Shaking A Fist Lisa Foster Wonders How She Can Praise The Almighty After Her Husband’s Suicide

Religion has always posed problems for the skeptically inclined.

There is the problem of pain, on which books have been written, and there is the problem of evil, on which theologians have been split.

Then there is the problem of praise which, regrettably, is rarely addressed.

Friedrich Nietzsche did. The atheist philosopher said he could not believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

It’s a delicate business, questioning God, and there are many who think it should never be done.

But then there are those who believe God not only welcomes, but encourages our questions, viewing them as happy consequences of the probing minds he gave us.

The pro-question faction will find interesting reading in an interview with Lisa Foster, wife of the late Vince Foster, in the Sept. 11 issue of the New Yorker.

This is the same magazine that, earlier this year, featured a sketch of a crucified rabbit, enraging conservative Christians who saw it as a mockery of their holiest symbol.

The Foster article might be almost as offensive to some in that it allows a still-hurting widow to ask questions of the Almighty. To wonder why she should praise a God who let her husband kill himself and, simultaneously, her children’s innocence and her old, wonderful life.

It allows Foster to, as author Taylor Caldwell once put it, shake a fist at God.

The article spans 12 pages, and the space devoted to Foster’s spiritual battles is relatively scant. But it is moving stuff for anyone who has ever wrestled with eternal questions and come up devoid of answers.

A lifelong Catholic, Foster said she was angry after the death of her husband, who was a White House counsel and Bill Clinton confidant. At first, she told writer Peter J. Boyer, she raged at God, asking answer-less questions such as, “Why did you have to let him get so bad off when all he wanted was to go up there and help his country and do some good things for people?”

Interestingly, Foster continued going to church. But, Boyer wrote, she defiantly wore a sweatshirt and jeans and sat silent through the Masses.

At home, she opened dozens of letters from people urging her to turn her pain over to Jesus.

“And I thought, ‘Well, where was Jesus when I needed him?’ I don’t know why God would do this to me. I wouldn’t do it to somebody I loved.

“You know, we’re supposed to be children of God. I wouldn’t do something like this to one of my children.”

Eventually Foster quit praying altogether.

“You can’t pray,” she said, “because you don’t know what you’re praying for. You’re mad as hell at God, and so you don’t know what to say. You don’t want to say, ‘Help me,’ because you think he’s screwed you. What are you going to say - ‘I praise you because you’re great, even though you’ve done this to me?”’

Ah, shades of Nietzsche. The problem of praise.

From childhood, we are taught that humility is a virtue. We are also taught that God is virtuous. But there the reasoning breaks down, because God desires our praise and worship, and neither fits with humility.

Lisa Foster, in the depths of her grief, stumbled on this puzzle and is still unable to reconcile the pieces. But even as she goes on with her life, she keeps holding the puzzle parts, feeling them, measuring them, trying to shove them into place.

MEMO: Jennifer Graham covers religion for The (Columbia, S.C.) State. Write her at The State, P.O. Box 1333, Columbia, S.C. 29202.