before he was scheduled to start college, I wrote in my journal: “People are saying it must have been God’s will. But that is theological pornography. If this is God’s will, then God is a sadist, unworthy of our love and worship.”
“Since God isn’t playing God, then maybe we should.”
After visiting a woman in my church suffering from unbearable pain, I wrote: “There are days when it’s hard to believe in God. Today is one of them. I went to see Mrs. Williams this afternoon, who is dying from inoperable cancer. During my visit she cried out, over and over again, for God to let her die. To me, the Christian thing to do would be to put this poor woman out of her misery. But people say that is ‘playing God.’ However, since God isn’t playing God, then maybe we should. For years, I’ve worried about my messed up vocal cords holding out until retirement. Maybe I need to worry more about my faith holding out.”
When a close friend of mine was killed in a horrific car wreck, along with his wife and two young children, I wrote, “It wouldn’t have taken much to prevent this disaster. Just a few seconds of the truck driver’s foot on his brake before he slammed into them. That’s all it would take. Surely an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God could pull off something as simple as that. You would think so. But you would be wrong. In this case, dead wrong. Times four.”
While reading over my journals in preparation for my new book, My Long Farewell to Traditional Religion and What Remains, a familiar pattern surfaced. I would write down an example of suffering and then ask, “Where is God?”
For example, in 2004, when 230,000 people died in a massive tsunami in Asia, I asked, “Where is God?” Or when I read a story about a mother in a boating accident who cried out, “Lord, please, let me get to my babies,” but all three of her young children drowned, I asked, “Where is God?”
I found hundreds of these kinds of entries. It became a familiar litany in my journal. When one of my favorite church members suffered and died from ALS, when a young woman in my congregation was brutally murdered, when my mother-in-law died in a car wreck, and when I suffered for decades with a painful vocal cord disorder that constantly threatened my vocation, I asked, “Where is God?”
Although I tried mightily, I never found a satisfactory answer.
Defending providence
In spite of these painful theological and spiritual struggles, I tried my best to hang on to some version of belief in God’s providence. And I tried to help my congregants do the same. So when horrible things happened, either locally or beyond, I found myself trying to defend God’s providential care in the world. For example, on the Sunday after the mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015, I said in my sermon:
“I found myself trying to defend God’s providential care in the world.”
We must remember that God does not cause suffering. God does not get up in the morning and say, “I think I’ll give a 7-year-old girl a case of leukemia today, send a massive heart attack to a 57-year-old man, and send a category 4 tornado to wipe out a community. And then, to finish off the day, I’ll send a deeply disturbed, hate-filled white supremist to a Black church in Charleston and kill off nine people during their Wednesday night prayer meeting.”
This kind of preaching and teaching became standard operating procedure for me. I constantly tried to help members of my congregations (and me) retain faith in a personal, caring and involved God, in spite of rampant suffering in the world. I especially encouraged people to see God’s providential hand in human efforts to mitigate suffering, since God mostly works though human instruments. I also reminded them we belonged to a “crucified God,” one who understood and entered our pain, even if it wasn’t possible to make the pain go away.
Although these kinds of affirmations proved modestly helpful, in the end, they had limited value. In spite of all my arguments to the contrary, a harsh reality remained that could not be ignored. In a world full of unrelenting and massive suffering, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to defend belief in a personal, all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, interventionist, miracle-working, prayer-answering, providential God.
The death of providence
A few years before my retirement, I attempted to write a sermon on the subject of providence. It was more for my benefit than for the congregation, although I knew many of them struggled with similar doubts. I titled the sermon “Redefining Providence.”
I spent a long time working on the sermon. In it I suggested modern believers needed to redefine our understanding of God’s providential care. Instead of thinking of it in terms of God’s protection, I argued, we need to redefine it to mean God’s presence.
“In other words,” I wrote in the sermon, “while God does not protect us from suffering, God promises to be with us in the midst of our suffering. That’s what Psalm 23 means when it says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”
The sermon looked good on the computer screen. I even found a moving story to illustrate the point. So I printed a hard copy and began my final edit.
However, as I reviewed the sermon, I began to think about how it would sound to the numerous parents in my congregation who watched their children die from illnesses or accidents. Or to the women who experienced domestic abuse. Or to the rape victim I had recently spoken to. Or to couples who desperately wanted to have children but could not. Or to all the widows and widowers sitting in the pews who still felt deep grief over the death of their spouses.
Or to people who prayed for God to save their marriages but still ended up getting divorced. Or to unemployed people who could not find a job. Or to those who struggled with addictions. Or to people who were fighting a losing battle with cancer. Or to members who no longer felt the presence of God in their lives in spite of desperately seeking it out. The list went on and on. And I realized the points in my sermon would sound like trite religious platitudes to them. They certainly sounded that way to me.
Then I thought about all the suffering occurring around the world, including wars, violence, famine, racism, genocide, injustice, climate change, pandemics, birth defects, child abuse, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and dementia. My sermon could not begin to stand up to such overwhelming and brutal suffering.
At that point, I pulled out a black sharpie pen from my top desk drawer and marked through the title, “Redefining Providence.” I wrote above it in large bold print, underlining each word, “THE DEATH OF PROVIDENCE.”
I took the sermon manuscript and threw it into the trash can. My long struggle to believe in the providence of God had finally come to an end.
I grieved the loss.
Martin Thielen, a retired minister (SBC and UMC), ex-megachurch pastor, and best-selling author, is the creator and author of www.DoubtersParish.com. The article is an excerpt from his most recent (free) book, My Long Farewell to Traditional Religion and What Remains. The book also includes how he resolved his struggle with providence.
Related articles:
Civil War changed Americans’ view of Providence, historian says
Frank Tupper, theologian who said God does what God can do, dead at 79