The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [131]
The immense question, Why do we suffer? or the “problem of evil,” has bedeviled theologians, saints, mystics—all believers—for thousands of years. How could a good God allow suffering?
First, we have to admit that no one answer can completely satisfy us when we face real suffering—our own or that of others. The best answer may be, “We don’t know.”
Second, we may have to admit that we believe in a God whose ways remain mysterious. In an article in America magazine, Rabbi Daniel Polish, author of Talking About God, put it succinctly. “I do not believe in a God whose will or motives are crystal clear to me. And as a person of faith, I find myself deeply suspicious of those who claim such insight.”
Polish goes on to quote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “To the pious man knowledge of God is not a thought within his grasp.” This is the greatest challenge of faith, says Polish, “to live with a God we cannot fully understand, whose actions we explain at our own peril.”
Third, while there are no definitive answers to the question of suffering, and while we may never fully understand it, there are some time-honored perspectives offered by the Jewish and Christian traditions, which have helped believers as they move through periods of suffering and pain.
During theology studies I took a fascinating course called “Suffering and Salvation,” taught by Daniel Harrington, the New Testament scholar I mentioned earlier. In that course, later adapted into a book called Why Do We Suffer?, Father Harrington looked at the traditional explanations presented in Scripture. None answers the question and each may, in fact, raise more questions. Yet, taken together, they can provide, as Harrington wisely says, “resources” for the believer.
So our class read in the Old Testament the psalms of lament, the Book of Job, passages in the Book of Isaiah about the “suffering servant;” excerpts from the New Testament about the passion and death of Jesus; as well as meditations on the meaning of the Cross in St. Paul’s writings.
We studied the main approaches to suffering found in Scripture: Suffering is a punishment for one’s sins (or an ancestor’s sins). Suffering is a mystery. Suffering is a kind of purification. Suffering enables us to participate in the life of Jesus, who himself suffered; likewise, the Christ who understands suffering can be a companion to us in our pain. Suffering is part of the human condition in an imperfect world. And suffering can enable us to experience God in new and unexpected ways.
A few of these perspectives I have found, at best, wanting; at worst, unhelpful. For example, the notion that suffering is a punishment from God makes no sense in the face of innocent suffering, especially when it comes to terrible illness or a natural disaster. Can anyone believe that a small child with cancer is being punished for his or her “sins”? It is a monstrous image of a vengeful and cruel God.
Jesus himself rejects this image of God in the Gospel of John, when he comes upon a man who has been blind since birth (9:2). His disciples ask him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus replies, “It was not this man who sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (v. 3). And he heals him.
But many of these traditional biblical and theological resources have been of inestimable help in my own life during different periods of suffering. One incident stands out, not for its severity, but for its durability, because it continues today. And the insights that I learned still provide me with some perspective.
At the beginning of theology studies, I began to experience shooting pains in my hands and wrists. Initially I figured it would subside, but after a few weeks I found myself in near-constant pain, incapable of typing, barely able to write, and slowly losing the ability to do simple things like turning a doorknob or holding a pen.
After six months of visiting