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With Sharon Dirckx
93 Plays3 years ago
When sharing the gospel, perhaps no response is more common or more scary than "How can God allow suffering?" It's an ancient question, but can relate to the present moment more than anything else. Sharon Dirckx joins us today to think about how to navigate this particularly sensitive and personal area of evangelism.
Sharon Dirckx is a Senior Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). She has a PhD in brain imaging from Cambridge and has held research positions in the UK and USA. Sharon speaks and lectures in the UK, Europe and North America on science, theology, ‘mind and soul’ and the problem of evil. She is also the author of the award-winning and recently re-released book on suffering, entitled Why?: Looking at God, evil and personal suffering. Her latest book, Am I Just My Brain? (2019) examines questions of human identity from the perspectives of neuroscience, philosophy and theology.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:09
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Vanister from the Sola Center for Public Christianity based all the way up in Scotland in sunny Dundee. And I'm flying solo today. Normally I'm joined by my effervescent co-host, Kristi Mayer, but she's off doing university carol services in Cambridge or something desperately exciting. So I'm on my own, but I'm made up for that by being joined by an amazing guest and an old friend. Well, old in that I've known her for a while, but not old, old.
00:00:37
Speaker
I'm joined by Sharon Dirichs, who is a speaker and writer based at OCCA, the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics down at the other end of the country. Sharon, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.
Discussing Sharon's Book: 'Why?'
00:00:51
Speaker
In fact, I mean, you and I go quite a way back because we've both kind of written books on various things. I still remember, I think, when you and I were both talking about writing our first books, we shared an office in Oxford of sort of chiving each other on to finally get it written. And lo and behold, here we are now. Goodness knows how many years later. I'm not sure we wrote what we were talking about then. Who knows? But yes, it's wonderful to have that
00:01:15
Speaker
a chance and opportunity to put onto paper what God has put on your heart really.
00:01:23
Speaker
Now, one of the books, there is a deliberate link and a deliberate segue here, a bad link as ever on pep talk. One of the books you've written, you've written it before, but it's been recently released, Sharon, you've written this book called Why? Looking at God's evil and personal suffering.
Motivation and Perspectives on Suffering
00:01:39
Speaker
And I think one of the things I loved when I first read that book is you weave together, you say some theological things and some sorts of quite weighty things about suffering, but it's grounded practically, it's grounded
00:01:52
Speaker
in the story of your family and others. I suppose I want to begin by asking, why did you feel the need to write that particular kind of book? I wanted to dig into how it can help people who are listening to this in a moment. But why did you feel the need to write? Lots of people have written on evil and suffering. What led you to feel you had something sort of different to say?
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, thanks, Andy. Well, I couldn't get away from the question and I guess none of us can really. It's the one question that everyone has probably asked at some point because suffering comes to us all in different ways. But I was also aware that any proper engagement with the topic needs to give kind of good intellectual reasons why you can still believe in God in a world of pain.
00:02:40
Speaker
but also ground that in the gritty reality of life. And so I wanted to try and hold together these two elements of kind of giving reasons or answers combined with stories of people that do believe in God and yet have suffered in sometimes horrendous ways.
Faith, Suffering, and Conversations
00:03:01
Speaker
Now, I think, you know, when I sort of talk to, when I do teaching and training on evangelism, I know you do this a lot too, Sharon. You know, I think there's a lot of fear from people out there that if I try and talk about my faith in the workplace with my friends, you know, what happens if I get pushback? And I think one of the pushback questions is in this area, right? Especially right now, as we record this, we're still in pandemic times. So, you know, you've thought a lot about this and had time to do that.
00:03:27
Speaker
I suppose for somebody who's new to all this and wants to share their faith a bit more confidently but afraid of being asked, okay, you believe in God, what about suffering, right? Where does somebody start? Where can we start responding to that if that's the response we get from a friend or a neighbour or a colleague? Yeah, that's a great question and I think that the first thing I would want to say is that
00:03:48
Speaker
You know, we would need to sort of be mindful of the context of that relationship, whether they are, they may be a friend who just has a kind of an intellectual question about suffering or it may be that they have suffered deeply or are indeed in a time of pain or trauma.
00:04:09
Speaker
And so the nature of the relationship will impact how you respond to that initial question. For one person it might be, let's go for a coffee and you listen. And you know, we learn a lot from Job's friends, you know, this most universal
00:04:27
Speaker
book on suffering at the start of the Bible, chronologically the oldest. His friends say nothing for a couple of weeks and in that time they are probably their most comforting to him. Sometimes there are levels of pain that can't be captured by words and I feel like it's really important to say that at the beginning. I don't want to just come in with a trike, we need to say this. Sometimes we need to really learn the
Explaining Suffering: Natural vs. Christian Views
00:04:53
Speaker
to have compassion and to really sit with people's pain and to really as Jesus did really enter into their suffering and from that place begin to be responsive in whatever way that might be. If words are necessary and we have an opportunity and we are genuinely being asked a question by a friend then I would you know want to begin by asking well look
00:05:22
Speaker
If God does not exist, how do we make sense of the suffering in the world that we see?
00:05:37
Speaker
naturalistic explanations that try and make sense of it. I mean, if you take the COVID-19 virus, well, perhaps this is kind of one of the explanations. This is nature's way of kind of slimming down population sizes. That's what they talk about in microbiology when they've got viral populations and one starts to dominate the others. That is actually to kind of keep certain populations under control.
00:06:04
Speaker
But of course, that that kind of explanation doesn't really sit too well with us when you start talking about people in that way. We could also look at things like lifestyle affecting immunity and that sort of thing. And we could also look at, you know, people's kind of biology impacts their behavior.
00:06:28
Speaker
in certain ways so you know it's not necessarily to do with us it's to do with sort of forces beyond our control and so we start we could look to explanations like that to try and explain why things around us are happening the way that they are and other genetic diseases we could say well you know chance alone can explain why kind of
00:06:55
Speaker
one genetic disease would affect one person on the planet. If there's sort of trillions of cells in the human body and billions of people on the planet, then occasionally it's going to go wrong. And so there are all kinds of things we could say from nature that might help make sense. But it's as though when it really comes down to it, that's not really enough. That seems to be sort of descriptive, but it's not really getting at why.
00:07:22
Speaker
And when someone asks why, that begs another question, who are you addressing your question to? And it's as though when we ask why, there's this assumption lying underneath it that there's something not right.
00:07:38
Speaker
And the Christian faith affirms us as actually, yes, that's not something you need to skirt over or ignore. The Christian faith says there's something deeply wrong with the world and with human beings. And that's how we sort of begin to sort of unpack that. And it's actually if God exists that you can make
00:08:01
Speaker
more sense of that rawness in the face of suffering than if he doesn't, if he doesn't exist, then this is just the way the world is, you know, it's just the way it is. That's very helpful Sharon, I think you're right there's some real wisdom in almost setting out the alternatives rather than just, because if you just set out the Christian worldview right and people feel it doesn't quite join up for them, but if you set out Christianity with the atheist worldview and go look Christianity despite there may be still some question marks in places,
00:08:30
Speaker
It is infinitely better than the nearest alternative. One thing I'm struck by though, and I'd love your insight on this, that I think one area sometimes we can get into trouble as Christians is, you know, you've obviously set the philosophical out there and we'll talk about the personal perhaps in a moment.
00:08:47
Speaker
But the questions do come sometimes of this form. Someone might say to us, things like, well, you know, if there's a God, why did my granny die of COVID? And I'm struck in one sense, you've given quite a good answer to why there's COVID, but we can't always necessarily say why this granny on this particular occurrence. And is that perhaps sometimes why this is a difficult question? Because trying to connect the personal and the meta level, and sometimes
00:09:11
Speaker
where things go wrong. So do we need to be careful at what we can say and what we can't say? Yes, absolutely.
00:09:19
Speaker
And I think
Christian Faith and Hope in Suffering
00:09:21
Speaker
that there are some things that we can say that are helpful in offering a framework as to why suffering exists in general. But that doesn't mean that we have all of the answers. And I think that it's really important to remember that suffering is deeply mysterious and
00:09:42
Speaker
we don't lose that element of mystery by giving answers and reasons. And actually why this person has suffered in this way and why this person has or hasn't is something that it becomes very hard to answer and I think that's where I would want to be actually saying, look, I don't necessarily understand
00:10:04
Speaker
why what's happening to you is happening, but I want to be with you in it. And that's where we really kind of get to the heart of the Christian faith. And actually, if we look, even look back to this book of Job that, you know, Job is asking all of these dozens and dozens of questions and his friends are kind of assuming that he is suffering because he's done something wrong and God is displeased with him. Christian faith is really clear that that is not the case.
00:10:31
Speaker
that we're not suffering as a punishment from God. That is not
00:10:36
Speaker
what we see in Scripture, and that is not the Judeo-Christian God. And actually, he isn't given an ultimate reason for his suffering, but he is given a relationship. He's given a person, and God ends up asking him many questions as well. And actually, that really is the heart of the Christian response, is that sometimes we never
00:11:06
Speaker
completely understand why things have come to us in the way that they have. We know that the world is broken. We know that we're all caught up in it. And beyond that, we know that there is a God who has come to meet us in our suffering. And the reason we know that is because Jesus entered history as we're remembering again at Christmas.
00:11:30
Speaker
and entered our broken world and actually through his own suffering made a way for us to be never alone in arms. And so that is really the heart of what the hope that we have to share with people
00:11:47
Speaker
in their suffering that whatever you're facing you actually never need to face it alone because there's a God that loves you, that knows you, that has stepped out of eternity into human history to be with you in it, to walk with you and give you strength that you never knew you had and hope that you never knew was possible even in the most bleak of situations and
00:12:10
Speaker
And so I suppose, you know, there's a sense in which giving answers, it does slightly run its course and you end up at a place where you're commending a person to somebody who is in pain. But that's the best thing that we can possibly do.
00:12:28
Speaker
Well, that's a good link to something else I thought would be really helpful to talk about for a few minutes, Sharon.
Supporting Those Who Suffer
00:12:34
Speaker
We've talked about some ways that one could address the questions and things I think that Christians can uniquely say, and that can be helpful for perhaps having that in, folks listening to this, having this in the background, because that gives you confidence when talking to others in case the question comes up. But I think the other place I know it can be hard in terms of evangelism,
00:12:53
Speaker
How do we, you know, in your experience, how do we begin to begin broaching the question of God with those who are suffering? I think that can be a really tricky one. If you've got friends who are suffering, perhaps somebody who's had a bereavement or a job loss or perhaps a health diagnosis, you know, there can almost ironically be a tendency for Christians, a temptation for Christians to step back and go, oh, gosh, I wouldn't want to wait in my size 10s.
00:13:15
Speaker
But actually, Christianity and the gospel are something unique to say in that in that situation. How do we bridge that gap when there's real suffering? And like we said at the start, one of the things I appreciate about your book, you've got those stories of personal suffering, both in terms of, you know, your own family and the experiences you've been through and others. So how do we how do we talk to those who are not just theoretically, they are suffering themselves?
00:13:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a great question and a great challenge for us. And I guess I come back to the heart of the mission of God. He didn't just send us information. He didn't just send us kind of tools. He actually came himself to us as Jesus Christ. And so I think the first thing that we can do if we have a friend in pain is be present with them.
00:14:04
Speaker
be prepared to sit with them, be prepared to be family to them, have them come to be in your home or whatever is the right or appropriate thing and obviously all of the practical help of meals and helping with their children and soaking all of that in prayer.
00:14:28
Speaker
And I think also not, we have the temptation to try and offer our interpretation of people's events, our interpretation of why something is happening to other people. This lovely phrase that we trot off, things happen for a reason.
00:14:48
Speaker
Actually, that can add to somebody's suffering sometimes. I think that there's a case for waiting for the questions to come to you, but they may not come in the thick of the suffering. When someone is struggling, they are not necessarily asking their questions at that point. They're in kind of survival mode or shock, but maybe they come later.
00:15:15
Speaker
But yeah, so I think it's waiting for those questions to come and then being ready with some questions to ask in response and one that I mentioned earlier, you know, if God doesn't exist, how would you make sense of what's
00:15:34
Speaker
happening to you. When you think about God, what sort of God do you pitch? Because sometimes in people's minds, they're thinking of a vindictive God who's actually quite happy about their trauma when that couldn't actually be further from the truth, that God kind of grieves with us. And so sometimes it's waiting for an opportunity to put forward the kind of God that we understand
00:16:04
Speaker
God to be and to kind of address any misunderstandings that they might have about the nature and character of God. And just I think being prepared to kind of walk with people over the medium to long term as well and journeying with them in their questions and recognising that they would have different questions at different times.
00:16:29
Speaker
That's a very helpful and practical advice in there.
Personal Stories and Hope
00:16:33
Speaker
Thanks for that, Sharon. Do you think there's some, is there a place for personal testimony in this too, if one has been through suffering oneself as a Christian? Is there a way that you can weave that story, if you think appropriately into what you say to somebody else?
00:16:48
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, of course, we have to avoid the danger of I know exactly what you're going through, because everyone's suffering is different and unique. And I think finding a way to uphold the dignity of the sufferer by saying, OK, I might have experienced something similar, but I don't know exactly what it's like for you to go through what you're going through. But here are some things that I have found to be helpful.
00:17:14
Speaker
along the way and here's my story and here's the difference that Jesus made in my story and that's, as you say, partly why I included stories in my book on suffering and sometimes then giving someone a book has been helpful. I was at an event a few weeks back and somebody came up to me and said, I gave your book to a mum who's two-year-old drowned
00:17:42
Speaker
And I was just completely taken aback by that and just slightly knocked for six actually. And it was the beginning of the day and I was thinking, oh my goodness, I would never have expected that that could be helpful, but in my book is a story of a two-year-old that dies.
00:18:05
Speaker
There is some comfort in kind of reading the stories of other people and seeing how they have come through. And they're still on their feet, thanks to God and the prayers of people. So I absolutely think that testimony story is helpful and can help pull people through and give them hope.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think hope is the key thing, right? I've got a couple of friends over the years who've been through cancer and I've talked about the opportunity that's given them when in hospitals are leaving, being treated to talk to other patients about the question of hope. Where do you find the hope when there's suffering?
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, we're running out of time, Sharon. But one last question I wanted to ask, because this is always hugely encouraging that when people can hear this kind of thing, is have you got any examples, perhaps, or stories of how conversations or a conversation that you've had around this theme with somebody and how you brought this to bear? Because we started theoretically, and I'd love to end practically. And I know, like me, you spend huge amounts of time talking to people about questions of faith. So have you got any examples of you could share of perhaps how you've navigated one of these
00:19:22
Speaker
conversations. Yeah.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yes, well I very often after kind of speaking on the subject and even after speaking on the subject of neuroscience people still come up and I had someone come up and you know tell me that their son had been in a vegetative state for a number of years after
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, an incident. I think my primary job at that point was to listen and to ask them what they have found
00:20:11
Speaker
what they have found to be helpful, what they think that they need, do they have a church family that they can go to, are there people that they can ask to pray for them and that's what I was
00:20:27
Speaker
that's how the conversation went with this gentleman that I was speaking to and then finally I offered to pray with him and so we prayed and I think that that's a really important thing actually especially if you're talking to someone who is right in the midst of suffering it's surprising how many people are willing to
00:20:57
Speaker
receive prayer even if they're not sure what they believe and so I would encourage people you know people not to be afraid to to offer that if you actually feel that you know them you know or even if you don't necessarily know them it never hurts to offer you know would you like me to pray for you that the worst they can say is no thank you
00:21:22
Speaker
or maybe they might say it in a slightly less, you know, if they're upset, but that is the worst response that you can have. So that would be, yeah, that is one example of a conversation.
Grace in Suffering and Christian Testimony
00:21:37
Speaker
It also occurs to me as you spoke, and of course the other thing which we
00:21:40
Speaker
We haven't got time to go into it in depth. It also occurs to me that there's something too about the way that Christians suffer as a witness. You know, we've got friends right now who the husband has been in hospital with a pretty nasty condition about the last two and a half months. We always thought we'd lost him on a couple of occasions. But what's interesting now
00:22:00
Speaker
that he's pulling through is the testimony is coming out about the impact of the way the family have dealt with that on nursing staff because they've seen nursing staff watch you know they've seen a lot and if Christians bear suffering well and with grace and with hope and with joy it's led some amazing conversations actually and so yeah I think that's an awesome untapped area we all go through suffering at some point and to be conscious of how we we suffer when the eyes of the world are on us
00:22:29
Speaker
Absolutely. And, you know, there's no question that God can bring all kinds of good out of suffering. There's no question in a world kind of full of horrendous evil. And the reason we know that is because of the cross when all of the world's evil was thrown at one innocent, pure, blameless target, an incredible good came out of that great evil, which is that, you know, you and I don't have to
00:22:57
Speaker
carry the weight of the world's evil and let it have the last word in our lives and that's because of what what Christ has done.
00:23:07
Speaker
on the cross. And so there is hope. Actually, you talked about hope earlier. I end my book with the question, can a broken story be fixed? Some of our stories are so broken, can it be fixed? And if God doesn't exist, it can't. There are just individual stories that are sort of mix and match.
00:23:32
Speaker
Some religions talk about circular repeating stories that you just kind of end up in this endless loop. Eat, sleep, drink, repeat sort of thing. But if God exists, then you fix a broken story by embedding it in a much bigger one in which good wins and evil loses. And that's what Christians mean when they talk about heaven. Not so much heaven, but a new heaven and a new earth where there'll be no
00:24:00
Speaker
crying or grieving or mourning or pain. And so there is present hope, but there's also ultimate hope as well that this life is not all that there is, that one day evil will be removed.
00:24:18
Speaker
That's a great place to end on that note,
Conclusion and Thanks
00:24:22
Speaker
Sharon. So Sharon, Derricks, thank you so much for taking 25 minutes to talk about some really actually quite deep issues. It's been a real privilege. Thank you for being on the podcast. That's a pleasure.
00:24:33
Speaker
And for folks who want to check out Sharon's book, this is the new edition of Why Looking at God, Evil and Personal Suffering. We'll put a link in the show notes to where you can pick up a copy. Hugely recommend giving it a read. And myself and hopefully Kristy will be back in two weeks time with a new guest and a new topic for another episode. Hope you've enjoyed the show. Thanks for listening.