On American Culture        VFC

                        ‘If God is so good, why is there pain and suffering?’

 

            Hope in the sense of expecting something good to happen is in very short supply today.  That’s a problem, because we rely on hope more than anything else in life. We seem to carry within us a hope for happiness which is often extinguished by the suffering we experience. In our culture, billions and billions of dollars are spent every year in the pursuit of making life pleasant and satisfying, while pain and suffering seem to absorb and neutralize every attempt.  We agonize, searching for the reason behind our pain, growing bitter because of its illusiveness. Cynicism instinctually dominates our society, a cynicism that not only questions appearances but purpose as well.  We lie exhausted on the conveyor belt of futility, expecting little to change.  With no solution in sight we sink into a mire of helplessness, grasping for a hand-hold just out of reach.  And out of us groans a primitive rage as our spirit strains, weary with the effort.  Inevitably it slumps, listening to its own echo fade into the distance. 

             We all experience pain and suffering as individuals and even as a society. In fact, the more proficient we are as a society, the more sophisticated and cosmopolitan, the worse the experience seems to become. We were relatively better off when we knew we had much to learn, in an age when philosophers dreamt of possible solutions, when science stood on the threshold of awe and when education was thought to be the answer to all our problems.  These were the substance of cultural hope.  But, as we wade into the human dilemma with the best social answers we have and they don’t make a dent, realization dawns and hope disappears, abandoning us to cynicism while we waste away. 

            We do exist in a shabby age as technological advancement, like the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’, gives the impression of development and progress.  We’re left with a hollow upgrade that creates a Dickens-esque soot-covered inner-life.  Our culture longs for inspiration and a creativity that’s just out of reach.  We want so badly to be unique and enlightened.  We live in a retro-culture numbed by affluence, pleading for renaissance.  The fact that we are disgusted and heartbroken implies a design for something better.  Yet, life relentlessly deals out blow after blow and we gasp a question, as one whose breath has been knocked away,

            “Why do we suffer, why does anyone suffer?”.

              We’re in good company when we ask this question.  Many philosophers, poets, theologians, materialists, addicts and drunks have wrestled with this issue for thousands of years.  Because of that one might conclude there isn’t a suitable answer.  But there is an answer, a good answer.  That’s not the problem.  This is the problem:  Thinking we could fix it, if we understood it.  If we could just grasp it, we could avoid the lion’s share of the pain. If we could just find that magic path, all would be well.  It’s human nature to conclude that if we understand something, we can manipulate it.  And, we do have an enormous capacity for problem-solving.  But some problems are beyond our solving.  This is one.  So, we have to ask the question,

            “What is it we want?”

              Do we want to understand why we suffer or do we want to avoid suffering? These are two very different things.  The tendency, of course, is to want both.  But, if our goal is the avoidance of pain, we need discuss this no further.  Avoiding suffering in this life is impossible.  The best we can do is understand why it’s here and find the strength to carry it well.  We need to carry our pain well, so that it doesn’t destroy us and those who live around us.  

 

            Shall we go on then? 

            To understand pain and suffering we need to go back before creation.  Interestingly, there are Scriptures the Holy Spirit can use to take us back there.  We find God making plans, having intentions and dreaming dreams.  What was he after in the first place?  Life doesn’t take him by surprise.  He didn’t set his plan into motion and then find himself over-taken by unexpected circumstances.  No. He had an idea, but what was it? 

            In a nutshell, he wanted to create children who had the ability to love by their own volition, children who could initiate love.  He would not require them to love, nor would he bait them into loving.  He would not simply program them to love automatically under any circumstance, nor would he create them to respond because of what they could get from him. His dream was that his children freely and willingly love.  As majestic as the universe is, this dream dwarfs the rest of creation.  Yet, it’s a large order to fill, this desire for children of depth.   

            So, it was necessary that we be free-moral agents, meaning we have the ability to make independent choices, choices that emerge from what we value and what we want. This one portion of our design makes it possible for us to have relationships of love. Who among us wants to be loved by those with no choice in the matter, or who wants to be loved by those with ulterior motives?  Not only are these superficial and meaningless, they are torture to us.  The design of free choice became the only road possible to carry out his dream.  And, on that road he became vulnerable to pain and suffering.  But what dreamer doesn’t become vulnerable to his dream?

            As a result, we see that he created us with the ability to choose, but he didn’t create us to be self-contained:  We need.  These needs he created became homing-beacons, directing us back to him.  They fuel the relationship, they initiate and maintain interaction.  If we feel insecure, we run to him.  If we feel worthless, we run to him.  If we feel purposeless, we run to him and so on.  That’s how we’re built.  We were designed with needs that can only be satisfied by the Eternal.  They are infinitely deep and only he can fulfill them.

            Here’s where it gets edgy.  If people are free to choose, then there will be those who decline his invitation to love him.  There will be those who will find no value in him.  What happens then?  What happens when these needy individuals become independent of him, setting out on their own?  Well, they find themselves in a finite world, existing among others who are trying to meet their needs with finite resources, creating a massive insatiable competition.  They wrestle and wrench things out of each other’s hands consuming all they can.  The world becomes a field stripped by locust. And after all their toil they realize they’re still parched and starving, experiencing the beginning of pain and suffering.  Is this punishment from God?  Of course not, no more than when a child jerks their hand from their parent’s and darts into the street, only to find pain and suffering.  If we take ourselves out from under the care of God we will experience pain and suffering, but not as punishment. 

            There are also by-products to our free choice.  As we make our decisions throughout the day we don’t make them in isolation, our preferences affect everyone around us.  In fact, our choices even affect those who are generationally distant from us. The momentum we create becomes an inheritance for those who follow.  Such was the case in Eden.  Consider the innocent, those who have not made one decision or another, the small children who are affected by those who have come before them.  Disabilities, damage and distraction all snowball down through our families. We have the right to chose but seldom realize the power and affect that our choices have on others.

            The earth and universe are involved in this drama as well.  They were created as learning environments for us, a context in which to love him, while developing and growing with him.  They are fields, if you will, and our interaction with him the seed.  We look into the sky as if we are standing on a ridge surveying other fields far into the distance, considering the potential he designed for us.  Yet because of our inheritance and our own personal choices we remain quarantined here, stripping our world of all its natural resource, locked in the struggle of the great competition, finding only insatiability. The earth, the Scripture says, convulses waiting to be rescued from the dilemma set in motion by the choices of the children. 

            Disease, famine and war all come from the domino effect of an exploitive people who are fending for themselves, causing havoc in a finite environment.  We dwell in a world that was meant for sustainable living. But those who have gone out from under the care of God have no choice but to ravage it.  And, this can’t be helped. No matter how much legislation is enacted or how much money we throw at it or how many challenges we make for people to live responsibly, nobly and in an enlightened way this will not change. We simply live as street kids in a world of instinct and impulse, a world of dysfunction, a world of sensuality, a world that’s degenerating and not evolving.  We live in a world where we habitually try and met our needs in ignorance of him.  Even if we respond to the opportunity of love that God has given us, it doesn’t change the fact that others will refuse and set into motion waves and waves of self-absorption.  Add to that our own contribution to the problem before we came to repentance and the opinions & habits that are still being changed within us.  We are paying a high price for depth.

            Free-moral agency was necessary for God to achieve his dream.  Sure, we can blame him for setting things up like this. We can rage at him because he didn’t provide a satisfactory option to himself, something that could completely satisfy and not be him.  But, raging at God and blaming him simply reveals that we don’t value his dream, the dream of un-coerced love.  Just as affluence creates superficiality, un-coerced love creates depth and develops character.  In this life, un-coerced love has been birthed through pain and suffering.   Is it worth it?  You would have to ask that of a mother as she considers her children.  It depends whether or not you value relationships of love.

 

            You see, the problem with pain and suffering isn’t about understanding it, but in the emotion of experiencing it.  Here is where God gives us the tools to carry it well, knowing that we must accept suffering to have the opportunity of love.  When we feel the sharpness, the stabbing, and the gnawing which makes us think ‘nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’, we run to him.  When all rational comfort seems glib and patronizing, we run to him.  When everything in our old nature wants to avoid suffering at all cost, we run to him.  And find that he has allowed himself to be affected by this pain and suffering as well.

             We have within us a need for joy and so automatically we feel that pain and suffering are obstacles in its way.  They aren’t obstacles, but vehicles. God has given us a chance for something that will take our breath away.  It’s genius, actually.  It’s inspiring to think there is real hope in finding a place where we can love and be loved, a relationship that was unexpected.  What would we pay, and to what ends would we go, to find this kind of love, to realize this dream?   It’s really his dream, but it’s also hopelessly contagious.