As if I could cover this in a post on a blog.
Still, let’s look at a couple of angles.
There are atheists who use suffering as their departure from G-d. The argument goes something like this: with children born with congenital diseases, how could there be a G-d? The “popular” Jewish attack is more holocaust centered. “Where was G-d in the Holocaust?” or “After the Holocaust, I can’t believe in G-d.”
I’d like to offer people an option to this problem that I feel is a much healthier and more honest “resolution.” Instead of “How can there be . . .,” let the question become “it’s very difficult for me to understand.” It is much healthier because there is a G-d, and this question is designed to help a person navigate the crests and turns of a sometimes tumultuous life. A life lived with thoughts of G-d is happier and healthier. It is more honest because the G-d that I refer to is infinite, and it is a bit dishonest to presume that His finite and imperfect creations can fathom His ways.
Quickly. Get away from this. It’s sounding canned and preachy. Truly, I have no desire to embody either of those terrible and usually inane adjectives.
The bigger point that I want to explore a bit is how I frame suffering in my life.
Point one: suffering is not bad. It is most certainly bitter, and it most usually difficult. It is not bad. To inflict suffering upon another is usually bad, for that is a moral failing in the inflicter. To suffer, however, is to experience unpleasantness, often extreme. But that’s what it is. Not more.
I understand a natural response is to tell me about some terrible level of suffering that I don’t understand. “How can you say ‘not more’ when I lost a child in a horrible accident!” I don’t mean to minimize anyone’s suffering. I consider myself to be a very empathetic person. I just mean simply to help properly define the term. It is not bad. It doesn’t mean, either, that I believe that suffering is good. No. Good and bad are moral terms. Our morality is found in the realm of how we relate to suffering. A reaction to suffering could be good or it could be bad.
If we climb into the nitty gritty of this, we could ask about G-d’s morality for bringing suffering. If I torture a person causing them undue suffering than I am bad, but if G-d does the same, than He is not? Why does G-d get off so easy? Or would I suggest instead that suffering is good, seeing as how it comes from G-d?
The final point for this post will help to address “G-d’s morality” as well as give what I would consider to be the most crucial component to understanding this. I do not offer this as a proof, and I’m fully aware that it is part of a belief system whose validity I am not currently establishing as true. That said, I believe with a complete faith that there is what Jews call “The World to Come.”
This world is many things, but for the needs of this post, it is a place where the unfair is made straight. That which we perceive as crooked in this world is understood and “corrected.” It lasts forever. There, the suffering will make sense. There is an analogy that helps to explain this well. (I have dear friends who are skeptical of the goodness of inoculations for children. If this is you, please assume for the sake of the analogy that they are clearly good.)
A mother has to take her two year old to the doctor for his shots. They are necessary, and they may very well help this child avoid getting any number of horrendous or deadly diseases. It is a great act of kindness for this mother to bring her precious son to the doctor for the sake of having the child’s skin pierced by several needles in order to inject the child with various chemicals. The child will cry, perhaps scream. There may even be welts and other allergic reactions. If you could ask the child whether they wanted to experience this pain, they would howl with delight at such a stupid question. There is little in the world that they would prefer to do than to avoid this shot. The mother knows this. Yet, she gets into her car with her baby carefully strapped into a car seat. She may even listen to classical music on the way to the doctor. Is she cruel? The analogy is clear.
G-d brings us through life with lessons for each of us to learn. We judge Him and His plans with the great and advanced intellect of an infant. Just as the infant simply doesn’t have the tools to understand disease and future possibility of contracting these illnesses, we don’t possess the vessels to understand all of the calculations of where we’ve been, where we are going and what we need to do along the way.
Suffering in this context is not understood. My goal is not to understand suffering. Rather, to frame its place in life. We can’t fathom G-d’s mind. We can, however, learn to trust Him. A mentally stable and good mother would never plan on bringing harm to her child if not for the child’s own good. Still, sometimes she does things with great intention and planning that causes great pain to this object of her undying love and affection. Suffering is not bad. It is just bitter.
