FINDING MEANING IN SUFFERING THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
FINDING MEANING IN SUFFERING THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, TORMENT, DESOLATION, DESPAIR, TORTURE, HOPELESSNESS, HELPLESSNESS, ABANDONMENT, FEAR, SIN
• As a doctor I have seen much suffering. In those who are sick or dying. In those injured and hurt. Those who have been neglected and abused. Those born with disabilities that make them different, disabled, bullied and ignored. • The suffering can come from pain. • The pain can be physical or emotional or spiritual. • It can also come from a sense of worthlessness or uselessness. • It can come from depression, anxiety, and despair. • It can come from a loss of faith, or hope, or love. • It can be because life is without meaning, or death only an end.
THE PROBLEM • If God is all loving, all good, all knowing, omnipotent - and wishes his creations to be perfectly happy then: • 1. Why does he allow suffering • 2. Why did he creatures capable of evil and sin • 3. Why did he not fix the problem once it arose • According to Peter Kreeft, the most common and strongest argument against faith in a God of love, is Suffering.
C. S. Lewis asks in “THE PROBLEM OF PAIN” • “If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both. ” • God is omnipotent, but with this is the implication that he can only do those things that are possible. Intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. • The appropriate example here is that God can not give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will. This is an intrinsic impossibility. This would be nonsense even for God.
FREE WILL • Free will implies a freedom to choose, thus there must be something to choose from. • There must also be a personal sense of self, and a knowledge of something other than self. • Self-consciousness and freedom presuppose that creatures, aware of God, have a choice to love God more than self or self more than God. • Matter, nature, our world gives us the playing field upon which we can experience “others” outside of ourselves. • Nature has fixed laws which allow us to experience others, but these laws are not equally agreeable to all
Examples Fire provides warmth and is pleasant, but get too close and it burns and causes pain. One man walking downhill finds the journey easy but another on the same path uphill finds the journey difficult or painful. The natural aspects of our world opens the opportunity for acts of courtesy, respect, unselfishness, and love but also the possibility of great evils such as competition, hostility, greed, and hatred. If souls are truly free they can not be prevented from choosing what is evil and self-centered versus what is good and loving.
• In a fight it is not the just who will win but those with superior strength, skill and numbers. • We could perhaps conceive of a world where God corrected abuse of free will at every moment, but this would require a change in natural law and free will. • If someone picks up a stick to hit someone then God could turn it into a blade of grass so no harm could be done. If someone wished to create a weapon God could remove their knowledge of how to make it, or make materials necessary unobtainable, or prevent the weapon from working. But in such a world wrong actions are impossible and freedom of will does not exist. • In such a world evil thoughts would be impossible but so would free-will.
• In a game of chess there are rules necessary for the game, just as there are rules or laws of nature. • The object of the game is for one person to win. • But, if for one person all moves could be taken back, rules could be changed, pieces could be removed arbitrarily, then there would be no game. • So it is with life in our world where there are fixed laws, consequences for actions, an order to nature. • Exclude the possibility of suffering, which the order of nature and existence of free will involves, and there might be no possibility for life itself.
• When God created the universe, then everything in it, he did so by establishing set laws of nature, or physics, which are precisely set in order for our universe to even exist. He then created earth with extremely precise parameters for life to be able to exist on it. These Laws of Nature are necessary for our existence. But we are also bound by these laws, and subject to consequences of the laws. • Without gravity set precisely by God the universe could not exist. Yet because of gravity we can fall and skin our knee or fall off a cliff and die thus suffering the consequences. An all loving God could have set gravity so that we could not be hurt, but then the universe also could not have come into existence. • God chose our existence over the possibility of suffering.
• You are enjoying a glass of beer, or maybe a soda, or water. It is cool, wet, flavorful. It has a bitterness and a sweetness at the same time. If you were suffering from thirst it would taste even better. It quenches your thirst, it may even relieve pain. • You may feel that there is nothing better than what you are drinking. • However, you may be allergic to something in beer, maybe gluten intolerant. Then this same drink that gives you pleasure may give you pain and suffering. If someone is alcoholic this same drink might cause them distress and anguish for the effect it has on them. • We are all different. Pleasure for one is suffering for another. • To deny something to some who might suffer is to deny joy to others. • God out of his love has given us both possibilities.
LOVE • Love is another example of this. Those things and people we love the most are likely to also cause us the greatest suffering. • An example of one of the greatest sources of suffering is the loss of love that we feel for someone. This can be due to breaking up with someone, or in the grief of losing someone we love in death. • Is it better to have never loved, therefore to never suffer loss? • As Christians, do we ever truly lose those we love, or do we understand that we have an eternal life in heaven with those we love. • For Christians, there is a never ending supply of love, as we are to love everyone, including our enemies. And we can never lose the love of God! • Christians never have to suffer loss from those we love. We will be with them for all eternity. We can speak, through prayer, to them at any time and they can take our prayers to God. How special is this?
SUFFERING IS UNIVERSAL • Is there anyone who has never suffered? • We all have had times when we have suffered. We probably all have times when we are physically in pain. We have all had emotional pain. We have all at times had trials that had us questioning our faith. • What gets us through these times of suffering? • FAITH • Despite all of our suffering, some of which makes us actually stronger, we can depend on the love of God.
FEAR • People despair in their suffering when they have a lack of faith. • Those who do not believe in Heaven, an eternal happiness in the beatific vision with God, are afraid of dying. • What are your greatest fears? • Those things that cause death, a death we are not comfortable with. • Those things that can cause us pain, something we want to avoid. • The unknown, something that we can not understand therefore fear. • As Christians we should have no fear of any of these. • We know that death is a new beginning in Heaven for Eternity. • Pain is temporary and will be gone in Heaven. And makes us appreciate joy even more. • God knows all. There is no unknown. If we know God we know all and should not fear the unknown.
OUR FALLEN NATURE • Other suffering comes as a consequence of our fallen nature. • The fall of Adam and Eve resulted in our sinful nature. • The suffering and death of Jesus on the cross saved us from the consequence of sin, an eternity separated from God, and brought us back into the possibility of sharing in the divinity of God. • But we are left with concupiscence, and can still sin resulting in suffering. Our sins cause us to suffer, but as Catholics we can relieve this through confession and absolution. This is a gift Christ left to help alleviate our suffering from our sin. We should take advantage of the gift. • Our intended nature was to be one with God. Our fallen nature is selfward, directed towards ourselves rather than the will of God. Pride, greed, lust, envy are all directed for our own nature, not what God desires for us. • Seeking the will of God, not our own, results in less suffering.
The Fall • When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, God told them that they would die. Their bodies were changed so that they could suffer, and their souls were separated from God. • God had pity on them out of His love and cast them out of the garden before they could eat of the tree of Life, which would have resulted in never ending suffering. • Christ through his suffering, for us, brought us back into a relationship with God that allowed for our redemption. • The cross is the true tree of life upon which Christ died for us so that we could have eternal life.
EVIL • Suffering is also caused by the devil and the fallen angels or demons, who desire for us to suffer, much like Job, in the hope that we will despair and reject God. • Unfortunately, they are all too good at this. • At times it seems like our world is ruled by the devil. • But Jesus tells us that “the Kingdom of God is at hand”. Since the coming of Jesus we can turn to Him who is King and overcome evil. • Jesus rejected satan, cast demons out, and we can also through His name. • The world needs to understand the power available to us through faith in Jesus. But even if the world does not understand it, we should.
Wisdom 12: 27 • For when in their suffering they became incensed at those creatures which they had thought to be gods, being punished by means of them, they saw and recognized as the true God him whom they had before refused to know. • Our society is filled with false “gods” that only bring us more suffering. • Love of money, greed, power, lust, pride are all false Gods. • Jesus gave us in himself a vision of the Father, and how we should live our lives. He is the perfect example of faith in the one, true God.
GOOD FROM SUFFERING • Suffering in childbirth brings about new life. • Hard work results in a job well done or creation of something good. • The struggle of raising teenagers results in responsible adults. • Caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, visiting those in prison, giving a gift of self out of love even if this involves our own suffering results in the kingdom. • “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”
CHRISTIAN MEANING OF SUFFERING • “In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Paul – Col 1: 24) • “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake” (Paul – Col 1: 24) • Paul’s joy comes from the discovery of the meaning of suffering. • According to JPII, this discovery is the Salvific Meaning of Suffering. • Suffering is essential to the Nature of Man.
• Redemption was accomplished through the Cross of Christ, that is through his suffering. • Just as the suffering of Jesus changed the meaning of suffering, and his death changed the meaning of death-- • So too our suffering can have a mysterious benefit when embraced and joined with the suffering of Christ. There can be a joy in suffering. • If our suffering brings us into a closer union with God, then we should embrace this suffering and rejoice in it.
• Man suffers in ways different than considered by medicine, pain is not the only suffering. • Suffering of the Soul or moral suffering is even greater and does greater damage to a person. • These types of suffering include: danger of death, death of our children, lack of offspring, persecution and hostility, mockery and scorn, loneliness and abandonment, remorse of conscience, unfaithfulness of those close to us, injustice, why the wicked prosper and the just suffer, and many more that you can imagine or have experienced yourselves.
• Man suffers on account of evil, which is a certain lack, or limitation, or distortion of Good. • Where the existence of good, beauty, love, and order are seen as evidence of God; • Evil and suffering seem to obscure the image of God and may result in many rejecting or denying God.
Punishment • Many see suffering as a punishment from God. • Job was thought to have done something bad in order that he deserved the punishments he received. • While suffering may have a meaning as punishment, connected to our faults, it is not true that all suffering is a consequence of our faults and has the nature of a punishment. • Job was not being punished, but God allowed him to be tested by the devil, and he remained faithful, and in the end was rewarded. • Suffering endured results in conversion and the strengthening of goodness in those who suffer.
THE WHY OF SUFFERING • The why of suffering has to do with divine love. • “Love is the fullest source of the answer to the question of the meaning of suffering” (JPII – SD) • The answer is the Cross of Jesus Christ. God’s salvific work. • The definitive suffering is the loss of eternal life with God, being rejected by God, damnation. • The mission of the only-begotten Son was to conquer sin and death. • He conquered sin by his suffering and death, and our death in his resurrection.
• Paul writes to the Romans: “We are … fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us. ” (Rom 8: 17 -18) • Peter also says: “But rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s suffering, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. ” (1 Pet 4: 13) • Luke also reveals what Christ said about our need to suffer: “If any man would come after me … let him take up his cross daily. ” Luk 9: 23)
Saint Theresa of Avila • In a vision Christ told her, “"Do you think, daughter, that merit lies in enjoyment? No, rather it lies in working and suffering and loving. Haven't you heard that St. Paul rejoiced in heavenly joys only once and that he suffered often? Look at My whole life filled with suffering, and only in the incident of Mount Tabor do you hear about my joy. ” When you see My Mother holding Me in her arms, don't think she enjoyed those consolations without heavy torment. From the time Simeon spoke those words to her, My Father gave her clear light to see what I was to suffer
Theresa continues • The great saints who lived in deserts, since they were guided by God, performed severe penances; and besides this, they waged great battle with the devil and with themselves. They spent long periods without any spiritual consolation. Believe, daughter, that My Father gives greater trials to anyone whom He loves more; and love responds to these. How can I show you greater love than by desiring for you what I have desired for Myself? Behold these wounds, for your sufferings have never reached this point. Suffering is the way of truth. By this means you will help me weep over the loss of those who follow the way of the world, and you will understand that all your desires, cares, and thoughts must be employed in how to do the opposite. "
SUMMARY • Suffering is a necessary part of life, it can not be avoided. • Suffering is part of the natural law, and thus can not be undone. • Suffering is necessary, if we are to have free will. • Our fallen nature, resulting in sin, causes suffering. • Satan seeks our suffering, in the hopes of causing us to reject God, but if we embrace our suffering it can be redemptive bringing us closer to God. Do you know of any saints whose lives did not involve great suffering? • Joining our suffering to the suffering of Christ on the cross, we can achieve our salvation, and aid in the salvation of those around us.
• LET US PRAY THAT SUFFERING WILL BRING US CLOSER TO GOD, A GOD WHO LOVES US AND WANTS US TO HAVE ETERNAL PEACE. • As Paul says in the letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me: and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ” • Our faith can help us to endure any suffering, if we join our suffering to that of Jesus on the cross, whose suffering brought us salvation. • As Christians we must be examples of love as Christ was, but also examples of those who suffer with dignity, as Christ did also.
Resources • The Problem of Pain. . C. S. Lewis • The God who loves you. . Peter Kreeft • Salvifici Doloris. . Pope Saint John Paul II
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