Suffering: What do we mean by it?
Three weeks ago my dear friend and mentor, Rits Tadema, died. He was, I think, 94. The Bible calls death the great enemy, which of course it is. We recoil from death because we believe—in fact, truly know—that we were not created for it. We long for life and cling to it for as long as we can. As God’s image-bearers, that longing is lodged deep inside us. I didn’t want to see him die. I will miss him.
Still, I wouldn’t consider the death of Rits an instance of suffering, for him, or for me. He didn’t slowly waste away, fighting off pain and losing one bodily function after another. To the contrary, he remained vital and sharp to the very end. Just a month before he died we had a long conversation about joy. During his last hours on this earth many members of his family surrounded him, singing hymns and celebrating his life. He died in peace and with dignity.
My great nephew, Jude, has cancer. He is inching towards death. His experience has been nothing but suffering: amputation, chemo, radiation, surgery, experimental therapies, pain, and so much more, to say nothing about the loss of never being able to know the joy—and sorrow, too—of a long life. He feels desperate, bewildered, and angry. And so does his family, which includes me. We wonder how and why God would allow it. His sickness is raising basic questions about God’s sovereignty and the power of prayer. It is pushing us to the edge.
Why is my response to these two examples so different? Both involve tears. Both involve loss and longing. Both involve death. Both violate our desire for life.
But only one deserves to be classified as suffering.
I am going to post a series of blogs on suffering. I don’t want to give the impression I have it all figured out. I am no expert, nor aspire to be. Nor, for that matter, dare to be. I find myself fumbling about in a cloud of mystery.
Christianity certainly addresses the problem of suffering, and it does so, I believe, convincingly. But its “answers,” such as they are, do not read like a theological treatise. Reading the Bible on suffering is more akin to making our way through a rugged mountain landscape. The Bible gives us a map of the terrain, to be sure; but the pathway we try to follow is not straight, smooth, and clear. We often get lost along the way.
I begin with a simple question: what do we mean by “suffering” in the first place?
Not everything bad that happens to us is an instance of suffering. Rits’ death is a good example. What makes a loss severe enough to deserve the appellation of “suffering”?
Surely losses with irreversible costs and consequences is one instance. A woman breaks a leg while skiing. The injury is painful and inconvenient. But does it deserve to be called “suffering”? Probably not. But what if the victim is a single parent and loses her job as a result of the accident, which forces her to move to an apartment in a different school district where her son falls in with the wrong crowd, drops out of school, and ends up in prison? In short, the injury sets off a chain reaction that has irreversible consequences.
Untimely death is a second instance because it fails to follow what we consider the natural order of life. Children should bury parents, not parents children. I lost a daughter and my first wife in a drunken driving accident 30 years ago. No one would deny that it was a tragic event that catapulted my children and me, and many others, into a vertigo of suffering. My mother died in the same accident. I miss her terribly. But losing her was not the same as losing Lynda and Diana Jane.
Prolonged and relentless pain is a third instance. Some people endure pain over a lifetime. People who experience the constant torment of lupus and severe arthritis. People who battle migraines. People who endure one cancer protocol after another, or one surgery over another. People who face constant rejection and abuse. People who struggle with severe depression and anxiety and other mental and emotional maladies.
Injustice is a fourth instance. A war, however “just,” always inflicts collateral damage. Law courts send innocent people to prison. The disparity between rich and poor keeps growing. Titans in the business world, political operatives, and media moguls wield undue and abusive power, often at the expense of the powerless.
The list is not exhaustive.
Why do I begin here? I want to protect the integrity of the word itself. Life can be and often is hard. But hard is not the same thing as suffering. Losing a job might be hard; suffering consists of never being able to get another one. An injured arm that ends a season is hard; an amputation is another matter altogether. Teenage rebellion is hard; but suicide inflicts a pain that never goes away. In most instances we bounce back after a stretch of difficulty and return to the normal life we lived before. Suffering does not allow for such a return. It thrusts us into a new and terrifying world.
How do we make our way through this new world?
(Blog #2 on Suffering coming soon…)