Once Again on Suffering and the Will of God

[[ Sister Laurel, Hi! You said that in vocations to chronic illness you absolutely do not mean that God wills our suffering. You probably know that there are hermits out there who insist they are called to suffer and that God actually wills and even sends their suffering. How can there be such different views of God's relation to suffering within the Church? I must admit, I prefer your view of things. I struggle with chronic illness myself and while I find myself asking God "Why?" a lot of times, I don't really think God wills my illness or the suffering that goes with it. I am looking forward to that new heaven and new earth you write about when God will be all in all and there will be no more suffering!!!]]

Hi there, and thanks for your comments and question. I am aware of no true hermits who believe that suffering is the will of God, though I have met an isolated individual or two who insist on this. I can understand why they have come to such a position. I suppose all of us who suffer with chronic illness and especially chronic pain, have been tempted to take the same theologically perverse path to try and make sense of something in our lives which really adds absurdity or senselessness. One person I am thinking of suffers from a trauma-induced inflammatory disease affecting spinal nerves, resulting in the entrapment and clumping of those same nerves. From what I have read (and can imagine) of the condition, the pain is truly excruciating. Fortunately (in some ways), the condition is becoming far more common than it once was, and docs are finding new approaches to help deal not only with the pain, but with the problems that occur when spinal fluid leaks out of the spinal canal and irritates other tissues and organ systems, etc. One of the most hopeful things mentioned was the use of potent meds that can cross the blood-brain barrier and help deal with the inflammation involved, and even with the clumping. (The blood-brain barrier has been the main obstacle to getting these kinds of meds to the appropriate area until recently.)

So, I can understand why someone with such a condition could decide it is God's will that they suffer, and even that God sends the suffering. Unfortunately, the God this gives us is not the God of Jesus Christ, nor the God of unconditional love or entirely unmerited mercy who takes on suffering in order to dwell with us and redeem our lives. I think that is the answer to your difficult question about how there can be such different positions regarding God's relation to suffering. The God who wills and sends suffering is not the God of Jesus Christ. My own position on this has changed over time. In the article you asked about, I believe I said that God willed the suffering of his Son. I treated this as the single exception in my theology. Today, I do not believe this. I believe instead that God willed Jesus' integrity, especially in allowing his Father to accompany him, to be God with us, Emmanuel, in everything Jesus lived, and in doing this, that Jesus would love both his Abba and the whole of creation faithfully and without condition or limit.

While I believe it was clear that doing so would lead to profound suffering, I think we must get used to drawing this distinction when we think of God or God's will. Certain terrible things can happen to us when we live God's will faithfully. We will routinely love those others hate, we will speak truth to power whenever necessary, we will model a countercultural life that will trigger feelings of guilt and insecurity in those who live otherwise, and in every way we can, we will act to foster true justice in our lives and society. These are the things God wills, not the reactions and tragic consequences of those who are offended by our lives and actions. To think that God wills these consequences is to say that the people who mocked, tortured, and executed Jesus were doing the will of God. Surely no Christian can say such a thing!!! Of course not! They were doing the will of Satan and of a distorted humankind under the power of sin. As sin and death and all of the anti-divine powers and principalities were focused and concentrated on and in Jesus that day, so too did the Christ-event become the focus of God's mercy and love. God's judgment was that he would be sovereign, and the actions and consequences of the actions of all the powers and principalities trying to stand against him would not stand!

Of course, we can learn through suffering. God can be victorious in and through suffering. But what we learn, I think, is always a function of appreciating God's powerful mercy and love that is the overweening reality even in terrible suffering. Suffering allows us to learn about our deepest selves as well, the strength, courage, beauty, and incredible giftedness that suffering tends to stifle and reveal. These things are rooted in God; they are alive in us because they have their origin in the eternal God who gifts them to us without ceasing. And these things are the will of God, not the struggle or suffering. This is the distinction we must keep drawing if we wish to make sense of the problem of suffering and the will of God (often called Theodicy).

On Witnessing Effectively to Suffering

[[ Dear Sister Laurel, I noticed that you have a disability and a problem with chronic pain and that was part of what you claimed to have brought to the Church in seeking profession and consecration under c 603. You don't say a lot about this very often and I wondered why not? If suffering is important to the eremitic life, why don't you speak about your own suffering?]] 

Thanks for your questions. It has been a long time since anyone asked me a similar question. In that response I wrote the following (I am posting it again here since it was written in 2008 and has not changed much) from Personal Questions on Vocation:

[[The reason you do not hear about the personal reasons that brought me to an understanding of this vocation is that while illness or injury remain problematical on a daily basis (this is mainly true of chronic pain), they do not define who I am. Especially I am no victim. Instead, my life is defined in light of God's grace and who that has made me; I want very much for that to be clearer to readers of my posts than these other things. God wills that I live as fully and lovingly as I can in spite of them. He has (with my cooperation) brought wonderful people into my life who have assisted in this including doctors, directors, teachers, pastors, friends who accommodate me in various ways, et al. In all these cases they have helped and challenged me to grow beyond an identification with illness and pain, and into an identification with God's grace, fullness of life, and growing personal holiness. Unless that is clear in what I write, live out, or otherwise proclaim, the suffering itself is meaningless and certainly not edifying; on the other hand, if the effects of the grace of God which transfigures both suffering and life IS clear in my writing and living, then there is rarely any need to focus on the suffering, and doing so would be a disedifying distraction!

[[Do you think it is important for people to know how to suffer? Do you think you have a responsibility to teach people how to suffer or to speak about your suffering?]]

While I think it is important for people to learn to suffer, and while I think suffering well is one of the things we are least capable of today, I am of the opinion that the way to teach (model, or witness to) that is NOT by focusing on suffering itself. In particular, speaking about my own situation is rarely necessary (or helpful) except when it is important to remind someone what is possible with the grace of God. For instance, occasionally a client will wonder if healing is really possible, or if it is possible to transcend a given set of circumstances. In such a situation I will refer to my own illness or pain. Here my own suffering is important, but only so long as it does NOT dominate my life or define me, and only in order to underscore the possibility of healing, essential wholeness and humanity along with the capacity to be other-centered and compassionate in spite of negative circumstances. God's grace ALWAYS heals and brings life out of that which is antithetical to these things, so what one wants to witness to is the transformation of one's life as one moves from faith to faith and from life to more abundant life. His love ALWAYS transfigures our reality, not least because he is WITH US in ways which remind us of how precious we are to him, how much he wants for us, how much he longs to share with us, etc.

Even in situations where it is helpful to speak of one's suffering one needs to recall that it's a lot like a single microdrop of skunk spray: a very little goes a very long way and "scents" everything in its path --- for a very long time!! Also, if you think about the stories of suffering that really inspire and move you, they are ordinarily the stories where courage, patience, joy, wholeness, dignity and selflessness predominate and the pain or suffering is recognized but allowed to disappear into the background. They are the stories where humanity triumphs (and this means a person living from the grace of God); they are not exercises in navel gazing or detailed and repetitive accounts of one's pain. Suffering well is, after all, about courage, about affirming life and meaning in spite of destruction and absurdity, and especially, it is about LIVING AS FULLY as one is able. 

There is no way to do this if one focuses on the suffering per se. This kind of focus is ALWAYS self-centered and can be temptingly and distractingly so both for oneself and for others; it is ALWAYS a bid for attention to self (even when appropriately used this is the case). It is also focused on the thing which God's grace helps overcome rather than on the effects of that grace (or the one who gives it). Neither of these (self-centeredness, or a focus on evil) is generally edifying, and can be quite disedifying except in certain limited circumstances. The question is always what does one want to witness to; viz, what do you want others looking at, God's grace and the possibilities for hope and wholeness or one's own self, brokenness, and suffering? For these reasons if one MUST refer to or focus on these latter things one must ALWAYS do so rarely and briefly.

What I am saying is that in "teaching" (I would prefer to say assisting or encouraging) people to suffer well, as far as I know, the only way to do that is to teach them how to live, how to pray, how to give themselves over to God's grace, and especially how to cope so that life and not pain per se is the focus. In my experience, a sure way to FAIL to suffer well (or to fail to inspire someone to bear their own pain well) is to focus on the suffering per se. By the way, "teaching" someone to suffer well presupposes one DOES that oneself, and I wonder how many of us can say that is honestly true of us? It is another reason to focus on life, on hope (both of which are the result of God's grace), and on placing oneself in God's hands so that he may redeem and transfigure the situation as far as possible. We need this encouragement and focus on a continuing basis as much as anyone we might witness to.]] 

In Cornelius Wencel's book on the Eremitic Life, he writes: [[But the hermit's days are not free from tears, pain, and sadness. Just the opposite --- tribulation remains present in the way of eremitic pilgrimage. The Word we respond to, however, is the One who has created us and who is constantly renewing our youth with his love. So to encounter the pain of our existence is to get another impulse to search, to listen, and to respond even more actively and faithfully. In this way we can be motivated to open ourselves up even more to the radiating presence of the Lord, whose glory is fully revealed in the shadow of the Cross. The voice that calls and the answer that we give never separate us from the refreshing air of this space. In fact, the fullness of the eremitic life is nothing else but the contemplation of God's magnificence that flashes at the intersection of the bars of the Cross. Any other perspective must be incomplete and even false.]] The Eremitic Life, pp 49-50.

Like anything else in Christian life, witnessing effectively to suffering involves a paradox. It means witnessing more directly to the life, love, and joy found in God in the midst of one's suffering! It recognizes that God counters human suffering with these realities, that God does not will or send suffering per se, rather, He transforms it with His presence (that is, His grace). This does not mean denying one's suffering, of course, or that suffering can help us open to God's saving love, but the emphasis is never on the suffering per se (except, perhaps, as one works through it in the privacy of one's meeting with one's Director or in one's prayer)! And even then, the light will shine through to the extent that one's work or prayer is truly graced and God-centered. I believed this in 2008 and believe it still --- even more emphatically. I hope this is helpful.

Looking Ahead to Jesus' Prayer in Gethsemane: A Matter of Life and Integrity

[[Sister, you wrote that God did not will Jesus' death by torture and that in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus asked for this cup to pass, God's response had to do with willing Jesus' integrity, not his torture, and so forth. I don't understand what you mean by this. For sure the passion and death of Jesus have me asking what kind of God would will the horrific passion and death of his Son, couldn't God forgive sin without all that? But at the same time, I recognize God is just as well as merciful. How do these two things link up with what you said about the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus living his life with integrity?]]

Imagine the scene in the Garden. Jesus has been journeying towards this moment his entire public ministry (and in one way and another his entire life!) because his entire life has been on a trajectory marked by integrity in doing the will of God. And what is that will? It is that in everything, Jesus says yes to God; it is that in all things he lets God be God; especially, he says yes to allowing God to truly be God-with-us in every moment and mood of human life. When we use the name Emmanuel (God with us) we celebrate the will of God not only for Godself but for Jesus and for all human beings. Jesus spends his entire life journeying toward the fullest embodiment or incarnation of the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Not only does he grow in grace and stature in some general sense, but as he grows, he becomes more fully transparent to the One he calls Abba and implicates this God more extensively and deeply into the whole of created existence. Every choice that Jesus makes and is asked by God to make is about living this particular integrity, both as one achieving the fullness of authentic humanity in our world and as God's own counterpart among us.

Thus, when I imagine the prayer in Gethsemane, I hear Jesus asking if there isn't another path marked by this specific integrity, another way he could live his identity and be true to himself and the God he so loves. Isn't there another way he could embody or enflesh the Word of God in the whole scope of human and created existence? I hear him pouring out his love and terror, his faithfulness and anguish over what may seem to be the all-too-premature and tragic end of his mission. At the same time, I do not hear God saying -- "No, I want you to be tortured and die a godless death!" or, "I want you to suffer so I can forgive these people!" Nothing could be less true of the loving God whose justice is accomplished in mercy. However, I do hear God comforting Jesus and saying, "My dearest one, continue doing what you have been doing your whole life and especially in your public ministry. As you embrace greater and greater ways to allow me to be Emmanuel, go before and accompany all these others into the darkest and most forlorn places of sinful existence, for I want to be with them there too. I want nothing at all to separate them from me!! If they choose sin, I will meet and love them there; if they choose death, they will find me ready to embrace them even in that godlessness. Meet them wherever that takes you and continue to proclaim the Word with integrity!! I will be with you even when you feel most alone and abandoned, but act with integrity!! You are called and sent to this; choose to be yourself." (And then, very gently, I hear God say to Jesus), "Beloved, I know you will do nothing less."

In sinning, human beings create a world that is often marked by godlessness, a world of space and time (i.e., history) from which the eternal God is often excluded beyond the limits that God's transcendence already imposes. (God is eternal. Space and time (history) are human categories God must be implicated into by the free acceptance/embrace of humanity.) It is a world where the sacred is often marked off from the profane, where certain ways of acting and living are resistant to life and the God who authors life, where death assumes a form called godless or eternal death, and where God, simply cannot be personally present unless somehow (he) is allowed or brought into these places. In sending the Word and then calling Jesus to Incarnate that Word fully throughout the scope of his life, we say the glory of God is revealed in Christ; what we mean is that not only is God made known in Christ, but that in him God is also made real in space and time and one day will be all in all. All of this is included in the name Emmanuel. God wills to be Emmanuel, not simply in the sacred places but in the unexpected and even the unacceptable places where God, religion tells us, should never be. What I hear God doing with Jesus in the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is to remind him of his own truest identity as Emmanuel.

God indeed wills to dwell with us in even the deepest and darkest of godless places. He wills to transform all of reality with his powerfully loving and creative presence. That includes the transformation of sin and death. This is the meaning of forgiveness. We are forgiven whenever God reconciles us to himself, whenever he overcomes the alienation that exists between us, whenever, that is, he makes the unacceptable or godless his own dwelling place and changes it forever. Paul knew this well and reminded us that Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners. He celebrated the bottom line of God's will to reconcile everything to God not only in 2 Cor 5:19 ("God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,") but in Romans 8 when he listed all of the powers and principalities at work in our world to separate us from God and affirmed that nothing at all can or will ultimately separate us from the love of God. After all, this is the fullest goal and meaning of "God With Us".

Emmanuel is the essence of Jesus' own identity just as it reveals the nature of authentic humanity itself. It defines the mission he has committed himself to and embraced numberless times in his life. And now, here in the Garden of Gethsemane, in spite of his terror and in light of his trust in his Abba, he must recommit to this Life, Truth, and Way, one final time. It is a matter of being faithful to himself and to the God who loves him and us without reserve or condition --- the God whom he loves similarly above all things. Remembering the thrust of Jesus' entire life, God asks Jesus to be Emmanuel --- to choose life in and with God, whatever step comes next, just as he has always done. What God wills in Gethsemane is a matter of life and integrity for Jesus and for the whole of creation. Nothing less and nothing other.