Coping with Suffering in a Fragile World

What distinguishes humans from animals is our capacity to reflect on and to articulate our experiences of suffering. Can you imagine anyone who isn’t suffering, or who seems to be above suffering? Such a person, I feel, would be difficult to relate to — our humanity is uncovered through our suffering and our responses to it. Suffering can either elevate the human spirit or deflate us, depending on our attitudes and approaches to life’s realities. Someday genetic engineering might clone non-suffering humans who no longer feel pain. Such experiments might result in a robot-like human creature, who might be less than a human being, because of having lost the capacity to feel another’s pain.

In other words, the universality of suffering is what makes us truly human — to lose it, paradoxically, would diminish the bonding qualities needed in our relationships with one another. Suffering can either connect us to one another or separate us as we wallow in self-pity, anger and various “isms.” Such negative reactions will never satisfy us emotionally, nor contribute to our well being. On the other hand, finding connectedness through honest sharing of one another’s stories can be both enlightening and emotionally satisfying.

Dimensions of Human Suffering

There are various dimensions to human suffering. First, there is physical suffering from deadly disease and poison, starvation, forms of violence and harassment, mental illness, genetic disorders, etc. Today, we have achieved excellent results in alleviating many medical causes of physical suffering, but physical pain will always exist and challenge our sensitivities, drowning us in tears. No matter how hard we pray, the “thorn in our flesh” remains. This thorn has its material and economic aspects as well — loss of employment, housing, possessions, wealth, safety and other forms of deprivation which can also be regarded as manifestations of physical suffering.

Second, there is philosophical and religious suffering as we struggle with the meaning of life, seeking answers to basic and oftentimes unanswerable questions, “What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope for?” Persons everywhere will wrestle and suffer in anguish over these and related questions at every major junction in their lives. We also suffer when we are denied the freedom to choose what we believe. Everyone’s faith journey seeks certitudes that we can defend dogmatically without persecution. But if the truth be told, there are no perfect philosophical or theological statements before the mystery and majesty of God. Everyone’s faith journey is a humbling process; we can’t lose sight of the fact that we may outgrow our present views as our faith deepens in our wrestling with God. In our search for an intellectual understanding of suffering we will discover limitations to our present comprehension; implicit in the very nature of our search for knowing lies this sense of incompleteness. Here is where faith enters; this is what Jesus was trying to communicate to the “doubting Thomas” in each of us.

Third, there is psychological suffering as we increasingly realize that no matter how street smart and intelligent we are, we still need an underlying emotional intelligence if we are to function in a caring and loving way in a society of broken relationships and lost identities. Every broken relationship — divine and human — creates a void of emptiness and darkness within us leading oftentimes to that dark night of the soul, depression. Such stress and pain from brokenness is at times unbearable. Maintaining psychic health in a dysfunctional society gets complicated by larger issues like 9/11 that drive us close to the edges of Hell. Part of our caring for others is to realize how helpless we are at times to “fix things,” and yet, how essential it is nevertheless to be there for someone. Seminarians, ministers and lay people are sometimes like Job’s friends, bent on giving advice and answers, when the real need is a listening ear, backed by the reassurance of God’s Spirit that opens the doors of hope in us.

Fourth, there is also political suffering, which often blames others for its ills. These “other groups” may be ethnic, racial, class or gender oriented and are perceived as the “enemy,” the cause of one’s ills or the nation’s problems. Out of such biased attitudes political action is organized “to correct” the situation. Such action may well lead to unfair suffering for the targeted group, resulting in genocides and holocausts. Such genocidal activities were widely practiced in the 20th century and unfortunately continue in today’s fragile world. A post-9/11 outlook must be leery of collective fault-finding as “the solution” to our suffering. The complexity of contemporary suffering in a global society suggests that “the enemy” wears many disguises.

In all these dimensions of suffering, how we respond as individuals, as religious institutions, and as ethnic and civic groups will increase or impede our suffering. A reconciling spirit toward our suffering among nationalities and races is needed if we are to uphold human dignity rather than become paranoid in the climate of a post-9/11 world.

A constructive view of suffering can spark a desire for personal growth in each of us — encouraging us to begin by forming support groups within our religious institutions, schools and communities where the divine icon in us is mutually affirmed and upheld. Through such organizing efforts we can become an educating fellowship of sufferers inspired by the pioneers of our faith who have traveled the journey from despair to hope. We need to ponder the biblical wisdom that encourages us to “boast in our sufferings, because suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character and character leads to hope and hope does not disappoint us,” because God is with us.

This has been my experience — spiritual growth always involves pain — and that pain is often accompanied by the question, — “Why me?” Our four-year-old grandson, Caleb is always asking the question, “WHY?” with almost every other sentence. Asking the question “Why” is important for all ages in gaining knowledge and information, but at the same time, we soon discover the limits of such questioning in our journey for spiritual knowledge. Often there is no plausible answer to tragic suffering.

Our seminarians are instructed to teach and preach with integrity and not to make false claims in their desire to provide comfort. Some unanswered questions in life may continue to exist and remain as such — thorns in our flesh — reminding us of our weakness and finiteness, living as we do “east of Eden.” Some tragedies may well defy reasonable explanations for now. I suspect we will have many questions to ask God someday. Meanwhile, we may need in some cases to suspend judgment as we mature in faith. Suffering also opens us to be receptive to God’s wisdom that can empower us through the means of prayer to move forward in spite of our ills.

Carnegie Samuel Calian is president and professor of theology, Pittsburgh Seminary.