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About a week ago a friend, who always seems to ask me just the right question at the right time, wrote me in reply to a letter I sent him.  In my letter I had described being in the worst moments of my “funk” and concluding “maybe God just doesn’t give a damn”.  In his letter, he expressed interest in that point and wondered where I went from there.  As I tend to do more often than not, I wrote him back with an explanation that seemed to satisfy me momentarily but, in hindsight, was woefully simplistic and weak.  And then, I read an essay about Bill Petit and my heart stopped.

Who is Bill Petit?  You may not know the name, but you know the story.  He’s a doctor in Connecticut.  On a July evening in 2007, two men broke into his home. They savagely beat him with a baseball bat then tied him to a pole in his basement.  They forced his wife to go to the bank and withdraw cash then repeatedly raped his seventeen and eleven year old daughters and wife.  The three women were tied up, gasoline was poured on them and they and the home set ablaze.  Dr. Petit, having lost approximately seven pints of blood, somehow managed to unhook his legs.  He crawled from his basement out a side door where he then drug himself across his yard and collapsed in his neighbor’s driveway.  The neighbor – who called fire and police – described Dr. Petit as “unrecognizable”. 

In the span of little more than twelve hours; two career criminals, drug addicts, brutally tortured and destroyed everything that was precious to Dr. Petit.  The crimes – so horrific that even grizzled investigating officers wept as they testified.  No one, it seemed, could look Dr. Petit in the eye.  Ironically, on the Sunday morning this would unfold, the family attended church together.  The congregation recited a liturgy containing the following:

“Will we stop our building a better future because of evil?

No! Our God will deliver us from evil.”,\

The writer asked “How does a man survive that?  He has two choices.  He goes on living or he doesn’t.”  There is no “happy ending” to this story.  Dr. Petit is not the man he once was.  He does not speak with joy.  He lives at home – his parents’ home – a mid-fifties man who lost everything.  He goes forward in silence dedicating the remainder of his life to his beloved deceased wife and daughters, but he is no longer who he was with them.

After I read the story of Dr. Petit, my friend’s question came back to me.  Does God really give a damn?  After all, the Bible does tell us He causes it to “rain on the good and evil”.  But, how do you keep faith when you hear Dr. Petit’s story?  How do you accept as true Romans 8:28 “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him according to His purposes?”  How do you keep believing?

When I was at the receiving unit I witnessed the most horrific thing I’d seen in my life occur.  I never spoke about it until recently, never let friends know.  The entire four months I spent in receiving were hell, but there were days – when I saw things that I still have a difficult time comprehending how we can be so cruel to each other – that it took every bit of strength I could muster to not go to the third tier railing and jump.  There were days, I concluded, where death was preferable to living with what I was experiencing. 

At night, I would fold my pillow over my ear to block out the screams of the deranged young man on the tier below.  I would wonder if I was destined to lose my sanity in that place.  And, I would pray “God, just restore me to my wife and sons”.  I heard nothing back.

Two months later, our divorce was final and I was still in receiving.  This past February, I learned, in a matter of fact manner from a friend at home, that while I was going through all of that, the woman I loved, who I’d been with for almost thirty years, had embarked on a long distance relationship with a married man.  When I found out, I was crushed, devastated.  I wondered if I had thrown away thirty years of my life.  And, I tried to give up on God.

Don’t misunderstand what I am suggesting.  I don’t blame my ex for behaving the way she has.  I know how I feel, but that is controlled by my circumstances.  I don’t know the pain, loneliness, fear, disappointment and anger she felt learning of my misdeeds and dealing day to day with the fallout from my actions.   I can’t and won’t judge how she handled things.  I don’t know how I would have behaved if the roles were reversed.  And, I know I’ve been no saint through this.  There are many words I have written her I deeply regret and wish I could take back.

My frustration, my disappointment, with God came out because I had lost everything and not once, could I tell, had He bothered to answer me.  Or, worse yet, He was answering me.  He was saying “screw you, Larry.  I gave it to you and you didn’t appreciate it, so I’m taking it all back.”

As I read the story about Bill Petit I wondered if he ever asked “what did I do, God, to deserve this?”  My church experience, my religious experience was big on “look how much God has blessed us with.”  It was short on when your life has spun hopelessly out of control due to you own arrogance (me) or someone else’s evil (Dr. Petit) and you cry out to God at that darkest, deepest point and you hear…nothing.

As I lay there last night seeking to make sense of my circumstances (and numerous blessings I’ve had to remind myself about) and pondered the sad courage of Dr. Petit, I remembered Job 2.

Job is one of those Bible stories we all know.  God, it seems, is a gambler.  He bets Satan Job can suffer unspeakable calamities and personal tragedies yet he won’t curse God.  God, as we know prevails.  The fix was in.  God was the first point shaver.  He knew what Job would do.

There’s the powerful dialog at the end of the Job where Job lays it on the line to God “why are you letting this happen to me?”  His family has been slaughtered, his wealth removed, his health taken, his friends tell him it’s all his fault and his wife – she just tells him to die.  And then God answers Job and says, in effect, “Hey, little man.  Who are you to question me?”  Job discovers his insignificance in the presence of God.  All the crap he’d been through doesn’t seem all that important anymore now that he’s seen the Almighty.

But, the table was already set for that reaction in Chapter Two.  Job – having just lost his children and all his wealth- is now disease ridden.  He is so covered in boils that “even his friends don’t recognize him”.  Job’s wife looks at him, sneers and says “get it over with.  Curse God and die.”

But Job says something that now makes such amazing sense.  He tells his wife “if we accept the blessings from God, shouldn’t we also accept the adversity?”  I think what that means is there are times when it is completely dark and silent and we are just struggling to survive.  We wonder “what is God doing?  Where is He?”  Job was saying God is still God.  Even when our lives turn to complete chaos; even when unspeakable horror is being perpetrated on those most dear to us, even when we look at a sixty foot high catwalk and railing thinking we should jump, God is still God.

Years ago, the British comedy group Monty Python did a movie called “Life of Brian”.  The premise was quite simple.  Its 30 A.D. in Roman occupied Israel and this young Jewish man, “Brian”, is mistaken for the Messiah.  Crowds flock to hear him, he “miraculously” heals people, and all the while he’s telling the multitudes “I’m not the savior. I’m Brian.”  As you guessed by now, Brian is betrayed, tried and crucified.

He’s on the cross still trying to convince people he’s not the Messiah when the dozens of other condemned men, all on crosses listening to him, break out in song.  Over and over they sing “Always look on the bright side of life…”

Sometimes, just surviving in the dark, and the loneliness and the stillness, is a testament to our faith.  God is still God, even when we don’t feel His presence or hear His voice.  As long as we have that, there really is a bright side.