| Suffering that diminishes
suffering
v Dramatic tragedy was a means by which the ancient Greeks diminished or softened the impact of suffering in the human psyche. Yet there is here no genuine hope, only serious fictions that suffering ultimately must be endured “as if” it is meaningful. The investment of meaning in suffering by tragic drama is similar to contemporary scenarios of constructed faith—“lets imagine” in a play of “as if” called “faith” that presumably adds to the dignity of human life. Whatever guise it takes, ancient or modern, therapeutic experience may be gained in a game of “as if” but the hard edges of suffering are merely deferred for a while. One persistent perspective on suffering asserts that because everything suffers, suffering is diminished through its unqualified acceptance. Suffering as violence and death is the very means by which nature sustains life; suffering enables the “circle of life” to continue from one generation to another. This seamless view of reality is known as “monism.” Monism requires death and therefore suffering as an inseparable process within life. To resist suffering and ultimately death is therefore to resist a role in the circle of life altogether. In the modern world, the monist perspective is developmental in which, as the circle of life occurs, it also progresses as an ellipse. Suffering not only facilitates each next phase of life but also adds to the progressive development of life. Progress occurs through suffering. Suffering is essential to biological progress with its “survival of the fittest,” which is a program of suffering and death. The progressive development of life requires an extraordinary contribution—the fittest samples of life require the suffering and death of other life. We might not readily think of the suffering involved in such deaths, yet in nature it exists in the torturous fear of being stalked and the pain of being assaulted by quicker reflexes with stronger claws and sharper teeth, finally to be terminated in sacrifice for the life that now embraces it. We do not accept nature’s violent suffering and death among ourselves. Yet many people believe that humans are seamlessly one with the natural world; ironically, this perspective is also an unacknowledged identification with the survival of the fittest. It is in their sinfulness that humans connive with the survival of the fittest and the suffering it entails by sacrificing the wellbeing of others for their own advancement. v If a seamless monism is combined with divinity, the universal and natural order of nature is perceived to be divine. For Stoics, this equation invoked passivity or resignation before the inevitability of suffering as necessary within the divine scheme of things. True wisdom and character was demonstrated by accepting with equanimity, the necessity of suffering as fate. Ancient and modern views of reality as seamlessly monist—with everything either wholly divine or only material—depict suffering as inevitable and necessary. In this way, the impact of suffering is supposedly diminished. If in mythology humans are the playthings of capricious gods, such gods do not represent an independent reality. The gods are projections of the human psyche before the strictures of natural life; the gods animate human suffering and fate. Nineteenth century atheism also concluded that God is merely the animated projection of human personality, yet unlike mythology, the focus was on the divinity of human freedom in the face of nature’s strictures. Others have sought to eliminate suffering as an issue by locating it within the bungled work of a lesser god. Gnosticism bypasses an inferior creation by locating true reality in an Absolute Beyond that is unknown, except by secret gnosis or knowledge. It was an elitist movement of intellectual speculation and mysticism. A modern counterpart occurs in idealism. Whether ancient or modern, in a world with no outside, the biological is either wholly divine or only material. Monism is ultimately a cosmic prison. To merge human and earth into a one organic spirituality is to sanctify the survival of the fittest also for humans. Yet we have other possibilities beyond the recurrent upsurge of life from the earth. There is an outside to life that gives depth and breadth beyond any gleaned within a seamless monism. This is the unique impetus of biblical testimony. v Creation exists in distinction from God as creator. God is distinguished from the blind machinations of natural phenomena—such as life eating other life, malignant life mutating within life and overwhelming it, or even humans in anxiety before death, sacrificing other humans as they squirrel away resources to secure the future. God as creator is none of these, unlike the divinity of seamless pantheism in a spiritual monism, which is all of these. Life is a gift given in the creative and sovereign word of God. God gives life to Israel in the liberating word that calls forth decision, responsibility, relationships and accountability in the midst of creation, beyond the forces and necessities of nature. Suffering occurs in the context of relationships, accentuating any suffering incurred by natural phenomena; sickness, accident or loss has its greatest impact within relationships, beyond the material deprivation or suffering incurred. Relationships intensify our experience of suffering. This is consistent with biblical testimony. Beyond the upsurge of life from the earth, the word of God makes apparent that human life is meaningful within relational responsibility, accountability and communion. The law in Israel shows that human life, endorsed in a narrative of loving-kindness, exceeds the possibilities of natural phenomena, giving primary focus to reality as relational. Suffering within this relational focus exceeds suffering merely within the flux of natural phenomena. In biblical testimony, God suffers human infidelity in the invitation to intimacy and communion; humans suffer in pursuing other possibilities in their idolatry of phenomena. Representing the sovereign creator within creation, Israel suffers when disciplined for infidelities that steal from communion with their covenant lord. The law intensifies this dynamic. The creator grieves and forgives. Suffering is not diminished by passivity before the forces of nature, whether nature is perceived as divine or only as material. Paradoxically, the experience and meaning of human suffering is not diminished but accentuated within relationships. Suffering is meaningful when freely undertaken for the sake of another. The idea that suffering can be redemptive is thoroughly biblical. When people assume this perspective, they are articulating a biblical dynamic even if they no longer accept biblical testimony. Christian testimony to Jesus’ suffering and God raising him to life contradicts ancient and contemporary possibilities of sacrificing other life to save the self within competing life that emerges from the earth. To enter this gospel passion, which is also an apostolic passion—death is at work in us, but life in you—it is essential that life is more powerful than the biological cycle of life and death. The sting of suffering generated by human compromises through anxiety and competitive survival in the face of death is neutralised by grace in the risen Christ. Losing our selves to diminish the suffering of others too, becomes a possibility in such grace. This is unique within Christian testimony to the gospel (Rom. 8).
Selected
sources: Jüngel, Taubes. |
