Pope Francis kisses the leaders' feet for peace.

Call it what you want, but it is still a very moving picture of displayed humility. Why displayed? Because I believe it had to be, to raise public awareness, to raise public accountability and to raise public pressure. 

Pope Francis pleaded for the warring leaders of Sudan not to go back to civil war. For five years before, Sudan had been rocked by wars. The nation and people were and are exhausted and the Pope is begging them to build the young nation for the people’s sake.

He invited them for a retreat in the Vatican and stunned them when he (82-year-old, who suffers from chronic leg pain) “was helped by aides as he knelt with difficulty to kiss the shoes of the two main opposing leaders and other people in the room.”

The two leaders, President Salva Kiir (“Kiir”) and his former deputy, Mr Riek Machar (“Machar”), was speechless by the humbling act from the Vicar of Christ. 

The background to that is this. 

In 2011, Sudan (a predominantly Muslim state) was split in the middle with South Sudan (Christian state) declaring her independence. 

Two years later, Kiir fired his deputy Machar and a civil war lasting 5 years (from 2013 to last September 2018) broke out. 

“About 400,000 people died and more than a third of the country’s 12 million people were uprooted, sparking Africa’s worst refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.”

What led to a truce last September was when the two sides signed a power-sharing deal “to assemble, screen and train their respective forces to create a national army before the formation of a unity government next month.”

This is done in the hope that there will be a permanent peace between the two religiously divided nations whose people have suffered tremendously, with children growing up without fathers, and mothers and daughters raped, exiled and dehumanised as sexual slaves. 

Here, I recall the parable of the sower, that nothing could ever be built on rocky dry ground and thorns, and this young nation of Sudan desperately needs leaders who are prepared to put aside their differences to rebuild the foundation upon which they and their families can grow once more on good fertile soil of peace, trust and hope. 

But a recent incident threatens the power-sharing deal recently signed.

Last Thursday’s coup in neighbouring Sudan “might put at risk the fragile peace” that ended the five long years of atrocity, social dislocation and death. 

This led to the papal kiss for peace followed by a 24-hour prayer and preaching in the Vatican residence to close the gap towards a unity government. 

Pope Francis made this plea: -

“I am asking you as a brother to stay in peace. I am asking you with my heart, let us go forward. There will be many problems but they will not overcome us. Resolve your problems.”

“There will be struggles, disagreements among you but keep them within you, inside the office, so to speak. But in front of the people, hold hands united. So, as simple citizens, you will become fathers of the nation.”

Lesson? Just one. 

When I look at the image of the Pope kissing the feet of the leaders, I am reminded of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. 

In John 13:14-16, the scripture reads: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.”

These words of Jesus came with his lowly act: “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" ("I give you a new commandment, That ye love one another as I have loved you”). 

Alas, if we had followed this example, carried out the new commandment faithfully, with leaders washing the feet of their people and transforming their own hearts first before winning the people’s hearts, the world would be very different from now. 

I believe that religion has lost much of its force for change when it claims to do the reverse, that is, instead of washing feet, they bath in their own glory, instead of being a servant, they become the master, with force of tyranny, and instead of changing their own hearts, allowing love to lead, they leave it untouched and pursue ruins driven by their own enslaved appetites. 

The power of religion is never in the power of subjugation. If the truth sets us free, then enduring freedom has to come from setting ourselves free from the carnal appetites of our hearts. 

If leaders can’t do that, if they can’t set themselves free, then every act that comes from them, regardless of how religious it boasts to be, is no more than an act to further enslave them - for they are never truly free. 

And this enslavement perpetuated only leads to destruction unmitigated. 

So, I have come full circle with the Pope kissing the feet of the Sudanese leaders. The leadership of my Saviour is always about a sacrifice that starts with him first.

In the wilderness, it was a sacrifice of the flesh. In his selection of his disciples, it was a sacrifice by example. In his ministry and teachings, it was the sacrifice of self in service to others. 

In Gethsemane, where he pleaded for the cup to be removed, it was a sacrifice of soul, emotion and will. And at the Cross, it was a sacrifice of love to bring about the healing and overcoming of hearts.

That is why the revolution that Jesus started never went out of circulation. It was so revolutionary during his time that till today, many leaders cannot but acknowledge its distilled power and enduring truth. 

And its truth promises to set us free as leaders if only we wash the feet of our people not as an act for show, but as the result of a changed heart redeemed by a love bestowed. Amen.

Pope Francis' call for Never Again.

Christmas is two days away, so what do you think of this Pope Francis’ promise to the believers: -

”The Church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case. Let it be clear that before these abominations the Church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes.”

The vicar of Christ and the head of the Catholic faith is serious this time. He knows that the “litany of child sexual scandals has rocked the Roman Catholic Church, which has 1.3 billion followers worldwide.” 

The Pope is therefore dropping the guilliotine on these offenders. He is calling for “those who abuse minors” to “convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice.” 

The justice Pope Francis demands are both on earth - human justice - and in heaven - God’s wrath. That might smack of double jeopardy on a life, but jurisdictionally speaking, it is not. For a believer, it is not inconceivable that both realms deliver justice to those who have been suffering silently from priestly depravity under the church’s watch. 

Lesson? One.

It’s the season's greetings and somebody had better tell me to stop writing such things that dim the Christmas spirit and send gifts of wet-blankets to the adults waiting by the Christmas tree to unwrap presents for their kids. 

But I think I didn’t get that message this morning as I continue to speak my mind starting with what Pope Francis has to say about the duplicity of the faith. He goes: -

“(There were still) consecrated men...who abuse the vulnerable, taking advantage of their position and their power of persuasion. They perform abominable acts yet continue to exercise their ministry as if nothing happened. They have no fear of God or his judgment, but only of being found out and unmasked. Often behind their boundless amiability, impeccable activity and angelic faces, they shamelessly conceal a vicious wolf ready to devour innocent souls.”

That in a nutshell is the unveiling of the great hypocrisy of our age, and of all ages. But let me be candid here and say that they don’t always start off as wolves amongst sheeps. I believe most of them enter the ministry with good intentions and well-meaning goals. 

In other words, they were truly - to a large extent - exuding and presenting “boundless amiability, impeccable activity and angelic faces” with the utmost sincerity. As far as they are concerned, at the inception of it all, they want to do good, make a difference and leave an enduring legacy behind - pathological leaders with evil desires excluded, of course.  

But having started in the spirit, they often ended up in the flesh. That is as much the story of mankind as Christ is the story of Christmas. 

These prodigal sons of the Kingdom abused their powers and satisfied their lusts with impunity because they were given easy access to them, that is, the positions, the protection and the pardons.

The church is definitely in complicit here, for as long as that one lone wolf got away with what he did when Peter first placed the cornerstone to build the church on the rock of Christ. 

From that time onwards, every time the church turns a blind eye to their own priest’s egregious deeds in order to keep the dirty robes and linens from public airings, these prodigal ministers got bolder and mutate into greedier wolves with insatiable appetites that they themselves could not control. 

I think Gibbons puts it best when he talks about the papal pornocracy during the young Holy Fatherhood of Octavian who changed his name to John in 955: -

“...we read, with some surprise, that the worthy grandson of Marozia lives in public adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran Palace was turned into a school of prostitution; and that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the female prilgrims from visiting the shrine of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be violated by his successor.” (pg 76/77 of The Popes by John Julius Norwich).

Needlessly to say, Pope John's pornocracy would never have survived in today’s rule-based, swift-justice institutional framework.

So, going back to the complicity of the church as a whole, as the ordained priests grant indulgences to believers in a bid to reduce the amount of punishment for their sins, the Catholic order grants indulgences to the offending priest to hide the punishment he has to face before the court of human justice. 

It’s a classic case of “I scratch your back so your deeds won't cause a dent on the reputation of the sacred order”. 

This brings me back to Pope Francis’ rather urgent call for the condemnation of sex offenders in sacred robe.

He said: “It is undeniable that some in the past, out of irresponsibility, disbelief, lack of training, inexperience, or spiritual and human short-sightedness, treated many cases without the seriousness and promptness that was due. That must never happen again. This is the choice and the decision of the whole Church.”

Never happen again? Fingers crossed there, because if there is any lamentation worth offering at the Church's doorstep, it has to be that since the time Jesus promised Peter that upon the rock He will build His church to our modern time unveiling the worst publicised sexual scandals in the history of the Catholic Church, you can’t be faulted for feeling that the whole Great Commission has been somewhat a great disappointment.

You would have thought that a divinely appointed sacred organization founded on the foundational stone of the messiah who became God would have gotten it right by now, that is, really living up to the exemplar of Christ; or at least, stands out as a city on the hill shining brighter than the other secular organisations out there.

Yet, two thousand years have come and gone, and after splitting bitterly into hundreds of denominations, all competing to present the best version of the truth, the in-fightings, the ugly leadership battles, the sexual abuses, the financial corruption and the hypocrisy of the closeted priesthood still persist today. Go figure...

But having said all that, I still feel that there is a silver lining in the looming clouds. So, let me end with this silver lining that the story of the prodigal son is as much the story of the prodigal Father - taking prodigal here to mean “wasteful extravagance” or excessive-ness or extremity in action. 

You see, however extreme is the failings of organised religion, there is always its countervailing force in the story of love that is equally, if not more, extreme. And this extreme love was once personified or incarnated in a man.  

As a Christian, I always feel that Jesus is an extremist for this love and here is what I mean as fleshed out in Dr Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail": -

"“...was not Jesus an extremist for love: "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and prosecute you.”

Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." 

Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." 

Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." 

And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience."

...So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?... 

In the dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime - the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment."”

On Christmas day, that is and has always been the message of human redemption - not about human achievements, its bragging rights, earthly prominence and the garlands of praises from transient sources. It is however about how the worst in us can be redeemed by  a love that goes all the way. Extremity for extremity, hate for love and sheer darkness for abounding light. It is beyond transactional, it's transcendental.

For only a prodigal Father can match deed for deed the prodigal son at the crossroad of his life. The heart of compassion, the embrace and kiss, the finest robe, the ring and sandals and a feast to celebrate his son’s return are all defining acts of extreme love, truth and goodness, or wasteful extravagance. Only grace of that extremity could carry such hope of transforming even the hardest of hearts. 

That has got to be the great consolation or empowerment for the Great Commission, despite the disappointment one may feel about the church’s failings time and time again. Amen. 

Catholic Sex Scandal: Where are the good shepherds?

Where is God when a priest masturbates a boy with one hand and then proceeds to conduct Sunday mass holding the communion elements in the other hand? 

Where is God when a ring of predatory priests secretly trades pornographic photographs of their victims and then go about ministering to the people?

Where is God when a priest forces a child to perform oral sex and also orally raped the boy and then squirt holy water from a bottle into the victim's mouth "to purify him."

And where is God when a Cardinal sexually abused a 16-year-old boy 50 years ago and then spent the next 50 leading the church as if nothing had happened? (I try to provide my view on all these questions in the postscript 2* below).

Revelations that Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania had sexually abused about 1000 people over seven decades broke out last Thursday. Altogether, the jurors' report ran up to 884 pages where the full extent of the deviant sexual acts were finally made known to the world at large.

This is the second massive scandal to hit the global stage since Boston Globe newspaper reported similar widespread sexual depravity in 2002. 

The despicable tale is repeated ad nauseam: It involves a priest, a bishop or a cardinal. It involves a child, an innocent boy brought up in the Catholic faith. And it involves the church covering all all up, sweeping under the rug, transferring the paedophile priest to places with even more defenceless boys to exploit, or sending the predatory priest for counselling, therapy and rehabilitation, and assuming he has repented, releasing the defiler into the open pen of unsuspecting and trusting young boys. 

It reports that: "the grand jury on Tuesday released the findings of the largest investigation of sex abuse in the US Catholic Church, finding that 301 priest in the state had sexually abused minors over the past 70 years. It contained graphic examples of children being groomed and sexually abused by priest."

And, "similar reports have emerged in Europe, Australia and Chile, prompting lawsuits and investigations, sending dioceses into bankruptcy and undercutting the moral authority of the leadership of the Catholic Church which has some 1.2 billion members around the world."

This time, Pope Francis has his hands full, with the haunting cries of the victims and their family members demanding justice.  

Personally, I felt that these words by the Church simply fell short of calming the public outrage:-

"Victims should know that the Pope is on their side. Those who have suffered are his priority, and the Church wants to listen to them to root out this tragic horror that destroys the lives of the innocent. There are two words that can express the feelings faced with these horrible crimes: shame and sorrow."

Former priest-turned-psychiatrist Richard Sipe argues that "the prevalence of masturbation in seminaries, and the ready forgiveness in confession, "forms a cycle of guilt that binds clerics and confessors together wherein secret sexual transgressions become minimalized and trivialized - even sex with minors becomes just another sin to be forgiven.""

Alas, where is the large millstone to hang around offending priests' neck for the seven decades of ecclesiastical immunity and impunity they have enjoyed when they are supposed to be standing in the gap as their good shepherds?

Mind you, if you so desire to trace the root of this sin, the seven decades of sexual abuse in the Church is nothing compared to the first reported case of child abuse, which stretches as far back as 153 AD. 

That case gave rise to the first law against abuse of boys by its clergy and it was only passed at the Council of Elvira in 306 AD.  

Imagine that, the sin of the Holy Father have since been passing down from one generation to another until this day and age, and the papacy is undeniably the most enduring institution in the history of mankind. 

No empire, rulership or kingdom have lasted this long (and continues to do so) since the time Jesus pronounced on Peter that upon this rock I shall build my church until the time the Pennsylvanian jury convicted 301 priests for a sin as old, stubborn and formidable as the history of the Church itself. 

If the truth indeed sets believers free and Christ is their answer, one has to wonder what freedom has the Church been giving to her very own clergymen and what answer have they been offering to their vulnerable flock for the widespread abuses of such freedom? 

And if the church stands as an institution to reform souls of all colours, cultures and creeds, it is indeed the greatest tragedy for her now to admit to the reality that after 2000 years of her humble origin, the most urgent call for reform is still within the ecclesiastical leadership itself.  

Mark Twain once said: "The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example."

Lesson? If there is one lesson here, it has to be this: -

"There is nothing more frightening, more damaging and more condemnable than a religious belief held together by a cloistered group of men who not only wield power but supposed legitimacy to do as they please in total disregard for the pain and sorrow their actions have caused to those they have sworn to teach, lead and protect."

Who can then forget the often-time-ignored warning of Lord Acton (in 1887) when he said these words which captured the essence of the tyranny of such pontifical leadership: -

"I cannot accept your cannon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely...There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

Is there any doubt that power, religion and sex combined would invariably bring out the worst in those who wield and abuse them and those who assist in the perpetuation of the office of those who wield and abuse them?

Wouldn't such sexual depravity be duly arrested and punished if not for the hundreds of priestly overseers who strode to protect, hide and transfer the offending priest away from the public eye because they chose to protect the delusional image of the infallible papacy rather than the innocent victims?

I guess the words of English Historian AJP Taylor would be most fitting here: "All change in history, all advance, comes from the non-conformists. If there had been no troublemakers, no dissenters, we should still be living in caves."

  

What therefore failed the Church in this fallen priest saga is not the lack of church moralists supremely equipped in knowing right from wrong, but the  want of courage to act on that knowledge at the cost of their coveted position and priestly title.

Let me end with an irony. 

In December 1979, then Bishop Ratzinger, who had been accused of knowing about the sexual scandals in the early days and did nothing to bring the guilty priest to account, defended the decision to expel Professor Hans Kung as an official theologian of the Roman Catholic Church on the ground that "his writing cast doubt on several of the most basic doctrines of his church". 

Professor Kung was known then as the modern day Luther, who had been faithfully knocking on the Wittenberg's door to provoke a second Reformation in the Catholic Church. 

Be that as it may, this is what Bishop Ratzinger said to justify the expulsion of Professor Kung: -

"The Christian believer is a simple person: bishops should protect the faith of their little people against the power of the intellectuals."

Mm...somehow I can't get the words "simple person" and "little people" out of my mind. 

I guess that is how the Church sees her millions of members worldwide. It is this superior position that views her members in diminutive scale that grants the Church such blatant and wide berth to do as they please, which included protecting the abusers and silencing their victims in order to uphold her burnished image at all costs.

Alas, when Jesus called to Peter with this commission that "upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," the church had however for the longest time rested her foundation on another rock as this latest scandal has unravelled. 

It is a rock that had blindingly elevated the priesthood to dizzying heights of usurpative power with the goal of preserving only the form of that call and not its substance; in other words, to wantonly reap the profit that the call brings and avoid the sacrifice, the cost, and the Cross to bear altogether.

Is it then finally time to return to the Rock of Ages, the timeless Rock that is based on the foundation of Calvary, the crucification of self, and the legacy of the risen Christ after more than 2000 years of struggling with this unwieldy sexual beast buried deep in the catacombs of the Catholic faith and practice?

Well, only time will tell. But I may just be too naive to think that this time the Church have learned her lesson for good. Cheerz. 

Postscript 1*:-

Just read the extract below...(points 5 to 6 left me speechless. I imagine Jesus would have stormed the Vatican City and overturned their tables and chairs for turning the House of His Royal Priesthood into a priestly den of conniving pedophiles). 

"Here is how the grand jury, in caustic terms, described the Catholic Church’s methods for covering up abuse and protecting priests:

First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say “rape”; say “inappropriate contact” or “boundary issues.”

Second, don’t conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel. Instead, assign fellow clergy members to ask inadequate questions and then make credibility determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work.

Third, for an appearance of integrity, send priests for “evaluation” at church-run psychiatric treatment centers. Allow these experts to “diagnose” whether the priest was a pedophile, based largely on the priest’s “self-reports,” and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child.

Fourth, when a priest does have to be removed, don’t say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on “sick leave,” or suffering from “nervous exhaustion.” Or say nothing at all.

Fifth, even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses, although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults.

Sixth, if a predator’s conduct becomes known to the community, don’t remove him from the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser.

Finally and above all, don’t tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don’t treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, “in house.”"

The words of Geoffrey Robertson QC who wrote the book "The Case of the Pope" that called for the prosecution of the previous Pope cannot be more apt and timely here: -

"The priesthood offers incomparable opportunity and spiritual power for paedophiles, and some have deviously infiltrated it, but most offenders appear to be psycho-sexually immature, often in denial about their condition and hoping that the rigours of the priesthood will protect them from themselves. Instead, they find a brotherhood, a sodality that closes ranks to protect them not from themselves but from the consequences of their actions, because the overriding philosophy of their superiors has been to avoid scandal to the church." 

Tragically...spot on.

Postscript 2* (forewarning: long, at times, aimless screed)

Where is God? Where is God when a 7-seven-old girl is recuperating in the hospital from a tonsil operation and a priest who was on a visit, flushed with lust, locked the door behind him and proceeded to rape her in that state? 

Where is he then when a defenceless child of God is being abused for years without end in sight by a "man of God"? Why does David still pants after God when men around him say to him all day long: "Where is your God?" 

Well, it is easy to find God when all things are going well. But where is he went everything around you begins to fall apart, one by one, your business/career, your finances, your health and your loved ones? We readily embrace the Prosperity Gospel of the modern age without thinking because that is the God that comes closest to resemble the deity we worship or want to worship. 

For that reason and nothing else, our default position is to give our finances to appease him. We give because such a God promises to prosper us in return, grant us long life, make a way without the loss and pain, and lead us into the path of romantic happiness, always. It actually reminds me of the vending machines in Singapore (recently declared illegal) that promise their patrons a lucky lottery strike at some time of the day. 

There is thus nothing that should impede us or stand in the way of believing in such a God. He is just undoubtedly un-doubtable. It is therefore in our nature to run into such a church when such a promise is offered at the pulpit from an all-dolled-up preacher whose mouth can say nothing else but wealth, health and longevity. The honey pot of faith just keeps overflowing, the working bees cannot help but gatecrash.

Alas, maybe I am deluded. Maybe the many Saints of God are deluded. Maybe Saint John of the Cross was deluded. Maybe Saint Therese of Lisieux was deluded too. Maybe even Mother Teresa was deluded when she cried out - "So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them...because of the blasphemy...If there be God...please forgive me...When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven there is such a convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me...and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul." But, in her delusion, in her immeasurable pain, she still held on to Jesus' coattails even unto death. How's that for being deluded?

I then join them in this conspiracy of delusion because I too have so many unanswered questions, I too raised my thoughts to Heaven only to find a convicting emptiness and like sharp knives they return to hurt my soul, especially with what is happening in the Catholic Church. And I can't imagine how the victims and their parents are feeling right now. 

I therefore join this rare group of Catholic Saints in their delusion to still believe in a God even when the apparent fact is such that there is nothing but every reason to leave this delusion for a saner reality.

But then, I wonder, what is true delusion? What keeps men running around in this world with no end in sight piling up one earthly treasure after another? What keeps them so busy in their restless climb up  the summit of power, wealth and fame only to find that meaning is neither found there too? 

Alas, we find a God that resembles so much like what we have been thinking about him all day and all night long that he is no longer a God that is independent apart from us, or exist outside of our imagination. For this reason and this reason alone, we cannot think of a God that can rise above our wish-list conception of him. 

Our faith falls short because our imagination fails us - even without us knowing it. We are kept cosy in the bubble of our own delusion. We are unable, or worse, dare not think beyond the proximate prosperity that is promised by men who themselves are happily prospering from the failure of our collective imagination. They think they have found the key to faith by promising everything good without the bad because the bad is an immediate turn off and the good turns on many things, especially the assured attendances of thousands every good Sabbath. 

As such, I always believe the first step to believing in tough times is to leave a frail imagination behind; to leave the delusion that keeps us tethered to  the glittering mirage on the ground and never look up to the endless expanse above us. C.S. Lewis once said: "I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity."

Truly, I don't know why or where is God when those unspeakable things happen to such lovely, endearing and treasured children of God. I have no answers in a way that can satisfy the mind of one who is earnestly seeking for an answer or two. Personally, some of the darkness of the soul that we are traversing through can be ruthlessly painful and piercing like sharp knives returning to tear us apart.

But I'd like to think that wherever God is, he has never left. I may never know why he did not intervene, what was he even thinking (right?), but I know why he did not leave. They may have nailed him and tortured him, but he chose to never leave. He never left because I truly believe he knew something that we never knew (or often overlook or fail to imagine) in a trial, no matter how unjust the situation may be. He never left because he saw something in a trial that is even more redeeming than when times are good, or when everything is going your way. He saw redemption that is beyond what this world can entice or offer. He saw enduring transformation when a soul is taken from a place where there is only pain, sorrow and suffering. That is why he never left for he had already said that in this world, you will have trouble, yet take heart, I have overcome it. He saw value beyond the value of this world.

This may not be the answer many are looking for, but I have never intended it to be an answer because each trial we face is unique to us. We will just have to seek our own answer or answers that come closest to giving us a sense of closure over time. 

Alas, I may not have found mine, at least not fully or completely, but I know deeply that it is never my heart desire (now or ever) to live out my faith and hope for a lack or failure of imagination.