When my older brother graduated high school, one of his friends died in a horrific and tragic way. She, along with her younger sister and mother, were shot and killed by their father before he killed himself. My brother was friends with her and just couldn’t make sense of the tragedy.
To be fair, no one can. He references this close-to-home murder-suicide frequently. And when he does, he always asks the same question.
“If God exists, how could he let this happen?”
It’s a question my brother often asks. He asked it in reference to 9/11, which transplanted itself in his memory and childhood much more than it did mine. I was four years old when 9/11 happened. He was 11. But we both also grew up in New York during the post 9/11 era.
Judge him as you may, my brother often looked at pictures or watched videos of people falling from the Twin Towers. He had gotten himself involved in a Korean church where people were very nice, acted properly, but at the end of the day, we’re still human.
Someone at his Korean-American church looked at these videos before him. For them, it was a means of reminding themselves that no matter how bad life got, no matter what obstacles they had in their way, their lives at least weren’t as bad as someone who was falling from the Twin Towers after an airplane crashed into the building.
I didn’t really want to see that. It was kind of depressing, as you can imagine, and somewhat insensitive. Watching people falling from the Twin Towers became a bit of a fixation for him, a means of telling himself “at least it’s not me” whenever tragedy struck his life.
For my brother, he would often ask himself, struggling with his faith or when we would talk:
“If God exists, how could he let this happen?”
When my brother struggled with mental illness and struggled mightily, he would often cry out and blame every person who ever wronged him for being 30 years old, having a life he hated without a job, and without hope for the future. He is in pharmacy school now. He absolutely hates it. I can predict everything he says whenever he calls me — he is paranoid about phones and keeps his off as a matter of habit.
He has had numerous mental health emergencies, living a life he doesn’t want, not having the courage to stand up to my parents’ wishes for him (I’m not being too judgmental — if I were in his situation, I wouldn’t either) and simultaneously finding each alternative for his life similarly undesirable.
Whenever his awful life situation, he would say the same thing.
“If God exists, how could he let this happen?”
In our family, I am the golden child. My brother is the black sheep. He is the Bruno in Encanto, the Jesse Pinkman of the Pinkman family. I often think of a scene in Breaking Bad where Jesse, who struggles with drug addiction and doesn’t have a job in his late 20s, accuses his younger brother, who is a studious and “perfect” kid, of being the family favorite. His younger brother counters, telling Jesse he’s not the favorite — Jesse is.
“You’re all they talk about,” the younger brother says.
In the same light, my brother is all my family talks about when I’m around. He’s all they worry about. It’s hard to see someone you love, your own son, in so much pain. I can see the tendency to want to fix, to overcontrol.
And yet for the past decade, each attempt to fix my brother, get him a future where he will be successful and be able to sustain himself independent of my parents’ dime and household.
My brother hates his life. He has talked for the past decade about how he hates his life, and sometimes about how he’s in so much pain he wants to die. When he first started talking about death I raised the alarm and worried more. I encouraged him to get help and would tell my parents.
Now, I feel like a bad person for just listening and being the one person in our family that doesn’t judge him. I feel like an awful person and incompetent for not being able to do anything to help his situation — I have my own life.
To be clear, I do judge him, but I keep those thoughts to myself. I think he defaults to blaming our parents for all his problems, blaming everyone else for his current situation, and not taking enough responsibility to live a life on his own terms. However, I keep those thoughts to myself — I know he judges himself far more than anyone else can judge him.
He’s asked the question less. He doesn’t go to church anymore. But occasionally the subject will come up again, this time in light of his life situation.
“If God exists, how could he let this happen?”
. . .
I don’t have the answer for why God lets these things happen. I am not a theologian. I can be pretty disengaged in church. I can go a week without reading the Bible if I get busy enough. I am not confident enough as an emissary of God where I can answer that sensitive of a question.
Suffice to say, my brother doesn’t believe in God anymore. The easiest answer to him for all these tragedies is that there’s no God at all.
It’s what he believes. I respect it. If I were in his situation, I’d feel the exact same way.
I became a Christian five years ago. And I still don’t know the answers to a lot of questions. I don’t know why God let my brother suffer crippling mental illness. I don’t know why God let his friend’s whole family get killed by their father. I don’t know why God let 9/11 happen. In the grand scheme of current events, I don’t know why God is allowing genocide to happen around the world, why God let George Floyd be murdered, why God let the current situation in the Ukraine happen.
The question of why God allows suffering and tragedy to happen is well documented in theological circles. I used to try to answer it. I used to think I had the answer for it. I think back to my old answers, and they now seem cheap, intellectually lazy, and just not what someone in pain and grief needs to hear in a time of suffering.
“Why is there suffering in the world?” is the number one question asked in a national Christian survey administered by pastor Lee Strobel.
And popular pastor Lee Strobel also says “I don’t know.”
When I think about the question, I realize how lucky I am — compared to my brother and compared to a lot of people. Sometimes I take my brother’s approach when I think about people who have a worse situation. It’s not entirely Christian or biblical to think, but my first instinct is also often “at least it’s not me.”
I think about it in terms of hardships that can happen in my job as a teacher. We recently found out a student in our school is being charged with the murder of a delivery driver. At least I’m still alive and didn’t get killed. At least I’m not in Ukraine right now. At least I don’t suffer crippling mental illness or a disability. At least I have a job, a stable income, and good health.
And yet my life hasn’t been roses and sunshine either. I try not to overshare as much anymore, but my family has been through significant trauma and dysfunction. There was a time during my senior year of college when I lost over half my friends (you can argue I learned who my real friends were). I have a lot of horror stories during my time as a teacher, but I have grown from them and become better as a result.
I don’t mean for this to sound cliche, but I don’t enjoy fixating on all the negative things in my life. There was a period where I did, but now I try not to.
All I know is God does not promise a life of prosperity or freedom of suffering. I think we all go through that stage where we expect God to make our lives easier. And when it doesn’t happen, we can get disillusioned with our faith or cast it aside altogether.
There just aren’t as many answers as we would like. Wisdom is often never found in hindsight, but rather in the moment. That’s just the way it is. Maybe one day I’ll have a more personal and informed answer to my brother’s question.
Right now, however, I don’t.
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This post was previously published on Publishous.
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Like your brother, I used to be an Atheist and would always ask the same question he asked. I then decided I would seek out the answers and find my own “truth” about God. After several years of researching the major religions I found my truth by combining my love of science with a curiosity about spirituality. I was able to create a spiritual connection that nurtures my soul and confirms for me that there is a power greater than myself that created, and is still creating this amazing Universe we live in. I decided to share the lessons I… Read more »