Some seasons of life feel like trying to stay afloat in an ocean of grief. Often, in those seasons of heartache and disappointment, one of my biggest struggles is with the question of why.
Why did it happen like this?
Did I do something to create this situation?
Did I miss what God was saying?
At times, these seasons have become so disorienting that I have questioned my calling. If you’ve been there, you know that’s a dark space to inhabit.
The problem is, we don’t often get conclusive answers to our whys—if any answers at all. Something in our hearts cries out to understand, to somehow make sense of our pain. We feel that maybe, if we could understand it, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
I doubt whether understanding would diminish our pain, but regardless, the reality is that we almost never understand why painful or disappointing circumstances happen. And if we can’t accept the mystery of these experiences, we won’t be able to find healing. For many of us, these unanswered questions can actually drive us toward offense and disillusionment in our faith.
Our ability to accept mystery and overcome offense about the whys of life is an essential part of our relationship with God. The opportunity for offense tests our commitment to the relationship. Do we still trust him in the middle of the unknowns? Will we unflinchingly hold to the truth of who he says he is even when our circumstances seem to contradict him?
At the core, this is what faith is all about—believing when we don’t yet see (see Heb. 11).
One of the greatest opportunities we have for proving our faith is in our response to the unsolved mysteries of life. This kind of faith is foolish to the world, to our intellectual standards, but it is faith that pleases God.
Whether we like it or not, building a faith that overcomes offense is part of the Christian journey.
When the Syrophoenician woman petitioned Jesus for help, she could have easily been offended by his response. Her daughter needed deliverance, and she knew Jesus could do it, but he ignored her. When she persisted, shouting at his disciples, he told her to go away, saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24 NASB). Then she bowed down before him, begging for his help, but he still refused, saying, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (Matt. 15:26; Mark 7:27).
Most of us would take great offense at this comparison, let alone his initial refusal to listen to her pleas, but her faith was unwavering. She countered, “Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table” (Matt. 15:27; see also Mark 7:28).
Jesus then told her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish” (Matt. 15:28). In Mark’s rendition of the story, Jesus clarified that it was because of her answer to him that the demon left her daughter (see Mark 7:29). In other words, her persistence in faith, despite offending circumstances, unlocked her miracle.
I don’t pretend to have a perfect explanation for why Jesus acted the way he did in this story. Other than Jesus’ statement about being called to the Jews first, he does not explain the why of his response.
Certainly, we know that Jesus’ mission involved reaching the Jews first. The Jews were the people of the promise; “If God’s new life was to come to the world, it would come through Israel.”(1) This was his plan. Yet many of them had wandered, had forgotten, and they needed a reminder. That was part of Jesus’ purpose—as herald of the appearance of the kingdom the Jews had long awaited. Over and over he declared, “The kingdom of heaven is here!” God had chosen the Jews to be the emissaries of his new covenant kingdom for the whole world, and because of that, Jesus focused his earthly ministry on the Jews, to the exclusion of others.
Does this make him capricious or uncaring?(2) That’s not how I see it. God is God, and he can do what he wants. He does not owe us an explanation. Yet even in his godhood, he bent low toward us to lift us up. He came to die, and he didn’t have to.
And in the case of the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus allowed the future of the-kingdom-for-all to break into his present mission to the Jews in response to her remarkable faith. Theologian N. T. Wright describes it this way:
The woman’s faith broke through the waiting period, the time in which Jesus would come to Jerusalem as Israel’s Messiah, be killed and raised again, and then send his followers out into all the world (28.19). The disciples, and perhaps Jesus himself, are not yet ready for Calvary. This foreign woman is already insisting upon Easter.(9)
What stands out to me is the importance of our perspective. We can get hung up on what feels like exclusivity in Jesus’ plan and allow offense to enter our hearts. Or we can find his heart in the way he altered the plan, the way he moved up the timetable for this woman when he didn’t have to. We may never understand the whys of life, but we can see God’s love for us. And we can embrace faith in the middle of the unknowns because of his love. When we do, we begin to step into the depth of faith that releases his kingdom into the most unlikely places.
Faith based on intellectual understanding or anything other than God’s love for us will ultimately fail us, because faith requires mystery. It cannot be faith if we fully understand (see Heb. 11:1).
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Endnotes
1. N. T. Wright, “Matthew 15.21-28 The Canaanite Woman,” Matthew for Everyone, Part I (London, UK & Louisville, KY: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge & Westminster John Knox Press: 2004), 200.
2. For a great discussion on the question of whether God is capricious and uncaring, see Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan (Baker Books, 2011).
3. N. T. Wright, “Matthew 15.21-28 The Canaanite Woman,” Matthew for Everyone, Part I (London, UK & Louisville, KY: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge & Westminster John Knox Press: 2004), 201.
