The Mystery of Suffering
I work as a physical therapist in the home health setting and see people everyday who are going through periods of great suffering. Many are dealing with terminal diseases such as cancer or dementia. All are dealing with the loss of independence. The family members are often suffering just as much but in a different way as they experience the ordeal of watching their loved one in pain. It gets me to thinking about suffering quite a bit. I have seen people who are amazing in their response to suffering and others who are brought to despair. The following is my personal take on suffering.
There are several constants in life and one of those is suffering. No matter who we are, we will all experience it. I’ve read several books about this topic and have come to the conclusion that as humans, we will never fully understand why we have to suffer. We simply lack the capacity to wrap our heads around it. There is a lot of speculation as to why suffering exists but when we look at the most horrific of situations such as a child with cancer or the Holocaust or why our loved one had to die, there is always going to be a part of us that wonders how a God who is supposed to be good could let this happen. I don’t think that any of us will have an adequate answer to that on this side of heaven. Instead, what I’m going to do is focus on the options that are available to us for dealing with suffering. (For the point of discussion, when I speak of suffering in this post, I am talking about those situations that present irretrievable loss such as your own impending death or the death of someone close to you or permanent disability.)
First option: atheism. Atheism tries to use the existence of suffering as a proof that God does not exist. But in doing so, atheism admits that it has absolutely nothing to offer when it comes to how we deal with suffering. It’s really this simple. If there is no God, there is no purpose to anything including suffering. If suffering is pointless and yet everyone has to endure it, the only response can be despair when it hits us. Since despair only adds to our suffering, atheism is the most self-defeating response to it.
Second option: agnosticism. If you are agnostic, you may or may not believe in God but you generally want religion to have at most a minor role in your life. You want to be free to live your life and make your own choices. You know that suffering will eventually come and you’re not sure how you’ll deal with it when it does. But for now, you’re going to try to ignore it and enjoy your life as best you can. The problem with agnosticism is that you have this dark cloud hanging over you at all times and sooner or later, the rain will fall down on you. So, you go through life with this underlying anxiety about suffering. When it inevitably comes, maybe you fall into despair like the atheist. Or possibly, you live in denial waiting to get back to your old life even when that is no longer possible. If you’re lucky, you have a St. Paul conversion experience so you can make some sense of what is happening to you.
Third option: belief in God. Belief in God may or may not give us an adequate way to deal with suffering. It obviously depends on which god you choose to place your belief. If you look at all of the world religions, Christianity is the only one that I have found which enables us to effectively deal with suffering. God knew that suffering would be our biggest stumbling block to loving him. He even devoted a whole portion of the Old Testament to this in the Book of Job. The quick summary of this story goes like this: Job was an extremely good man. God allowed all of this misery and loss to befall poor Job. Job lost his wife, his kids, and all of his money. Although he never lost his faith, he definitely began to get angry with God and question Him. To this, God replied that Job could not possibly understand His way of doing things and therefore Job should not be questioning Him. Job apologized, renewed his faith in God, and eventually began to get his life back.
I doubt that I could have gone through what Job went through and still have kept my faith. It’s likely that God knew Job’s story would be an insufficient explanation for most of us. God realized that we would forever have trouble understanding how He could permit such tragedy in our lives. At the same time, God knew, in a way that we can’t, the necessity and purpose of suffering in our world and in our lives. So, God did a most unexpected thing to help us with this problem. He became one of us. As such, he exposed himself to all of the sufferings this world has to offer. He lived in poverty. He lived as a refugee. He lost His father. He was rejected by His hometown. He was betrayed by one of His closest friends. And then He endured what may be the worst suffering of any person ever during his Passion and death. In all of this, God was proving His love for us and asking us to put our full trust in Him even amidst our own personal suffering. Then he went one step further. He showed us that when we offer our suffering up to Him, He will bring incredible goodness from it. How do we know this? God took the worst thing that ever happened to our world, the crucifixion of God Himself, and turned it into the best thing that ever happened---the conquering of death and the offer of eternal life to every person.
While this certainly does not answer all of the questions I have about why suffering must exist, it does prove how much God loves me. Knowing what Jesus went through has allowed me to put my full trust in Him in the midst of my own suffering. Furthermore, it has permitted me to live life without this dread of what suffering may come to me or my loved ones. It has given purpose to my suffering because I know that God will bring good out of whatever happens, and I can trust in His promise that the suffering which occurs in this world is not the end of the story. My hope is in God and in heaven where