The struggle to make sense of suffering
More than a year after Haiti's earthquake, Kent Annan's aching, honest book, After Shock, articulates the ancient and ongoing to make sense of suffering in a world God made and loves.
Annan's first book, Following Jesus Through The Eye of The Needle, was top-notch travel writing with measured doses of personal reflection, cultural critique and global political analysis, all with a watchful, loving eye on “the least of these." After Shock is like a sequel, just as personal as Following, but less travelogue and more meditative and reflective. Annan tries to reconcile the faith he professes with the reality of 230,001 dead (he adds the “one" to the death toll to make the number more personal) and finds himself in a cold war with God, his soul the “barren, dusty, no-man's land" between the two of them.
Although he spends a lot of time working in Haiti, Annan and his family weren't there when the earthquake struck. But he returned to Haiti a few weeks later and then numerous times over the year. He visits the places where he worked and the people he worked with, and he listens to their stories about survival. He takes issue with the profoundly unsatisfying theodicies and clichés some Christians offer in the face of such a disaster: “At least they're in a better place now," or “We might not understand, but it's all part of God's plan."
There are no simple answers, he says, no easy ways to make sense of the magnitude of grief and suffering of Haiti's people. The vexing problem of suffering is just as confusing for us now as it was for Job, and the straightforward answers are as exasperating now as they have always been. In this book, Annan struggles deeply as he searches for honest faith, not simplistic, easy faith.
I've never been to Haiti. My life has mostly been easy and rich. But I am familiar with the sorts of faith struggles that Annan articulates in this book. Anyone who can look intently at the world without blinking and still go to church on Sunday, take the bread and wine and honestly worship God is someone I want to listen to. I admired Annan for his honesty in his first book; my respect for his work and his faith is only deepened by this moving, searching book.
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