Finding Strength in a Hopeless Place

"When I heard Deo's story, all I could think is I would not have survived." — Tracey Kidder, "Strength in What Remains"

I have been on a kick lately of reading challenging books. Some people have wondered why I want to read stories that are tough, depressing, or both. I guess the answer is our worldview has to be challenged to be sharpened. Reading about injustice and suffering does both.

That's certainly true of "Strength in What Remains," a story of a man who endured tragic and brutal circumstances but found his way through. I was struck when author Tracey Kidder noted of Deo's story that he would not have survived. I thought the same thing. In fact, it is hard to imagine surviving such horror intact.

Deo was a medical student in Burundi, a small nation in Africa, in the early 1990s when ethnic genocide and civil war broke out. Many are familiar with the genocides in Rwanda around the same time, but things were just as bad in Burundi. After surviving slaughter and getting to America, Deo found something just as challenging — income inequality.

He toiled 12 hours a day at a job that paid just $15 for that work. He found himself living in Central Park and, on more than one occasion, wondering if it would be better just to die. But kind people found him, he worked hard, became a citizen, graduated from Columbia, went to medical school, and achieved his dream of contributing to Burundi by building a clinic for the people there.

The book chronicles Deo's struggles in New York and his story of home — the violence and tragedy that left a mark on his life. It takes a truly strong person to overcome all that, and it also takes something else.

In reading some of these challenging stories, I look for faith. Someone who has known such violence and struggle cannot be blamed for sometimes questioning the idea of a loving and benevolent God. When asked about God, Deo replied, “I do believe in God. I think God has given so much power to people, and intelligence, and said, 'Well, you are on your own. Maybe I'm tired, I need a nap. You are mature. Why don't you look after yourselves?' And I think He's been sleeping too much.”

In some ways I find Deo's response sad, but it's not all that unexpected. Deo received help from devout Christians, and he found room in his heart for God despite his experience of the world. But he struggled with the question of why God had allowed such evil and suffering in the first place.

I think that is natural among humans. "Watchmen" is about as far from a Christian ideology as one can get. But when posed the same question about evil and suffering, Rorshach delivers a similarly jaded view of humanity, "You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew... God doesn't make the world this way. We do."

Humans, made in the image of God, are fascinating beings. We're capable of acts of great kindness and generosity. We're also capable of acts of evil, malice, and violence that boggle the mind. This side of Heaven, we will struggle to reconcile what God tells us of Himself with the suffering we see around us.

Most of us won't know the kind of suffering and violence Deo experienced, but the questions remain. What we have to decide is whether we have the strength to believe, and the strength to act with the courage of our convictions.

Deo may have struggled with the idea of what God allowed, but he never gave up on his dream of speaking hope and love into a place of violence and hate. And the world is better for it.