The case for mystery -- civic evangelicalism part 3

This is part 3 of an ongoing series. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

One of contemporary evangelicals' common ailments is the obsession with resolution. Evangelical sermons offer five step plans for reducing stress. Evangelical books offer seven disciplines for becoming totally surrendered to God. Instead of hymns, cantatas, and concerti, most evangelical churches now use that execrable substitute for music, the praise chorus, which follows a predictable and tension-free IV-V-I chord progression through an elementary melody and vapid lyrics.

Our obsession with resolution (and our corresponding aversion to tension) seeps into our civic lives. Put simply, we evangelicals are not very good at dealing with suffering. Most evangelicals today are extremely uncomfortable thinking about issues not easily resolved. Broken families, depression, fatherlessness, cancer, sexual abuse, rape. These and other life circumstances present difficult and painful realities that humans (not just evangelicals) would prefer not to think about. We Christians have a peculiar mandate to meet suffering people in their suffering. But all too often when these circumstances defy resolution, evangelicals simply throw a trite cliche at the problem and go back to their praise choruses.

How many evangelicals do you know who have read Chesterton or Kierkegaard, Mother Theresa or Frederick Buechner? (I know not too many.) Those Christian brothers and sisters knew the true depths of human suffering. And they did not trivialize suffering by offering trite solutions. Instead, as they matured they became more comfortable reconciling the love of God with irremediable pain. They did not accept, much less preach, easy answers. As Michael Novak has written of Mother Theresa, she lived darkly in the presence of her Beloved.

The world needs to know that we do not trivialize its pain. The world needs to know that our God can handle tension, even tension that is never resolved during an entire lifetime. Some families are never reunited. Some cancer victims are never cured. Some drug addicts never recover. Some abusers never repent. Those are awful realities, problems for which there are no easy answers, and perhaps no resolution within the four dimensions of time and space.

Much human suffering is real and unfixable. Yet God is still sovereign and we are promised a coming Eschaton, free of suffering. The world needs that message.