Without Cause

The question of suffering has preoccupied humanity for ages. Suffering is a human phenomenon. There is not a single human being immune to suffering. Suffering is not a question of if but when. As my students at the University of Memphis would put it, “it’s real.”
Unfortunately, I continue to see persons who are very bitter with God when suffering strikes, either for themselves, loved ones or the community around them. They ask why God did not stop this. I recently saw one young man who pronounced that he is no longer interested in praying to God. The young man argued that if God truly hears prayers, He would not have allowed so much suffering in his family. My attempts to show the young man how God has answered prayers in his family seemed to land on deaf ears. The young man was angry with God.
When one of my parishioners lost her mother, she became very bitter and angry with God. Prior to this loss, the woman was an usher and very active in church. After the death of her mother, this woman decided she no longer wanted to come to church. She could not bring herself to worship a God who allowed her mother to die. These are two of countless examples where people openly express their anger and frustration with God. The truth is that storms of life can and will come unexpectedly to all human beings. Human suffering may be manifested in many forms. It could be physical, mental, spiritual, economic or social, to name a few.
Religious and philosophical thinkers alike have perpetually contended with the question as to why human beings suffer. For the theologically steeped Yahwist writer of Genesis 2 and 3, suffering has its origins in sin. Sin is rebellion against God. The consequence of sin is separation from God. Human beings entered a covenant with God to eat and enjoy all the fruits of the garden, apart from the fruits of the tree of life, which was forbidden. Out of curiosity, humanity gravitated towards the forbidden tree. They ate the forbidden fruit. In so doing, Adam and Eve rebelled against God. The consequences were fast and severe. Human beings were subjected to suffering and pain, suffering in making a living, suffering in procreation and ultimately, death for humanity.
Theologians would point out that the writer was not recording a historical fact. Instead, he was contending with reality. Suffering is a reality. Death is a reality. His is an etiological attempt to explain the origins of a glaring reality in life. Surely there must an explanation for this glaring reality. The account on the fall of humanity is an attempt to explain the origins of a reality that simply refuses to go away.

Like the Yahwist, the clinically minded Buddha started off with the observation that life is characterized by suffering. Like the symptoms of a disease, the Buddha observed that from birth to death, life is characterized by constant struggle. Suffering is a universal phenomenon of constant struggle. The struggle has come to be identified with suffering. So, life as currently lived and observed is characterized by suffering.
Unlike the Yahwist, the Buddha avoided finding the scapegoat in the divine. Instead, the Buddha sought the origins of suffering in human beings themselves. He pointed out that suffering derives from human desire. Clarifying this trend, the Buddha pointed out that this is the egocentric desire that selfishly focuses on self-gratification. It is all about feeding the insatiable ego. It’s what we popularly term as me, me, and me in our society today, or I, me, and myself. It is all about the self. Surprisingly, the Buddha’s argument has an intersection with that of the Yahwist’s view. It is the ego that drove Adam and Eve to rebel against God in refusing to heed instructions given to them by God. Egocentrism took the better of this first couple. It was no longer what God had said to them but what they desired and craved to satisfy their itching ego.
Both good as well as bad people will at one time or other face suffering, including pain and death. The writer to the Hebrews arrives at this conclusion when he says “It is appointed for men (human beings) to die once” (Hebrews 9:27). Each human being has an appointment with death. To think otherwise is to be in denial.
God does not at all promise us that just because we are good and God fearing people, we will be spared from pain and suffering. On the other hand, this does not mean that righteousness and piety count for nothing. In fact, they equip and prepare us to confront the storms of life. God gives us the strength to overcome the ordeals of life.
Asked by Peter, his lead disciple, regarding the reward of following him, Jesus curiously said: “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). Why did Jesus put persecution in the list of rewards? It was the realization that life in this world is not a utopia. So, Jesus never promised that just because we are God fearing and pious people, we are shielded from suffering. No. What he promised is his presence in our lives and the strength to overcome these sufferings.
Pain and suffering are inevitable. Failure and disappointment are inevitable. Like the yin and the yang, joy and pain are intertwined. Belief in one inevitably leads to the other. Enjoyment of one calls for preparedness to encounter the other. This was essentially Job’s message to his wife. Here is what Job says to her: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).