I Am the Provider

by Gabi Kim

Amid instances of social injustice, it can be easy to question where God is. During the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strikes led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., people held up signs saying “I AM a Man.” These signs held by activists proved the often invisible status of Black women within their communities. Religious scholar Eboni Marshall Turman reflects on the “I AM a Man” placards in “Of Men and [Mountain] Tops: Black Women, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Invisibility in the Movement for Black Lives.” Though some have argued that women were included within the word “man,” Turman asserts: “King’s rhetoric at the overflowing mass meetings emphasized the human dignity of the strikers and of all poor people… Manhood as the vector of human dignity dispossesses Black women who are subordinated according to race and gender logics.1 Turman writes that while Black people were outraged at the condition of sanitation working conditions which led to the death of two workers and consequently started the strike, their vision for justice was primarily concerned about men, and women were an afterthought. It was not that Black women were not important, but the strikers were not putting the lives of women and the gender nonconforming at the front of their campaigns with the men. Therefore, while Christianity was supposed to be a vessel of hope for all people, Turman argues that Black women found themselves often feeling excluded from their community.

Still, womanist theologians give critical insight into how to deal with suffering in the world, beyond gender issues within the church and systematic racism. Delores Williams provides alternative responses to the violence and cruelty in the world in her book Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Because there is much suffering, Williams concludes, “when non-Jewish people… read the entire Hebrew testament from the point of view of the non-Hebrew slave, there is no clear indication that God is against their perpetual enslavement. Likewise, there is no clear opposition expressed in the Christian testament to the institution of slavery.”2 Essentially, Williams understands that God does not always liberate people.

Instead, when she meditates on the story of Hagar, she discovers that He instead might provide something else. Hagar, the handmaiden of Sarah, was often mistreated by her. Frustrated at God’s timing and her lack of ability to bear a child even though God promised Abraham a son, Sarah

1 Turman, Eboni Marshall. “Of Men and [Mountain] Tops: Black Women, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Invisibility in the Movement for Black Lives- Eboni Marshall Turman,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Volume 39, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2019, pp. 57-73, accessed 4 May 2021, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/730426.61.

2 Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, Markyknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1993, 2013, 129130.

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.

Genesis 21: 19-20 gave her slave to her husband to bear a son on her behalf. But despite her consent, she still resented Hagar for God had closed her womb for the time being. After a while, Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael, her son, away. Alone in the wilderness as a single mother, she cried out to God for her son to have a drink of water for he appeared to be dying. At that moment, God provided her water and blessed Ishmael, promising Hagar that He would bless him and their family for many generations.

Black womanist scholars have commented on their exclusion from Black liberationist scholars like James Cone, especially because He does not always liberate people from their oppression or harsh circumstances. But drawing from the story of Hagar, Williams writes that God provides “‘survival and a positive quality of life for Black women and their families in the presence and care of God.’”3 God does not save people from the suffering of life every time. Rather, He gives people the tools to discover a way of life to survive and endure in this world which repeatedly inflicts injustice onto people because of their gender and race. Because Hagar was given water in her moment of desperation, she claims this is proof that God does not promise an easy life, but He still provides for our daily needs.

Perhaps even going further, I would argue that God doesn’t just provide tools for survival for survival’s sake; at times, the suffering of the few can be used so that God can be greater glorified. When Lazarus passed away, Martha said to Jesus that if he was at their home, Lazarus would not have died; she believed Jesus could have saved him from his fatal illness. But Jesus, even though he loved Mary and Martha who were the sisters of Lazarus, did not alleviate them of their mourning over the death of their brother by healing him from the illness, even though He had

3 Williams, 155.

the power to do so. Instead, He left their home so that people would know for sure that Lazarus was dead, and later returned so He could raise him back to life to prove that the resurrection of the dead is a possibility. This was not merely a miracle but a way for people to understand that Jesus too could resurrect from the dead, and not just stop there, but also save humanity from sin because of His perfection. In short, while I do not suggest that suffering is a good thing, sometimes suffering can be used for His glory.

Oftentimes it can be difficult to understand how God can be good despite human suffering. When on the road to discovering one’s faith, it can be easy to question how the alleged good God could allow evil things to happen to “innocent” people. Yet, Williams’ critical insight that God provides the tools for survival can shed light on the conundrum between a good God and a fallen world.

If one believes people are inherently good then they might find themselves to be disappointed as people can very easily fail one another. On the other hand, if people are bad, then there is no hope in life. Still, I believe that the hope in humanity lies in the resurrection of Jesus. Despite living in a fallen world where people can face discrimination and must endure many hardships, the hope is that because Jesus died and rose again, we can have eternal life in Him. And, God does not leave us to suffer in a broken world but rather provides us with the tools to survive.