One day in church I was listening to the story of the widow of Nain. She was the widow who was grieving over the body of her only son as it was being carried out of the city to be buried. Jesus was moved by compassion and raised her son back to life. This is a beautiful story from Christ’s life, and yet it raises a difficult question for me. Why did He choose to raise this widow’s son and not others? Surely there were other widows with no son left to care for them. It does remind us of how human Jesus was. This widow was standing before Him. The others were not. I realize that Christ’s miracles were not just to relieve pain and suffering, but also to show forth His power and His right to claim to be the son of God. But still, Jesus was moved, in a human way, by the plight of this woman, and though He was not called to help everyone by a miracle, He chose to help her, the one standing before Him.
The story is just another reminder that suffering is still a huge mystery, even for those of us who believe in the Christian God. Why does God allow certain suffering and yet perform miracles for others to relieve their sufferings? Certainly God’s ways are not our ways, and He truly is a mystery. Our faith does not supply all the answers. If it did, it would no longer be faith.
This story also reminds me that God is very patient. 
He does not solve problems instantly. Rather, He works over time with feeble, broken, limited, sinful humans. As Christians, we believe God is the Lord of history and that His will is being accomplished over time. As St. Paul says (Eph 1: 9-10 and 1 Co 15: 28), God has a plan, but it will take all of history before it is complete. I don’t understand why God seems to work so slowly and in such a hidden way, nor do I understand how He will make sense out of all the seeming chaos of history and human error. I don’t know why Christ didn’t heal all the sick and suffering or set up a worldly kingdom that would have brought peace and justice to the whole world. Why didn’t He raise all the dead and inaugurate the Kingdom then and there?
So, in such times of doubt, or at least mystery and perhaps confusion, on what do I base my faith? I know that faith is a leap, but it should not be a blind or a foolish leap. Today, when there are plenty of people who would ridicule and question such a faith as ours, what is my certitude based on? How do I know I am not just being foolish?
The traditional proofs of God are good and useful at times, perhaps even at times of such doubt. They have been helpful to me in the past. Certainly there is no more proof that there is not a God than there is for a God. I would argue it takes more faith today, knowing what we know of the intricate, precise beauty of creation from stars to the smallest atomic particle, to not believe in a God than it does to believe in one. I still believe in logic enough to question what the first cause was that caused everything that followed it. I also think both the beauty and the order of nature argue strongly for a God who created beauty and order.
But what do I tell my son when he asks me why I believe as I do? There has to be something less formal, less intellectual, and more personal for me. To say I believe because my father and mother did, because their father and mother did is not good enough today, if it ever was. When I am questioned by very well educated people who no longer have any faith in logic or reason or truth or the good or the beautiful, what do I say to them?
My life experience tells me that I have three crucial choices. First, I can live my life in service of love or power. Second, I can choose a path of pride or humility. Lastly, I can choose obedience or self-rule.
Life has taught me, my conscience tells me, and my heart tells me that I should choose love, humility, and obedience. My experience also tells me that the person who has taught this most completely, and the person who has lived this most fully, is Jesus Christ. This is one of the major reasons why I am a Christian and a Catholic. All my being and experience tells me this is the truest and the best way to live. It also tells me that the closer all of us can come to living like this, the better this world will be. My experience also tells me that the more I live a life based on power, pride, and self-rule, the more unhappy and miserable I will be, and the more people who live their lives in pursuit of power, steeped in pride, and determined to be self-ruled, the uglier and more dangerous this world will become.
I have tested this hypothesis through my life, sometimes unconsciously. I have chosen power. I have been proud, and I have desired self-rule, and I still do at times, too many times. It has caused me a great deal of pain and robbed me of true peace and joy. The more I am able to choose love over power, humility over pride, and obedience over self-rule, the sweeter life has been, the more joy I have experienced, and the more peace I have attained. To be sure, one has to be patient, because the results are not immediate. Power, pride, and self-rule give us quicker results, but the results turn from what we had expected to ashes in our mouths. The results of choosing love, humility and obedience take time, sometimes a great deal of time. This is why, I think, the lessons of life so often elude us and why we so often resort to what looks like the quick answer. We are not patient enough in testing hypotheses. We look for the quick result and miss the point.
I have not only tested this hypothesis in my own life. I have observed the same law at work in society at large, both in my own lifetime and through a reading of history. Any society that honors love, humility, and obedience and encourages its citizens to pursue these virtues, is by far a more humane society. One that honors, and encourages the pursuit of power, pride, and self-rule is a very crude, brutal society that is tending toward chaos. Some societies have come closer to the ideal than others, but my reading of history tells me that the Christian religion has had more impact on society at large toward the ideal than any other religion. Again, I think we tend to miss this in our short-sightedness. We have forgotten how cruel and brutal society was a few thousand years ago. We forget that many of the advances we have made in the humane treatment of one another have occurred in a largely Christian context. My experience also tells me that as we turn our backs on that Christian context, we are beginning to lose what we have gained in humane community and the more we slide toward a crude, brutal chaos.
This, I tell my sons and daughter, is one reason why I am a Christian and why I strive to live my life in love, humility, and obedience to God and all His lawful authority. By my experience, it only makes sense.
The story of the widow of Nain reminds me that Christ lived His life in complete obedience to His Father. All His power was subject to His Father’s will as we hear in John’s Gospel. “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing” (Jn 5: 19). Here, I believe, is the key to the mystery. We are called by our very nature, our original nature and not our fallen nature, to conform our wills to God’s will, to do and say only what God gives us to do and say. When we do, we are powerless, but filled with love and God’s power. We are also humble and desire to serve others, not ourselves. Our fallen nature screams out against this choice. It feels like death to self, which it is, and we fight for what seems our very lives. Christ told us this: “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn 12: 24-25). This is Christ’s central message, a message of love for God and neighbour, a love that sacrifices its very life for another. Amid all the confusion, contradictions, and mysteries that exist in my life, in history, even in the Bible, this is my faith, a faith in Jesus Christ and his word and his ultimate example on the Cross. This is my faith in the most radical, profound and difficult message ever delivered to humanity, to die to myself and to live in God’s Will.
This is the crucial choice we always have before us, to choose as our fallen nature desires, to gain this world, or to choose what our true nature was created for, love of God and love of others and eternal life. We all know what a tough decision that is. It is so easy to loose sight of eternity, something we can hardly comprehend, especially when we are faced with day to day struggles. Each struggle can seem like a threat to our very being.
This is why I believe Christianity is so radical and so difficult to choose completely. Do we really want to follow Christ? We only have to look at where He ended His life to see what a challenge that is. To many, it is a foolish choice. As St. Paul points out, without the Resurrection, it would truly be a foolish choice. The widow of Nain received her son back into this world, but it is still not the answer we are looking for. Her son still had to die again. Christ’s Resurrection is the answer we desire, eternal life. I still don’t understand why Jesus raised this woman’s son from death and not others. There are still so many other mysteries and unanswered questions I have about my faith and about life, but I have no doubt that Christ surely is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the greatest message ever sent and I will risk my life and death on it.
