{"id":1158,"date":"2008-05-13T00:08:41","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T00:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2008\/05\/thoughts-on-suffering-pt-2.html"},"modified":"2008-05-13T00:08:41","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T00:08:41","slug":"thoughts-on-suffering-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/05\/thoughts-on-suffering-pt-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on suffering, pt. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight my father called a cousin in Chengdu who, we discovered with relief, is fine. His reports about the incredible destruction at the earthquake’s epicenter were anything but comforting. So mangled are the roads that getting there with any help is next to impossible.
\nI’ve been in Chengdu, I’ve been in the mountainous outskirts where the quake was centered. And as the son of a geophysicist who, among other thing, specializes in earthquakes and has done work in Chengdu, this strikes close to home.
\nI don’t have much to add to all the words being penned right now about China or Myanmar but I have one thing to add. This blog from a Harvard law professor<\/a> dealing with his own awful cancer. They all relate me thinks:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have any previous experience with this sort of thing, but judging from what I hear and read, I\u2019m supposed to be asking why all this is happening, and why it\u2019s happening to me. Honestly, those questions are about the farthest thing from my mind.
\nPartly, that\u2019s because they aren\u2019t hard questions. Why does our world have gravity? Why does the sun rise in the East? There are technical answers, but the metaphysical answer is simple: that\u2019s how reality works. So too here. Only in the richest parts of the rich world of the twenty-first century could anyone entertain the thought that we should expect long, pain-free lives. Suffering and premature death (an odd phrase: what does it mean to call death \u201cpremature\u201d?) are constant presences in the lives of most of the peoples of the Earth, and were routine parts of life for generations of our predecessors in this country\u2014as they still are today, for those with their eyes open. Stage 4 cancers happen to middle-aged men and women, seemingly out of the blue, because that\u2019s how reality works.
\nAs for why this is happening to me in particular, the implicit point of the question is an argument: I deserve better than this. There are two responses. First, I don\u2019t\u2014I have no greater moral claim to be free from unwanted pain and loss than anyone else. Plenty of people more virtuous than I am suffer worse than I have, and some who don\u2019t seem virtuous at all skate through life with surprising ease. Welcome to the world. Once again, it seems to me that this claim arises from the incredibly unusual experience of a small class of wealthy professionals in the wealthiest parts of the world today. We think we live in a world governed by merit and moral desert. It isn\u2019t so. Luck, fortune, fate, providence\u2014call it what you will, but whatever your preferred label, it has far more to do with the successes of the successful than what any of us deserves. Aristocracies of the past awarded wealth and position based on the accident of birth. Today\u2019s meritocracies award wealth and position based on the accident of being in the right place at the right time. The difference is smaller than we tend to think. Once you understand that, it\u2019s hard to maintain a sense of grievance in the face of even the ugliest medical news. I\u2019ve won more than my share of life\u2019s lotteries. It would seem churlish to rail at the unfairness of losing this one\u2014if indeed I do lose it: which I may not.
\nThe second response is simpler; it comes from the movie \u201cUnforgiven.\u201d Gene Hackman is dying, and says to Clint Eastwood: \u201cI don\u2019t deserve this. To die like this. I was building a house.\u201d Eastwood responds: \u201cDeserve\u2019s got nothing to do with it.\u201d
\nThat gets it right, I think. It\u2019s a messed-up world, upside-down as often as it\u2019s rightside up. Bad things happen; future plans (that house Hackman was building) come to naught. Deserve\u2019s got nothing to do with it.
\nWhy, then, are we so prone to think otherwise? This is one of the biggest reasons I believe my faith is true: something deep within us expects, even demands moral order\u2014in a world that shouts from the rooftops that no such order exists. Any good metaphysical theory must explain both of those phenomena: both the expectation and the lack of supporting evidence for the thing expected. The only persuasive way to get there, I think, is to begin with a world made good that was twisted, corrupted, bent. Buried deep in our hearts are hints of the way things ought to be; the ugliest reality can\u2019t snuff them out. Still, that reality exists; it can\u2019t be denied. Christianity sees that reality, recognizes it for what it is\u2014but also sees the expectation, and recognizes where it comes from.
\nBottom line: I don\u2019t need anyone to tell me why I\u2019m in the situation I\u2019m in, and I certainly don\u2019t think I merit an exemption from the rottenness to which the rest of the world is subject.
\nBut I do need to know some things. Three, to be precise: first, that I\u2019m not alone; second, that my disease has not made me ugly to those I love and to the God who made me; and third, that somehow, something good can come from this. My faith tells me that the God of the universe suffered everything I suffer and infinitely worse. Death and suffering don\u2019t separate human beings from our Creator\u2014on the contrary: those things unite us with our Creator. The barrier became the bridge: that is the great miracle of the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection. So I need never suffer alone. Job\u2019s story confirms that, far from rejecting the ugliness of disease and pain, God embraces those who suffer and takes on their suffering. Beauty and ugliness are turned inside-out. Joseph\u2019s story and the gospels alike show a God who delights to use the worst things to produce the best things. That doesn\u2019t make life\u2019s hells less than hellish. But it does make them bearable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight my father called a cousin in Chengdu who, we discovered with relief, is fine. His reports about the incredible destruction at the earthquake’s epicenter were anything but comforting. So mangled are the roads that getting there with any help is next to impossible. 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