God, cancer and a woman called Shin.

Hi all, here is a life that will and should challenge your safe harbor of faith. This life is Shin. Some of you may know her. She was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in December 2005. She passed away about 3 years ago after a never-say-die fight.  She is survived by her husband and two beautiful children.

I admire her fight for life, love and family and her blog: www.shincancerblog.blogspot.sg, stands as a testament to her courage, humor and sheer determination to live on her own terms.

Shin is remarkably bright and resilient, and it is her straight-shot and unpretentious view of religion that drew me to her blog. Below is an exchange between her and another blogger on God and cancer.

"A blog reader (Stephanie) wrote the following comment to me (Shin). I thought I should post my answer here to share with others so that those of you who are still talking to me about God saving me will see where I stand on this issue. 

From Stephanie:

"Think about the life of Jesus. He did nothing but good for people. He healed the sick and cast out demon spirits who tormented the thoughts of people.  Yet no matter how much good He did in His life He was still crucified. Jesus came so we would have the Holy Spirit in our lives.

A good Spirit that tells us the truth about our present situation.  A Holy Spirit that is our guide so that in everything we go through we might gain understanding through our ability to believe that God can and will help us no matter what cancer might do to destroy our lives.

Why does God allow cancer? God hates cancer! Cancer is the result of Satan's power to hurt people in the world. God is ready and able to help us fight. Even if the fight leads us to death, God promises us that  He will reward us in Heaven for the pain we have endured.

We are His Christian soldiers. Soldiers who fight against Satan and this evil world. God takes the evil of cancer and He shows how our determination through everything we suffer is an example to others what God can do in our lives even when the prognosis is bad.

God changes the lives of our friends and family when they see that we will not let go of our faith no matter what happens to us. I pray this encourages you.

Please know that if you believe in Him, he will give you everlasting life. This world is not your home. God is able."

Here is Shin's answer:

Stephanie, "Jesus might have been a good guy but there have been many, many good people throughout history who have sacrificed far more than he. He wasn't given a choice. Nelson Mandela, Xanana Gusmao, Mother Theresa, even people I personally know who are not famous have sacrificed a lot more than Jesus - with choice, unlike Jesus.

So I have to say I'm not that impressed with Jesus or what he did for anybody under duress, without choice.

If God hates cancer and cancer is Satan's power, then if follows logically that Satan is more powerful than God since cancer exists. Hmmm.

God will let Satan's cancer kill us but that's okay because he will reward us in heaven for the pain we suffered.  Sorry. Not good enough. I don't want any rewards in heaven. I want to be with my husband and my kids here on Earth. There is absolutely nothing, nothing that God can offer me in heaven that I'd prefer to being with my family here on Earth.

So I resent that this supreme being is telling me what I should want.  I don't want everlasting life. That's greedy and selfish, vague and obscure. What IS everlasting life anyway? What do you do with it? This world IS my home. It's a beautiful world, despite all the problems. I don't want something else.

I think people want something else, seek something else, when they're not happy with what they have in front of them. Well, I'm quite happy with what I have in front of me, even with cancer.

So I'm not asking for anything else. I don't need God to be happy or strong. I have the love of family and friends to help me through this, but most of all, I have me. I believe I have inner strength that no God, friend, or family member can give me. I believe I have it within myself.

You say that God "shows how our determination through everything we suffer is an example to others what God can do in our lives even when the prognosis is bad."  I think I'm an example of what the strength of the human spirit and love can do, without God.

I don't need to give credit to something external to me or lean on something outside of myself.  I understand that some people think they need God. But I wonder if some of these people could find strength within themselves instead. I wonder if God is just a crutch."

- END -


Dear all, the above seems a tad defiant and even militant from Shin. But please understand that Shin meant well. She was merely expressing how she really  felt and was very open about her feelings; which accumulatively, were exclusively tormenting.

In fact, in later exchanges, Shin realized that all three men she had mentioned above are either Christians or Catholics. And she cordially gave this comment: "Hey, it didn't even occur to me that the three people I mentioned were Christians! I guess that's a pretty good argument for people finding strength through God."

The next statement from Shin showed her fair and open mindedness  in the whole issue concerning religion: "...I have many friends who are Christian, plus three family members who are ordained pastors. I know they want what they think is best for me. How can I be angry about that?"

Further, in one letter, Shin was asked, "What's the best thing about having cancer?" She replied, "I think cancer has brought out the best in my friends and family. To put it another way, it's made me see the best in my friends and family...that's the best thing about having cancer - getting the chance to see the goodness in people around me."

I am deeply ministered by Shin's life and her fight for it. It's real, visceral at times, and her faith in humanity, especially her husband and children, taught me many things about my own struggles as a father, husband and friend.

I recall a saying that goes like this: "People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But in the darkness, beauty is seen only if there is a light within."

Shin's life is genuine and she shone brightly for me even in the darkness of my own life.

I too have my own doubts and, inspired by Shin's fight, I wrote a letter to my cell group years ago about theodicy as I understood it. It started off with my son, then six years old, who innocently asked me this question, "Daddy, how come God can hear us, and we cannot hear God?”

Below is my reply to my son addressed to my cell:-

"Dear Cell, let me caution you first: this letter is not a letter about answers. It is in fact a letter generating more questions than answers. Answers to what, you may ask?  Well, answers to all the questions you have about God, His existence, His love and His power. For those of you who attended Cell last Friday, the discussion was a challenge to our faith.

The challenge was this: How do people come to the conclusion that there is no God or that God is cruel and sadistic? How do you answer them?

Let’s go for the jugular. Professor Richard Dawkins, an atheist extraordinaire, will take the first shot at our religion with this shockingly invective quote:-

“God is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloody thirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynistic homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicial, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously, malevolent bully.”

When you finally come exhausted after poring through the Oxford dictionary to find the meaning of those big, long words, you can take this rabid quote as the signature, all-compassing mantra for non-believers with a religious axe to grind.

But, the above begs this question: Does Dawkins have a point?

Well, maybe not the whole spiteful load of it. But the undertones and sentiments behind his quote are unmistakable. Without misquoting Dawkins, I think we can say that he is of the view that there is no God. Or, at least the probability of His existence is so negligible that it is as good as taking it as a confirmation that there is no God. And you don’t need to be a Professor to share this sentiment with Dawkins.

You can be a preschooler and still be able to identify with him in less disconcerting way.  A year ago, my son, who was only six years old, casually asked me this question, “Daddy, how come God can hear us, and we cannot hear God?”

Of course, this is not exactly an expression of doubt by a young boy but it is a foreshadow of all theological questions about the existence of God. It always starts off innocently enough and, if left on its own to fester, it can grow into something quite problematic for the devout Christian parents trying to keep the faith in the family together.

So, we as Christian parents have this sacred duty to protect our children from the intemperate thinking that comes with Dawkins quote. But how do we do that? Do we have better answers to offer that will dispel all doubts?

When Jezer asked me that question, I took it quite seriously. I thought it was too early for him to challenge me in that way, so disarmingly and so innocently. But of course, I knew Jezer didn’t realize the full theological weight behind that question, not yet at least.

But I knew as the years roll by, when he grows older and wiser, the question may become less innocent, less amiable and maybe more confrontational. The older Jezer may want an intellectually satisfying answer and expect me, as his father, to give it to him.

But honestly, can we provide an intellectually satisfying answer to questions concerning theodicy even before one is sufficiently transformed by the renewal  of his mind (Romans 12:2)? Isn't that "putting the cart before the horse" or "putting on one's shoes before the sock"? Just musing...

Along this musing line, many religions have come forward to offer their answers to a variant-form of the question posed by Jezer.

When the tsunamis struck South East Asia and took the lives of fathers, mothers and young children alike  (altogether 250,000 lives were taken that fateful boxing day of 2004), the religious journalist, Gary Stern, went around mosques, temples, churches and secular communities to scout for answers.

He wrote a book about it entitled, Can God Intervene?

His question was simple enough but the answers were far from simple. He started off with this:-

“Is the mystery of God’s role in the tsunami any different than the mystery of God’s role when one innocent person suffers?”

I imagine that the question was posed as a non-starter. To give an answer, of any acceptable merit, would require one to be familiar with the mind of God. This is as insurmountable a task as expecting  an ant to understand why there is a sudden, all-consuming flood in the sink. Well, I guess you can say that this example is limited since the ant in question is not our image bearer unlike our relationship with God.

As an aside, I also dread to speculate how some cynical quarters would have approached the question. To them, there is a sensible difference that goes beyond the question. And it is reducible to God's existence.

You see, while a single innocent death creates only a small dent on one's faith, and can be explained away as part and parcel of life, a mass obliteration seems to render His existence, as a loving and powerful being, much less tenable and defensible and the same may just wash away one's safe harbor of faith.  This difference therefore unravels and exposes one mystery (of mass innocent death) while accommodates the other (of one innocent death).

To whom should I pass this theodicy baton?

Anyhow, going back to the question, I think one shouldn't be too far from the truth to say that there is no difference. God is equally mysterious in both situations.

While there is no way to know why natural disaster happen in a place and time we least expect it to strike and take away so many innocent lives and why an individual has to suffer unexplained illness, our ignorance doesn't mean that God is any less indiscriminate.

In other words, in all things, in particular misfortune, God sets them against the backdrop of the cross and eternity, and seen in that perspective, our vain attempt at tipping the scales of justice and keeping scores pale in comparison. Such attempt is analogous to a man trying to measure a sunbeam with a ruler.

In the end, on this side of heaven, if it is a mystery, it will always be a mystery and explaining it away will only take the mystery out of it.

Of course, telling my son that it is a mystery will do little to sate his intellectual appetite. He would want to know why it is a mystery. Or, is it just another tactic Christian parents employ to avoid answering the question?

Here, the atheist’s answer would be the easiest and even most tempting.

In the book, Gary interviewed David Silverman, who is the national spokesman for American Atheists, and David's reply was quite expected:

 “If you combine benevolence with omnipotence and all-powerfulness, you can’t have natural disaster…Either God sent the tsunami, which means he is not a nice guy, or he didn’t know it was going to be there, so he’s not omnipotent, or he couldn’t stop it, which means he isn’t all-powerful. You can’t get all three. If you think about it, natural disasters disprove most religion, especially Christianity.”

What is even scarier is that Silverman became an atheist when he was only 6 years old (my son’s age) when he said, “I realized that God is fiction. I kept asking questions and getting non-responses.”

Silverman did not stop there.

His religion bashing was most frightening and vitriolic with this conclusion in the book:

“(Silverman) thinks most people are atheists. They innately understand that life doesn’t make sense and that no one is in charge. But they pretend to be believers so they don’t have to face the truth. They don’t want to deal with it, so they pretend that they believe in the invisible, magic man in the sky.  That’s why when you challenge them on it, they get so defensive, angry or withdrawn. Prayer is a form of self-hypnosis so that people can convince themselves they’re not going to die. A natural disaster is a shot of reality. People doubt mythology when they’re confronted with reality.”

Well, my only wish is that my son is not as “enlightened” as Silverman was when the latter was six years old and took a path wholly different from mine.

At this juncture, I can get a little creative with my answers. I can tell my son what Reverend Tony Campolo once said.

Basically, Campolo conceded that God was not in control of everything.  He said that God limited His power by personal choice. It was the same choice He made when He sent His son to be slaughtered by His own creation.

By sending Jesus, God made a conscious choice to limit His power by not interfering when Jesus was scorned, whipped, bound, tortured, ridiculed, misjudged and crucified. The bloodied, wretched and dejected face of Jesus at the cross was the epitome of God’s self-imposed restraint of power.

It was therefore for a greater purpose that God had tied up his own hands. It was for universal salvation that God chose to turn his face away from Jesus at Calvary.

As for the tsunami and all such natural disasters, I could tell my son that God chose not to act because that was the only way we could experience the full plethora of what we humans constantly clamor for, that is, “freedom of expression, will and choice.” Imagine a god, like a genie, at our disposal? We would never grow up.

Take a personal example in this case. If I want my son to grow and mature, to learn from his mistakes and be independent, I would have to let go and let him do things his own way sometimes. I cannot be controlling him 24-7. I cannot be telling him what to do, how to do it and why he should do it the way I would do it.

In the same way, I cannot tell my son who he should love, how he should run his adult life, and what career path he should take. My son just has to muster the courage to take that first step on his own and sometimes suffer the consequences arising from his own personal choices.

Furthermore, it is not on every occasions that the adage “Father knows best” is fully applicable. I could be wrong about things, misjudging them, or just being careless about it. So, my son should be left on his own to grow and mature.

By extension, this example, however imperfect, is the same reason why God left us alone at times to learn, grow and mature. In other words, God cannot be chaperoning us all the time.  And by leaving us alone, this will inevitably result in some hurt and pain in our lives as we face life’s challenges head on.

Of course, this explanation suits us fine when we are talking about pains of life that bring about our growth. There are many lessons to be learned from failures. Many people are invariably stronger, wiser and more resilient after a personal trial.

But how do I explain to my son about the meaningless and pointless sufferings in this world?  Surely, God shouldn’t restrain His power to help when an innocent wife is crying out to Him for healing from Aids when the same was passed to her by her unfaithful husband.

Yesterday at cell, we also talked about a little Thai girl sold into the brothel at a tender age of 12. When they raided the brothel and entered into her tiny squalid room, they found many prayers for help scrawled on her wall – most of them were left unanswered by the one person who had the power to rescue her.

She had suffered so much despite her constant, daily cry for help. It is therefore tempting to ask: Where was God when she was forcibly taken by greedy mercenaries and sold like a cheap chattel to be repeatedly violated by perverted, STD-infected men, thereby ruining her life for life?

Wouldn't any earthly father want to save his own daughter from such macabre fate? What's more our heavenly father?

At this point, if my son is intuitive enough, he would pester me with these questions: Why can’t God be more discerning and discriminating about his choices to limit His power? Can’t He protect the innocent, defend the weak and make a way for the sincerely earnest without compromising the integrity of our free will and choice? Can’t a perfect God strike a perfect balance between divine intervention and humanity’s freedom of will?

Maybe, I should change tack or strategy.

In respect of natural disasters, I should look at my son eyeball to eyeball and tell him that there is a scientific reason why tsunami happens. It is call shifting plate tectonics.

I should tell him that there are several plates in this world holding continents and countries together. There are the Indo-Australian plate and the Eurasian plate. And when these dynamic plates shift or move violently, they cause natural disasters. There is therefore nothing supernaturally sinister about it.

How about cancer?

Maybe I can tell my son that cancer works almost the same way – sometimes they strike because of man-made choices in the food they take and the lifestyle they adopt and sometimes because of blind random genetic mutation with impunity. And sometimes  it is a convergence of all possible natural causes.

In fact, another way of looking at it is that cancer is the disease of the rich, well-off and long-lived. You see, during primitive times, where mortality rate is  high, many died young. By dying young, most were spared the pain of contracting cancer because cancer is generally the disease of the relatively old.

When we age, our cells become more unstable and they tend to mutate and these harmful mutation multiplies or metastasizes, causing the dreaded cancer. So, in biological terms, there is always a trade-off; that is, the good and bad in all things.

It is generally a blessing to grow old. But in growing old and enjoying the fruits of old age, there are also the despicable weeds of old age and they come in the form of neurological decay like dementia or genetic haywire like cancer or vascular entropy like stroke.

In like manner, in geological terms, the earth we live in is the only planet that can support a bio-diversity of life. We thrive on this planet because the conditions are just right for us. Some call it the "Goldilocks zone".

It is somewhat like a beautiful Garden of Eden on Earth except for some expected trade-off like earthquakes, tsunami, volcano eruptions and hurricane.  In other words, in order for the majority of us to live and thrive in our own habitat, some unfortunate minority would have to pay the price in a way that seems unfair, cruel and even mysterious.

Lastly, my son should know that no action stands alone on its own. There are ripple effects for every action sowed. One man’s policy may result in another’s tragedy. If a mother chooses to smoke, she risks a miscarriage, or worse, her child may bear the consequences of her actions with congenital defects that will handicap him for life.

If a man seeks easy and quick profit, he may sell his young daughter to a man three times her age for a price. If a corrupt leader of a nation gives in to peer pressure and chooses to engage in war with a country for the flimsiest of ideological reason, we can expect a lot of civil casualties, resulting in future recriminations and revenge, and the cycle of violence can go on and on without stopping. And innocent lives may be caught up in the cross-hair of these wars as human casualties.

So, there you have it, the ever-expanding cycle of causes and effects are part of the reason why sufferings are so prevalent and persistent in this corrupt world.

In the end, I fear that my adult son may not be completely convinced by the above answers; because they appear to generate more questions than answers or more heat than light.

So, when that day of reckoning draws nigh, when my adult son comes to me for answers,  I would share with him this passage from the book, God on Mute, authored by a church-planter Pete Grieg:-

“A story is told of the Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he was imprisoned by Stalin in a Siberian gulag.

One day, slaving away in sub-zero temperatures, he finally reached the end of his endurance. Discarding his shovel, he slumped onto a bench and waited for a guard to beat him to death. He’d seen it happen to others and was waiting for the first blow to fall. Before this could happen, an emaciated fellow prisoner approached Solzhenitsyn silently.

Without a word of explanation, the prisoner scratched the sign of the cross in the mud and scurried away.  As Solzhenitsyn stared at those two lines scratched in the dirt, the message of the cross began to converse with his sense of despair.

“In that moment, he knew that there was something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that the hope of all mankind was represented in that simple cross. And through the power of the cross, anything was possible.”

Picking up his shovel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn slowly went back to work.”

Beloved, the cross is where God met humanity on the latter's term. The price was paid and the way was made. God gave no excuses for the cross. Neither was it a divine apology. It was a framed charge that Jesus accepted without protest with us in mind.

You can ridicule, spit or snarl at the cross but one thing you cannot dispute about it: it's a selfless act of a stubborn and preposterous passion. Who is to understand this strange, irrational passion unless our eyes are truly opened to its gruesomeness? Boethius once said, "the mind not redeemed by the cross is like a drunk who is unable to find his way home."

In conclusion, I will have to tell my son that our faith is not anathema to understanding. In the science of faith, our faith is one that seeks understanding. It is therefore not a dialectics of faith versus understanding or faith against understanding.

My son must realize that the search for understanding may sometimes take half a lifetime and he should not give up just because a stenciled answer is not readily available.

Further, John Calvin once commented that our mind is a factory of idols and only when we have foreclosed them can we see clearly and know deeply the secret things of God. This is in line with what Richard of St. Victor wrote: "Whoever thirsts to see his God - let him wipe his mirror, let him cleanse his spirit...when the mirror has been wiped and gazed into for a long time, a kind of splendor of divine light begins to shine in it and a great beam of unexpected vision appears in his eyes."

Son, if you are reading this, my hope is that you will, at your own time, see His light in the shadow of your own trials because as Psalms 36:9 puts it, "For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light."

While this light may not represent full understanding for you, it will be one that you'll be able to live with in quiet confidence all the days of your life.

Cheers out!