In this solo episode of the "Voices in My Head" podcast, host Rick Lee James reflects on his Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) training and his overarching theological learning goal: to develop a theology of suffering. Drawing on his work as a hospital chaplain, he observes that people in pain often ask "Why?" and argues that God's answer is not an explanation but the Hebrew word "Hineni"—"I am here." He emphasizes that divine presence, not reason, is the constant answer to human suffering. Rick also connects this idea to the biblical portrait of the resurrected, wounded Christ, who remains physically scarred and therefore enters into our pain. From a pastoral perspective, he stresses that the most effective ministry is simply being present—"stand there"—rather than offering solutions. The episode concludes with a brief invitation to share the podcast, a preview of upcoming guest episodes, and a reminder of his music releases.
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Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James. I know it's going to be another short episode today, and I apologize for that. I've got— honestly, I have 3 different wonderful guests booked on the show, and things have just come up over the last week or so, and we've had to move some things around and reschedule so I'm about to do some recordings in the near future. But today it's just me. I'm actually driving. I spend so much time driving every day back and forth to Dayton at the hospital where I work. And I thought today, you know, I just finished my third unit of CPE and I have one more unit to go. That's Clinical Pastoral Education. And if you didn't listen to my episode with Dr. Moses Taiwo My Educator, you might want to give that a listen so you can know a little bit more what I'm going— the journey that I'm going down right now. But one thing that they have you do in CPE is you formulate learning goals, and my learning goal is, as a theological goal which is consistent throughout my entire CPE journey, is to develop a theology of suffering.. And because I work in a field with suffering people and I'm with suffering people every day, it's important to have a theology like that. So that was one that I decided I wanted to dive into. So after 3 units of CPE, just about to start my 4th before I head back full-time into school at Loyola University in Chicago, I wanted to share just today one, maybe two, probably just one though for the sake of time today conclusion that I've come to when it comes to suffering. So often we ask the why questions. Why am I suffering? Why is this happening to me? The why me question happens a lot, and most people come to that when they're suffering. I'm not sure everyone realizes that they will suffer, but, but we first have to acknowledge that, that everybody has suffering in their life. Everybody is going to have terrible suffering at some point. It's just inevitable. We're humans and it happens. And when we ask these why questions, there are many reasons for why we suffer. Some people bring their own suffering upon themselves. They may or may not even see that, but there are several reasons. There's the kind of reasons where A person will suffer because of their eating choices, their lifestyle habits. And so I see this all the time where a person is suffering from diabetes because it's brought on by their diet. That's not the only reason you get diabetes, but it is for a lot of people. Some people need open heart surgery because of the way that they are, you know, the fuel that they are putting into their body. And it's totally brought on by their own choices. Same thing with interpersonal problems that we have in our life. We suffer for different things like that. There are a number of reasons that we suffer. Some are sickness, some are relational, some are mental, but there's all kinds of reasons. I wish I could tell you that I could give an answer to the problem of suffering or the problem of pain or the problem of evil. But the one conclusion in all my studying, in all my reading, in all my work in the hospital, in all the, the CPE training that I've done, if I could sum up one thing that I believe is true in every situation with every person who suffers, God's answer is not answering necessarily the question that we're asking. We so often ask, "Why, God? Why is this happening to me?" And I'm gonna give you what I believe in the bottom of my heart is God's answer back to us to that question. When humans suffer and when we come to God with the "why" question, "Why is this happening to me?" This is God's answer: Hineni. That Hebrew word, Hineni. I'm here. You know, we have different places in scripture where we are told to answer that way with God. You know, speak, Lord, your servant is listening. I'm here. I'm waiting. God's answer to suffering is I am here. Think about that. Maybe write it down if you need to. Because everybody's gonna suffer at one point. And while we are asking the question of why, God is simply answering with this simple, not even a statement, but with presence. I am here. There's never a time when God is not here. For there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ. And you know what nothing means? Nothing. There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ. I know that flies against so much evangelical theology, uh, so much Catholic theology sometimes, but it's what Scripture says and it's what I believe to be true. There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Nothing. And especially in those moments when we suffer, we have a suffering Savior who comes to us, and even the resurrected Lord comes as a disabled God, as we've talked about before. As the resurrected Jesus comes not as a fully whole new body, but Jesus's new resurrected body still bears the wounds of the cross. Touch my hands, touch my feet, touch my wounded side. A ghost does not have flesh and blood, but this body of Jesus is still wounded for us. And so I, again, I believe that God enters into our suffering because our resurrected resurrected Lord is still suffering with his people. He does not leave us in our suffering, in our despair. He does not leave us in hopelessness. God says in every moment of suffering, "I am here. I am here." And we find that in clinical pastoral ministry, it's not what we say, it's just being there. A good theme of our work could be, "Don't just do something, stand there." And just being present when a person is suffering is one of the most important things we can do for them. And I trust that God is there in all those moments of suffering. So this has again been a very short episode of Voices in My Head, uh, but I hope you will find it to be significant and helpful. Maybe you're suffering this week. Maybe you're going through something in your life and you need to be reminded that God's answer for you in suffering is not, "Well, this is why," but the answer is, "I am here." I am here. I hope that's good news for you, 'cause it's good news for me. Thanks so much for listening to Voices in My Head. Hopefully if all goes the way it is planned at this point, the next 3 episodes in a row are gonna be with some wonderful guests, and I can't wait to share those interviews with you. But for today, one more time, it's just me. Happens sometimes, but I hope you still found some benefit just from the musings of things that are going on in my head as I research suffering. So again, thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head, and if you have a chance, tell a friend about it, share it online on Twitter, Facebook, wherever you are online, or just tell somebody, listen to Voices in My Head, the Rick Lee James podcast, and listen to my music on Apple and Spotify and all places where you find music. Again, thank you so much and God bless you.
