The Meaning of Suffering: Part XIV

Jul 05, 2007 03:41 PM

Dr. Gregory Glazov: I know that I will ponder and turn over and over these exchanges frequently. Thanks to all of you again for the privilege of participating and to you Jamie for setting it up. To say anything at this point seems presumptious, and if anything new is to be said, it is bound to stir things up, but why not?

The reference to the Stoics seems crucial. There is in that philosophy also an admission that “when the room get’s too smoky, one can leave.” Not one contributor has defended this option, the option "to return the ticket.” However painful existence is, all participants treasure life and it is because of the treasure of loved lives, that existence is particularly painful. To anesthesize this pain by substitute pleasures would be wrong. All seem to agree. Why? Is it not because the dignity of a loved person transcends things, because their faces cannot be reduced to things?

If not, what is the problem?, what is so incomprehensible about suffering? If not, existence can be full of “bad” things, but not of “evil” things or choices. The premise(s) of the discussion from which some participants confess feeling alienated may include the view that it is metaphysics, belief in transcendent and personal goodness and truth, i.e. in God, that makes things not just bad but evil and so grounds the problem of pain, but participants who express alienation from this premise, by speaking of the “incomprehensibility” of painful bad things, or is it evil choices? -- experienced in our day and history, do seem to give meaning to this experience, at least to the extent of grounding alienation from metaphysics and its consolations, because this would seem to presumptiously impose comprehensibility upon something incomprehensible. In Ivan’s terms this is to opt for a Euclidean universe, to square the circle, something he rejects.

But no one here defends returning the ticket and even those who are most hesitant to accept solutions that seem glib speak of paradox. This betrays a deep love for the goodness of life, existence and perhaps, deep down, God. As the book of Job demonstrates, it takes a lot to not fall to the temptation to “return the ticket”, to “curse God and die” in particularly painful affliction. According to that book, what is right about Job, experiencing what he experiences and knowing what he knows and not knowing what he doesn’t know, is indeed to regret and curse one’s birth, to curse and deny the wisdom underpinning creation, and to seek to put the Creator in the dock, as Ivan does. By doing so, Job proves that he is “righteous for nothing” and by returning the ticket Ivan too manifests his concern for justice. God vindicates Job’s standpoint, relative to his friends, at the end. Similarly, one could argue, Alyosha kisses Ivan for expressing his outrage at the outrage suffered by innocent children.

What is the role of individual suffering in all this? When the prophet Ezekiel accepted the death of his wife, the delight of his eyes without mourning or weeping he demonstrated to his people, who were about to lose Jerusalem, the delight of their eyes, that he bore and shouldered their pain and anguish with a trust that was capable of comprehending and containing it, and so became a sign unto them of a way forward, a sign of not cursing but blessing and trusting God, fore-giving Him, come what may (Ezek 24:16-27 and chs. 2-4). But for that trust, there would be no Jewish people and consequently no Christianity either.

“G-d forbid” that “He remained untouched” by evil which people suffer, especially the innocent. But it is worse to do evil than to suffer evil, for if there really is such a thing as freedom, then the dignity of our deeds inheres in the self-creativity of our choices. We are the result of our choices and if our choices are evil we twist ourselves until we untwist through repentance, with the help of the forces for good.

It is terrible to suffer evil, and terrible to stand by watching one’s loved ones suffer, without ability to help them. But there must be consolation in knowing that they did not perpetrate evil but suffered and exposed it. What must it be then for those who do evil and for their parents and relatives?

If freedom exists and our choices matter, then judgement exists and Hell exists and solves one problem. But it raises another. Perhaps it’s premature and insensitive to speak of that problem here but the question about the religious meaning of suffering has been asked and participants have called out for a clarification of the assumptions and thoughts of the panel’s participants, and so I should say what I think.

It has been said that we do not have the right to forgive the perpetrators of various crimes if we are not the victims of those crimes or the family of those victims. I agree. But what if they repent and ask for repentance? And what if they don’t? The same answer would seem to apply. It would then seem that even G-d could not forgive them unless He was somehow not “untouched” by that evil, unless in some way, when it was done, to any of His creatures who possess a Face, whether they know their right hand from their left, it was also done to Him, (not to mention the animals)? And perhaps it is this reality that is either revealed or proclaimed by all of His suffering servants who suffer because of their allegiance to Him, whether they know and say it or not?