Death and Doctrine, Part 4: Legitimate and Illegitimate Suffering

The world is a sad place. Full of tragedy, pain, and death. And in the face of this predicament our minds seek answers and explanations:

"Why did 9/11 happen?"

"Why did my child die?"

"Why did Katrina hit New Orleans?"

Some Christians know that there are just no good answers to these questions. Worse, these events create experiential and theological wounds that we know won't be healed in this life. We answer these questions simply with this:

"I don't know."

There is an emotional cost for answering in this manner. For you are admitting that life is full of causal "loose ends." Thus, life becomes populated with events that seem random and inexplicable. And if these events are traumatic or tragic then the prospect of existence becomes quite an existential burden.

Carl Jung once said, "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” That is, rather than directly facing the pain of existence we avoid it, sticking our head in the sand, avoiding difficult choices or hard conversations. We would rather live with symptoms than suffering.

I think this "avoidance of suffering" model applies to religious faith as well. Specifically, rather than bear the pain and burden of existence we seek to quickly explain away the suffering with answers that are trite and silly. For example, Christians are notorious for saying horrible things to grieving people. Parents who have lost a child routinely face the following comments at church:

"She is in a better place."

"God must have needed him for a purpose in heaven."

These are chilling comments. They are intended to comfort (and they may even be true) but what is really going on is a refusal to suffer--personally and with the grieving parents--legitimately. The person is trying to get "around" the suffering. Amazingly, these comments suggest to the grieving parents that there is no reason to suffer at all! Suffering is, through a quick theological fix, subtracted out of existence. All is sunshine and roses. From a biblical perspective, rather than sit with Job people seek to "explain" the situation, to grasp its "higher meaning." The "reason." Lacking the courage to lament we live with neurotic theological formulations.

To live neurotically as a Christian is to use faith as a substitute for suffering. Faith is a quick band-aid we offer to ourselves and the world.

But to live authentically as a Christian is to lament and to move into the suffering. And this is difficult, a hard practice. Particularly in America where "happiness" is an addiction.

A few years ago, a friend of my wife lost her father to cancer. Jana knew him well. During college he would come to town while the girls roomed together in a house. When he came to town to visit his daughter he would help do odd jobs around the house and take his daughter and all her roommates out to eat. Rather than spend all his attention on his daughter he reached out to all her friends and became a father-figure to them as well. He was loved by all these girls.

So when my wife found out that he had died she wanted to write to her friend to console her in her loss. But what to write in such a letter? Jana asked me for my opinion. I said this, "Write about all your memories with him. About how he fixed things around the house and about the memories of those dinners he shared with you. How you all, even though he wasn't your father, looked forward to his visits." Jana replied, "But if I write all that, won't that make her cry?"

I said, "Yes. Yes, it will."

We do not avoid legitimate suffering. We don't seek to rescue people from it. We meet them in the midst of it.

Will Christians have the courage to do this? Or will our neurotic fears of existence cause us to abandon the world, leaving the grieving and suffering masses with trite theological slogans? Formulations that comfort us but cause even more pain to them?

A month or so later Jana was reunited with her friend and they talked about her father. At one point she said to Jana:

"When I read your letter I just cried and cried and cried. But of all the letter's I received, your's meant the most.

It's the only one I've kept."