Chris Clegg,
Editor, South Peace News
During our short existence on this planet, each person will be faced with hardships and trials along the way. Each will have to deal with personal problems in an individual way. Some are better equipped to deal with it than others while some are smart enough to ask for help from a professional, or a church leader.

To a five-year-old, it’s just as important to get a chocolate bar as it is for the 20-year-old to buy a house and pay the mortgage. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Edmonton Pastor Chris Levan’s insightful column in the Edmonton Journal many years ago is the inspiration for this column, which I repeat every so often. Credit for its thoughts must go to him.

For many people, religion is the answer. Some may roll their eyes, others scoff at the ridiculous idea, but the fact is for millions of people, it works. Whether you believe or not, it works.

Religion gives people a foundation to deal with problems. The Bible is their guide.

For others, there is no such guide. It’s ironic most North Americans are still guided by Christian beliefs although they would not dare admit it – at least in public.

For those who have lost their job or precious loved ones, the answers are difficult to find. Levan writes that Christians even find it difficult and begin to question their faith in God. It is never God’s fault, of course, yet many Christians and non-Christians blame God for all their troubles.

“If God is such a loving and almighty being, why does He let us suffer so much?” many ask.

Those who know me know I’m not a churchgoer. Blasphemous! My religious beliefs are based on Christian teachings, however.

When people lose loved ones – and we have all lost loved ones – they immediately begin to seek answers. I’ve seen it time and time again. When you lose a loved one it is too easy to blame God, or the doctor who messed up a diagnosis, or a family member who should have seen the telltale signs or the symptoms of the disease. We look to God for comfort although at the same time we curse Him for allowing this to happen.

Why?

I’ve been to a few funerals steeped in religious traditions for people who never went to church. Yet their families believe that a funeral with all the traditions steeped in Christianity is necessary.

Why? If church wasn’t good enough for them while they breathed the air in this world, why now?

I believe funerals have tremendous value for the family of the deceased. Funerals help the grieving relatives and friends in the healing process. It helps them cope with the recent loss of a loved one. It gives them closure.

It is ludicrous to blame God for the loss of a loved one. Yet people say after losing loved ones that God is the first to blame.

People should realize when a precious life is lost, Levan writes, God is usually the first one to weep. In fact, He is right there crying with you if you’d take the time to look around.

Meanwhile, most of us struggle and cope with the loss of loved ones. Everyone reacts in a different way. Most of us get over it quickly and get on with life. Others struggle for years.

As humans, we would like to believe that death serves no purpose. Yet people die each day. We struggle for answers no matter how much it tears us apart until we are content with the answer and we reach inner peace.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we struggle to make answers out of something there is simply no answer for? Why do we go through the pain and anguish of playing the death over and over in our minds until we make peace with ourselves and make sense out of it all?

Levan writes all this and adds that perhaps the answer is not eventually arriving at the answer but God’s way of making us try to make sense out of it all.

Levan is right when he writes that in the end, perhaps that is enough.