“The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.”- Thomas Merton

This is more of an anecdote here, though relevant. I remember the first time I experienced a death in the family as a child. My relative who died was only in his 30’s, and it was very unexpected with no warning. It was highly memorable for me because it also coincided with Ash Wednesday, the start of Lenten season. And that service was so painful for someone like me who experienced death for the first time outside of cartoons and documentaries- which simply cannot capture the raw grief and sudden awareness of one’s own mortality and just what death meant when it becomes personal.

My relative was gone. No, not just away from home and his family in a measurable amount of time. It was as if his soul (perhaps in Greek terms) flickered out. His body- also the first time I had seen a body embalmed- seemed like a mockery, a gross parody, of who he was when I saw him alive.

And this terrified me. How could he be there one second, and then… out of existence?

The sermon was wonderful from I can recall. And my life went on. But the rest of the family who had known him longer and had more life experience grieved heavily. Why had God allowed him to die? Why not one of our older relatives who had exceeded the average lifespan? And just how could God bring him back? Lutherans are neither cessationist nor continualist when it comes to the miraculous, though wanting and praying for a sign and not getting one to receive a drop of comfort sure does not help the living family members in distress, as is natural to seek signs.

Sadly, all these questions of suffering and death are nothing new under the sun. We can always find a way to blame the grieving person for lacking faith or even shifting the blame onto the person for causing such wickedness (see Job’s friends). But if we don’t allow all who grieve to grapple with these doubts and unbelief- which does not make anyone a horrible Christian- then we never grow. We will never seek Christ if we do not see His Suffering in ourselves and others.

We won’t all get to be like St Thomas the Apostle and touch those Wounds, but God can work in many ways, even in this fallen world, to bring us close to Christ.