The Question of Suffering

The great discussion about suffering is most popularized by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People". I've read it a couple times, not recently, and found it unfulfilling. I came away with the sense that Rabbi Kushner thought suffering happened because God is not all powerful, that He can't stop it. A frightening thought to me.

I've been though a lot, have suffered a lot. Way less though, than most people on this planet. Leading up to WWII, there was an American Jesuit priest, Walter Ciszek, that ended up in the Soviet gulag. He was arrested by the Soviets in 1941 for being a spy, and spent five years in Lubianka prison. Then he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia. He got back to the US in 1963.

Some of his thoughts on God's Will:

"God's will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at that moment, and those were the things upon which he wanted us to act, not out of any abstract principle or out of any subjective desire to 'do the will of God'. No, these things, the twenty-four hours of this day, were his will; we had to learn to recognize his will in the reality of the situation.

"The plain and simple truth is that his will is what he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems. The trick is to learn to see that- not just in theory, or not just occasionally in a flash of insight granted by God's grace, but every day. Each of us has no need to wonder about what God's will must be for us; his will for us is clearly revealed in every situation of every day, if only we could learn to view all things as he sees them and sends them to us."

Linking God's Will to Suffering and Pain. I'm thinking now that I'll have to go back and re-read CS Lewis' "The Problem of Pain". I doubt God wants us to suffer. There is, on balance, more grace, love and joy in the course of my life, than there is suffering and pain. I suffer too, when I see suffering. Other's suffering grieves me deeply.

Often when we see friends and loved ones suffering, we're at a loss for words. Then we say some things, often not helpful, sometimes hurtful. I like this though: A mother, who's son was suffering horribly from the results of a car accident. The mother asked, "Where the hell is God?" Her priest answered "I think God is devastated. Like the God who groans with loss in Isiah, and like Jesus who weeps at his best friend's tomb, God was not standing outside our pain, but was a companion within it, holding us in his arms, sharing our grief and pain."

Being a Christian, or believer in God, does not mean we will not suffer. We are all suffering some hardship, some more than others, but it's a lot about how we handle it. I like the line I read, in of all places, one of the books of Henry Miller; he said that the most Godlike thing about God is that he entered into his own creation.

God suffered all the human suffering, then the ultimate pain and suffering. He still suffers with us. I take comfort in that. I know too that suffering takes us in unexpected directions. I didn't really get involved with helping and supporting cancer victims until I lost a close friend. Now I've lost two close friends, and have several friends that are cancer survivors. How many of you didn't pay attention to something until you suffered from it, or knew someone who suffered? I can only Accept, know God shares my suffering, and shares the pain, all of it, of everyone.

Is there an answer to why we suffer? Not really. We can know, that the suffering is shared; by God, by friends and loved ones. There's comfort in that, and that's the most we can have, at least for now.