Resistant Hope: Fighting Back against Suffering

Introduction

There are many books available on the market designed to help us through times of suffering. They all offer answers and proposals as to why we suffer, what purpose is to be found in this experience, and how can we go forward after our life has been shattered. It is reasonable to ask what I think I am going to add to all of these ideas.

I have spent several years teaching and writing about suffering and a concept in Christian theology called theodicy. Interest in the question of suffering began as I learned the answers proposed by Christian theology. As I tried to apply those answers to the painful experiences in my life, I was left feeling hollow and sad.

Through teaching, I had the opportunity to share my frustrations and questions with students of all ages and backgrounds. In return, these students contributed to my ideas and helped to shape this text. With anger and with tears, they shared their personal stories of pain and suffering. Together we struggled to find a method that would allow us to recover God’s promised hope.

Seeking hope is a common thread in all the stories. For our generation and all generations, the victims of suffering demand that the teachers of the church show us a way to understand suffering. The most common teachings approach the subject of suffering from the perspective of defending God. Along this path the great and not-so-great thinkers of the Christian community desire two things. First, they wish to avoid the human practice of blaming God for their suffering. Second, they reject or at least modify the temptation to hold God responsible for the pain they have experienced. There have been a couple of notable exceptions. C. S. Lewis wanted the reader to believe that God sent and used pain as a means of correcting the wandering, wayward believer. At least this seems to be the position of Lewis in his first book on suffering, The Problem of Pain.

This book is not about defending God. I believe that God does not need my defense. This book is about how God, alone and through us, comes when we suffer to rescue us from the abyss of despair. Through my personal experience and time spent with others at moments of suffering, I have heard many either blame God or accept with painful resignation that God had sent this devastating pain. When individuals were controlled by these positions, I watched them slide into the dark abyss of hopelessness. One Sunday morning, this abyss was obvious to all before worship services began.

A Story

When the young wife died of uterine cancer, her husband and two children sought refuge in the family of their church congregation. Medicine had no answers as to why it was his wife, their mother, who died. As they began to emerge into the light of the love of friends, one Sunday they returned to church. They were met at the door of the church by a member who held that suffering was sent by God but could be prevented through ardent and faithful prayer. His opening greeting to the grieving husband was, I don’t know why God sent this sadness to you. Maybe if you had prayed harder, God would have saved her life. The young father began to weep silently. Taking his children by the hands, he turned back to his car. The hopelessness of suffering had followed him to this place of worship. He was now confirmed in his belief that he had failed his wife, children, and even God.

This is not a story about the God of scripture or of the Christ of salvation. However, stories and experiences such as this are rooted in the teaching and preaching of the Christian tradition. This experience over twenty years ago now continues to bring me great sadness. At the time, I did not know what to say. I just knew that the church member was wrong. Now many years later, it is my hope that at the conclusion of these writings you will find a pathway to revealing hope in the midst of the pain of daily life and at the moments of greatest grief and sorrow. This hope is not a false assurance of easy Christianity. It is the hope of God through Christ that speaks to us through the scriptures and the teachings of the church.

How will I accomplish that? Chapter One leads us into understanding the present answers and their devastating effects upon those who suffer. This task begins by defining suffering. Actually, that is a task that is beyond words. So it begins with describing the effects of suffering. There are many thoughtful people who have provided descriptions of the effects of suffering upon humanity. These ideas are gathered together to set the stage for finding hope. Chapter One examines the relationship of suffering to evil. This is a serious dilemma for many Christians. It is hard to know which comes first: evil or suffering. It probably does not matter. We need to understand the effect as the two destroy our lives.

As I mentioned above, there have been many attempts to describe the source or cause of suffering. Most attempts are really attempts to defend God. Chapter Two takes a careful look at the four proposals that stand as answers to suffering. These theological ideas have become predictable parts of Christian responses to people who are in pain. Each answer seems logical on the surface. However, with in-depth consideration, we will see how they lead us further away from God and consequently further away from hope.

There is a long history of Christian thinking that comes along with the application of these four responses. Chapter Three takes us back to the source that informs all the teachings of Christianity: the Holy Bible. What does God have to say about the nature of humanity, the course of suffering, and suffering’s devastating effects upon humanity and the entire creation?

Chapter Three begins with a brief outline of how Christianity got itself into this situation. The examination of scripture begins with Genesis, moves into the writings of Paul, and finally ends in the interpretation by church teachers. The chapter examines the continuing power of Christian teaching. The conclusion of Chapter Three demonstrates that when Christians tell only part of the faith story or speak of God from only one tradition, people of faith are oppressed by their own trust in God as both loving and all powerful.

Chapter Four invites us to approach the experiences of human suffering from a different perspective. Having established a definition of the effects of suffering and come to understand the traditional and familiar answers, it is time to build a new response to the experience of suffering. Of course, this is not really a new response. It is a very old response that begins by looking carefully at God’s goal for creation. This is the point to introduce many readers to a teacher of the Church whose writings are not known to most people who are not a part of the Eastern Orthodox community. Irenaeus of Lyon wrote in the third century. His writings contain wonderful explanations of God’s goal for all creation. Utilizing three steps, Irenaeus shows that as we embrace the life and work of Jesus the Christ, we get a glimpse into God’s plan and goal for creation.

The first step examines God’s plan or creation. This is a plan of love and compassion. The second step in finding hope is naming the reality that human action has interfered with God’s plan. In traditional Christian language, this is naming the sin or brokenness that taints the creation. Again, many great thinkers have described the effects of sin as chaos and disharmony that destroys the ability of creation, human and otherwise, to move toward God. The brokenness of life traps us in a repeating cycle of tragedy and pain. We are tempted to rejoice that our suffering is not a great as another, to pretend that suffering does not exist, or to callously dismiss the pain or others as somehow deserved or even invited.

In the third step, attention focuses on the life and death of Jesus Christ. Here God reveals all human answers to suffering are drawn from the human community. In Jesus we learn that accepting human answers as truth traps us into a cycle of guilt that destroys the very human nature within each of us. The gift of Christ is the power to break free of our humanly imposed barriers. The way to hope in the midst of suffering is found by returning to the beginning. God has never ceased to love and bless the creation. God has never ceased to call the children of God good and blessed. Now those are two claims that will need further explanation.

Too often we confuse the consequences of our actions for a condemnation from God of our human existence. In times of suffering, we also lose sight that God created humanity with the purpose to work with God to achieve God’s goal and purpose. Here we must look carefully at the work and life of Christ. In Chapter Five we uncover how Christ shows us the path to work with God in the power of God’s compassionate love to