Suffering: A Refraction

We are human; therefore, we will suffer.  Like Job, we want to know why.  How can a loving, sovereign God allow the pointless pain evident in every level of every society?  We rejoice at the miracle of life, seeing in our unconditional love for our children the reflection of God’s love for us.  Logically, then, we feel betrayed when we suffer.  God is silent, an adjective.  We want a verb.

We want action, and we want explanation.  Why must the innocent suffer alongside the guilty?  Why isn’t the suffering distributed fairly?  Why must we suffer at all, if a loving, sovereign God is in charge?  Our answers, like Job’s, are nebulous at best, deleterious at worst.  Perhaps ”Why?” is not the right question, although our human logic demands to know.  Perhaps we would do better to ask not why, but rather how.  How are we to absorb and survive the pain that inevitably accompanies our human condition?  God’s answer to Job is, basically, “I am who I am.”  God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, simply reaffirming his creative power.  A chastened, humbled Job reconciles with God, but he never understands his suffering; Job needs God—as we do—regardless of the suffering.

Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff’s short but powerful Lament for a Son[1] addresses the difficulty of reconciling the death of his 25 year old son with his faith in a loving and all-powerful deity.   Wolterstorff describes the loneliness of grief (“grief isolates”, 56), inextricably juxtaposed against the need for quiet company on the “mourner’s bench” (34).   Not “Why do we suffer?”  Rather, “How do we survive this horror?”

In another short but pithy book, Stanley Hauerwas’ Naming the Silences[2], Hauerwas notes in the preface (after quoting Wolterstorff on the frontispiece) that his purpose is not to explain suffering but rather to explore why the question of suffering is so important to us; indeed, Hauerwas’ point is to question the question:  “I cannot promise readers consolation, but only as honest an account as I can give of why we cannot afford to give ourselves explanations for evil when what is required is a community capable of absorbing our grief.”  The explanations fail, always; we need look no further than Job to see that.  Yet Job retained his faith, and reconciled to his God.  How, not why.  We suffer.  We survive.  We depend on one another.  And on God.

            Hauerwas closely examines suffering as a theme in Peter DeVries’ novel, The Blood of the Lamb[3] through the feelings, experiences, and faith challenges of the novel’s main character, Don Wanderhope, as he faces his young daughter’s losing battle with leukemia.  Hauerwas focuses much of his discussion on the tension between medicine as a healing art and medicine as a means to delay death while sustaining suffering (“the art of prolonging disease… in order to postpone grief” [qtd.  21]), thus tackling our near-lunatic faith in the power of medical knowledge and technology.[4]  We look for miracles, and we’re happy to credit God for working through medical technology.  Anything to avoid the inevitable pain, and the inevitably painful questions.  We want a verb.

            Hauerwas makes no attempt to explain Wanderhope’s suffering; he merely describes it, in an almost detached, clinical tone.  He also (thank heavens!) makes no attempt to place the suffering within a larger context as a means by which the dead girl’s father becomes better or stronger or more aware of life’s fleeting joys:  “[DeVries] does not say…that Wanderhope through Carol’s suffering has learned to see the beauty in the olive drab of the hawthorn in autumn…sensing as he does the dishonesty in those who would have a child like Carol suffer and die from leukemia so that a father like Wanderhope could learn to see the particular beauty of the everyday” (33).

            According to Hauerwas’ interpretation of DeVries’ novel, our only hope exists in seeing the pointless suffering of a Carol Wanderhope against the backdrop of Christ’s suffering; i.e., there is comfort in shared suffering.[5]  Thus we can know that we aren’t abandoned; Jesus, “fully man and fully God,” knew the “silence” of suffering.  For all the prayers, all the medical voodoo, all the frantic, desperate pleading, Carol Wanderhope dies; she suffers, and her grieving father suffers.  We suffer.  We survive.  We depend on one another.  And somehow, God is at the center of it, silent.  An adjective.

            Hauerwas devotes the middle section of this book to defining and ultimately countering the traditional concept of theodicy as the study of God’s relation to evil.  In a detailed footnote on Job, Hauerwas quotes an article entitled “God and the Silencing of Job”:

The book of Job displays the cost of …silencing the voice of the sufferer….  Job shows the theodicists’ place is in the company of comforters….  [Job’s] comforters are ‘academics’ in the worst sense of the term, ineffective observers of the terrors of human suffering….  The book of Job makes no coherent claims….  As part of the Jewish and Christian religious canons, it reveals that no way of speaking of God and suffering will do.  (Tilley, qtd. 45-46)[6].

            Hauerwas has now ruled out both medicine and theodicy as adequate means to confront the problem of pointless suffering in an ordered world controlled by a benevolent, omnipotent God.  For all his questioning, all his pain, all his arguing with God and man, Job receives no solid answers about suffering, although he reconciles with God.  Job, a man, asks, “Why, God?  I hurt!”  God answers, typically cryptic, “Can you make a hippopotamus?”  Say what?  In the end, Job needs God—as we do.  We suffer.  We survive.  We depend on one another.  And on God.

Moving along in the biblical canon, Hauerwas points out the obvious:  Early Christians suffered.  They were persecuted relentlessly—harassed, oppressed, tortured, executed.  The mother of a young martyr was no less devastated in ancient Rome than her modern counterpart in rural Indiana.  Yet suffering doesn’t seem to be an issue:  “Apparently, it never occurred to the early Christians to question their belief in God or even God’s goodness because they were unjustly suffering….  Suffering was not a metaphysical problem needing a solution but a practical challenge requiring a response” (51).  And a couple of pages later:  “[H]istorically speaking, Christians have not had a ‘solution’ to the problem of evil.  Rather, they have had a community of care that has made it possible for them to absorb the destructive terror of evil that constantly threatens to destroy all human relations” (53).  We suffer.  We survive.  We depend on one another.

            Hauerwas explains the impact of various historical thought-movements, especially the Enlightenment, on modern Christian views.  Because Christianity is now a “civilizational religion oriented to provide the ethos necessary to sustain an empire,” we modern Christians tend to try unsuccessfully to rationalize evil as somehow part of God’s plan which we aren’t yet capable of comprehending:  “The way things are…is the way things were meant to be for any right-thinking person, converted or not” (55)[7].

            So exactly what are we to do with the problem of suffering?  I’m not sure.  Hauerwas laps at the edges, giving us much to ponder without attempting to answer the unanswerable:

Obviously, suffering, seemingly unnecessary and pointless suffering, grips our lives in a manner that rightly leaves us numb.  My point is not to deny the reality of suffering—in particular, suffering that bears the mark of evil (that is, suffering which seems ‘caused’ by a power for no reason)—but rather to suggest that there is no such thing as suffering that challenges belief in the existence of God as such.” (68)

            Thus, Hauerwas returns us to his starting point:  We need a new question.  I certainly don’t know what the “right” question is, and Hauerwas refuses to give a pat answer.  But he is clear that asking why we suffer is useless, perhaps even ludicrous, when we look honestly at the God who became a man—the God who is the Suffering Servant, the Crucified Christ, the Paschal Lamb; the man who cried out in lonely anguish, spiritually and physically parched, spiritually and physically suffocated, quoting the desperate plea of an earlier “man after God’s own heart.”  That God—that man—suffered.

If it helps, I can cry out in angry, frustrated prayers, as Job did, as David did, as Jesus did.  If it helps, I can analyze the suffering, taking comfort that Jesus knows my human pain.  If it helps, I can recite Romans 8:28 like a mantra.  If it helps, I can sit on the mourner’s bench and hope someone warm and quiet will sit beside me, shielding me for a minute from my pain.

            Maybe in the end—as in the beginning—that is Hauerwas’ point.

I measure every Grief I meet

With narrow, probing, Eyes–

I wonder if It weighs like Mine–

Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long–

Or did it just begin–

I could not tell the Date of Mine–

It feels so old a pain–

I wonder if it hurts to live–

And if They have to try–

And whether–could They choose between–

It would not be–to die–

I note that Some–gone patient long–

At length, renew their smile–

An imitation of a Light

That has so little Oil.

I wonder if when Years have piled–

Some Thousands–on the Harm–

That hurt them early–such a lapse

Could give them any Balm–

Or would they go on aching still

Through Centuries of Nerve–

Enlightened to a larger Pain–

In Contrast with the Love–

The Grieved–are many–I am told–

There is the various Cause–

Death–is but one–and comes but once–

And only nails the eyes–

There’s Grief of Want–and Grief of Cold–

A sort they call “Despair”--

There’s Banishment from native Eyes–

In sight of Native Air–

And though I may not guess the kind–

Correctly–yet to me

A piercing Comfort it affords

In passing Calvary–

To note the fashions–of the Cross–

And how they’re mostly worn–

Still fascinated to presume

That Some–are like My Own–

(Emily Dickinson)

[1] Wolterstorff, Nicholas.  Lament for a Son.  Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdman’s, 1987.

[2] Hauerwas, Stanley.  Naming the Silences:  God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering.  Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1990.

[3] Devries, Peter.  The Blood of the Lamb.  Boston:  Little, Brown, 1961.

[4] Accurate depiction, seems to me:  Superdocs, with their white labcoat capes flying behind them as they flit hither and yon dispensing miracles.

[5] See Emily Dickinson, “I Measure Every Grief I Meet.”

[6] Tilley, Terry.  "God and The Silencing of Job." Modern Theology 5 (Apr. 1989), 257-270.

[7] I would argue that a sort of autocratic Christianity undulates into world politics and global policy, without including Jesus—Christian-centric without being Christ-centered.  Hence the need for a book such as this one and a branch of theology such as theodicy.

Desperate Housewife?

Okay, I admit that I spend WAY too much time researching and contemplating movies, then mulling them over afterward. Maybe I should get a life. But not quite yet, I’m having too much fun in my fantasy world.

I recently watched a cute little romantic comedy, It’s Complicated, a light, fluffy, fun movie with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. As a movie, it’s okay, like low-fat mousse, pleasant and guilt-free, but not deeply satisfying like Belgian dark chocolate.

What is remarkable in this movie is the fact that Streep was born in 1949, whereas Baldwin is nine years younger. Dare I hope that Hollywood has, in its infinite wisdom, deigned to allow women to age normally? Streep played a mother with a young adult daughter in Momma Mia, too, and while both movies take implausible liberties, it is refreshing to see a 60-something woman with 20-something kids. Even if it’s the same actress both times.

The plight of the “woman of a certain age” is a Hollywood cliché, but it remains difficult, even for beautiful women, women who have easy access to top drawer trainers, stylists, plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Typically, in the movies, Mother is barely older than the kids. In The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character has an affair with the mother and dates the daughter. Mother is played by Anne Bancroft, a whopping six years older than Hoffman. In 1988, Sally Field played Tom Hanks’ lover in Punchline; six years later, she was cast as his mother in Forrest Gump. (Field is ten years older than Hanks.) Toni Collette, twelve years older than Paul Dano, played his mother in Little Miss Sunshine. Consistently, the mother is played by an actress at most 20 years older than her child, meaning most mothers of young-ish adults are in their early to mid 40s. Case in point: Steel Magnolias (1989). Now no one can tell Julia Roberts’ real age—her birth year changes frequently—but she was born sometime between 1962 and 1968. Sally Field was born in 1946, so of course, it is biologically feasible that she could have had a 22 year old daughter when she was 43. In reality, though, Field’s baby (born in 1988) was on the set during filming.

On one hand, this makes sense, because by Hollywood’s standard of beauty, we all look better at 43 than we do at 63. But I’d love to see more women in their 50s and 60s cast as mothers of young adult children. I’d love it even more if the best friends, just as attractive and successful, had grandchildren. Real women’s lives range so much farther than the movies give us credit for.

One of the true gifts of the feminist movement has been to make the childbearing years more flexible—you know, “40 is the new 30”. I’m stereotyping here, but bear with me: The women who most benefit from this flexibility tend to be successful, upper middle class, and well-educated, with interesting careers. Exactly the privileged women Hollywood portrays as having grown children when their real-life counterparts—often even the actresses themselves—are thinking about fertility options or perhaps juggling diapers and day care.

It’s Complicated isn’t great film art. Not even close. But it’s still nice to see some softening of the gender and age stereotypes.

eat, pray, love, vomit

I just saw that Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, memoir) is going to be a movie, starring Julia Roberts. Maybe that's as it should be--a romantic comedy starring Pretty Woman.

The book, though, the book is ice cream, complete with the brain freeze headache. I was sick of its lovely fun sentences before Gilbert even got to Italy, let alone India and wherever she met the hunk who saved her sorry soul.

This memoir is to the art of creative nonfiction as limerick is to the art of poetry. It is engaging for awhile. You laugh. You meet interesting people--so many that you wonder seriously exactly where "creative" and "nonfiction" meet. You know from the self-pity of the first scenes crying in the bathroom exactly how it will all end.

But a limerick is only five lines long.

Gilbert's sentences are, indeed, masterful--if only she'd write about something more substantive than her own overprivileged world in which she can ask for--and get--a book deal out of a failed marriage to a perfectly decent human being. "Oh, dear, I've married the wrong man, I need a trip around the world, hey, will you pay for it and I'll write you a book?"

[The publisher, along with Ms. Gilbert, get to laugh all the way to the bank...]

Someone--BK Loren? B.E. Pinkham? Jeannette Walls? Jean Harper?-- SOMEONE owes it to thinking women everywhere to write something fun and funny that goes a little deeper than this self-involved celebration of mediocrity! We need food, love, God. The concept is intriguing and universal. The carnal sides of food, love, and God are equally intriguing and universal. It's fertile ground for true human experience, where the harvest is Truth. Soul-sustaining and deeply satisfying.

Gilbert harvests Sweet Tarts.

If this were a work of fiction, it would be a fluffy beach read, appropriate for a quick getaway into our richly peopled imaginary worlds.

But it is not fiction.

I am reminded of the late Narcissus, who found the true love of his life by looking at his own reflection...

A Study in Contrasts: Hawaii

A Study in Contrasts

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
(Christina Rossetti)

Miss Conley was older than God, and I’m pretty sure God did as Miss Conley said. So when Miss C. demanded that the congregation of our tiny Methodist church in the Shawnee Hills learn this haunting, bittersweet poem/hymn, we did. The grown up me is eternally grateful.

You thought I was off on yet another blathering treatise on the glory of poetry, but this one is about finding summer in the middle of the bleak midwinter. We have just returned from a trip to Hawaii. It was fascinating, and beautiful, and full of contradictions.

Tourism is an odd thing to base an entire economy on, but that seems to be the case, at least on Oahu, where we were (Waikiki Beach). We toured the North Shore, home of the big waves Hawaii is so famous for, with an angry young man who resented the intrusion even while he valued the job (and the tips). His monologue was interesting, equal parts local lore, history, and bullshit. But we saw a sea turtle and several endangered birds, coconut palms and tilapia ponds, Jimmy Buffet’s house and the Dole “plantation”. I loved the banyan trees with their Tarzan vines to swing on, and was disappointed to learn they aren’t native. Neither are the amazing rainbow bark eucalyptus trees. And neither are pineapples, according to our not-too-trustworthy angry young man. The “plantation” was a few fields and a maze and a huge tourist-trap gift shop. Inside you could buy just about any sort of stupid island-flavored piece of junk imaginable. Yep, good ol’ Yankee capitalism at its finest: Buy your crappy little souvenirs here in Hawaii, but we’ll grow those pineapples to garnish your $12 Mai Tai somewhere where labor is cheaper, somewhere where the prevailing wage is somewhat less than starvation level. That $12 Mai Tai seems somehow symbolic. Though we had a wonderful time, it felt like the “real” Hawaii has been smashed under the big handmade shoes of powerful white men.

We spent most of our time on the beach, within easy walking distance of our hotel, indulging—gorging—ourselves on the sensual feast the ocean offers. Nothing on God’s green earth smells or feels or tastes or sounds or looks like the sea. There is healing there, and power. Grace. Life.

The shelters in the parks along the beach are made from intertwining trees that completely engulf metal supports, for a protective cover that keeps rain and sun out. One particular shelter seemed to house a colony of happy homeless folks who smoked funny Hawaiian cigarettes by day and made music together by night. We learned about Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii’s “Ambassador of Aloha” who won some Michael Phelps-like number of Olympic medals over a career that spanned most of his life. He is also credited with bringing surfing to Hollywood. But his best accomplishment in our estimation was the restaurant that bears his name. The breakfast buffet at Duke’s was a highlight of our trip. We ate like Olympians, or at least like the wild pigs that roam Hawaii’s countryside.

I didn’t actually see any wild pigs, but I spotted several whales on the horizon as I walked toward the base of Diamond Head. I also saw a couple of mongooses (remember Rikki Tikki Tavi?), some odd looking bird with a bright red head, several wild chickens, and a lighthouse that has been lit for several hundred years.

The Pearl Harbor memorial, despite distracting construction, remains a moving tribute to the 2400 sailors and civilians who died in the attack on December 7, 1941. As the daughter of a World War II veteran and career sailor, I found this part of our trip very meaningful. Daddy wasn’t at Pearl, but only because he got lucky. So many were not. One display in particular struck me. It was the uniform and personal effects of one of the sailors killed there. His uniform, dress blues. His watch. His wife’s picture, a lovely, lively brunette. A high school diploma. He was 20. Except for a few bars, his uniform was identical to the one Daddy was buried in last year. The U.S.S. Arizona, hit broadside, suffered the most damage, and the remains of the battleship still ooze oil on the surface of the calm harbor. The wall where the names of the dead are recorded is a sobering reminder of the hell brought on by power-hungry nations at war.

Hawaii is the most remote place on earth, with its nearest neighbor island 2000 miles away, and the nearest land mass 2400 miles off. So how in the world did the original settlers get there? With canoes. That’s right, these guys ROWED to Hawaii, in about 900 A.D. And I think I’m hot stuff when I “row” three sets of ten on the rowing machine at the gym?

Waikiki offers great people-watching, too, from the homeless hippies to the Speedos to the designer-clad dames. I was astonished at the number of young families there—how on earth can these people afford Hawaii?? And I was equally astonished at the middle-aged women whose multiple cosmetic surgeries rendered them improbably, unnaturally “youthful”. I’ll keep my lines and jiggles.

It’s 5 degrees outside tonight. Bleak midwinter, for sure. But we’ll always have Waikiki.