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Roger Benimoff was a US chaplain deployed twice to Iraq between 2002 and 2008. As a result of what he saw and experienced, he came home with PTSD and nearly lost his wife and family, as well as his faith. I read his autobiography, Faith Under Fire, while I was in Afghanistan myself, and it’s a raw and very personal account of his and his family’s struggles.
Padre (Major) Howard Rittenhouse – File Photo
Rebekah, his wife, wrote the following:
“Having faith is about relationship … not answers.
“It is not about saying, ‘Everything is going to be OK,’ or even, ‘God has a plan…. This is all just part of his plan.’
“The truth of the matter is that we do not like suffering and so we tell ourselves these things in order to try to comprehend the Un-comprehendable. Faith is looking at the realities of the situation and saying, this is more than I can bear, and hearing God when he says, ‘That is precisely the point!’
“Faith is not about the absence of questioning. For me it has been very much about questioning. And accepting my husband as he works through his own questions.
“He does not want us to come to Him once we have everything finally resolved. He wants us to choose relationship despite the unanswered questions.”
And that resonates with me – very much. Someone once told me, “You can be right, or you can be in relationship.” And that drives to the heart of what it means to be in a relationship – humility. And that’s a hard virtue to practice. I tend to think most people have a lot to be humble about – but not me!
Well, humility in relationship – with our spouses, our kids, our colleagues, and friends – is a struggle. And humility in our relationship with God is just as hard – or harder. We demand answers from the Divine and from everyone else. And we think we have a right to those answers, that we have a right to understand and comprehend why things are the way they are, why our spouses think and act in certain ways, why the world is as it is, why our kids don’t listen or take our advice, why the chain of command (any chain of command) doesn’t listen to our suggestions, etc.
And when we don’t understand, when it doesn’t make sense, when we don’t get answers, we get angry and resentful. “I have a right to know, to ‘get it!’” Well, you can choose to be angry and resentful, to carry a grudge (against your spouse, against God, against your supervisor) and know that you’re right to be angry and resentful. Or … you can choose to be humble and accept others’ shortcomings, foibles and faults, their lack of understanding (as you see it), and have a healthy (or at least not a terrible) relationship with them. If you choose to be ‘right’ and angry, you will be quite lonely in your righteous indignation. If you choose to be humble (whether or not you’re ‘right’), you will still have a relationship that can be strong, vibrant, and resilient.
Question, by all means – question God (he can handle it), have doubts (I do), but never think you have all the answers and that you’ve got it wired tight and everyone else is a bag of hammers. That is a lonely path.
As Rebekah said, “Faith is not about the absence of questioning…. [It’s] very much about questioning.” And being humble enough to accept people as they are … even as they accept you for who you are.