Does God Send or Choose Suffering for Us?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, do you believe God chose for you to experience the trauma you wrote about yesterday? Some people affirm that God chooses the pain they experience or the difficulties they have. I understand how that seems to make sense of things for them but for me it makes God something of a sadist. Maybe that's a bit strong but I think you know what I mean. Anyhow, do you think God chose the trauma you referred to so that you would become a hermit?]]

I have answered questions similar to this before, not about the trauma I referred to yesterday, but  in general and perhaps in reference to the chronic illness/pain I deal with daily. You might look at, On Bearing the Crosses That Come Our Way. Other posts on the Theology of the Cross during the same time frame (@Aug. 2008) may also address this topic. My position on this has not changed but your questions take this position in a somewhat different direction than I may have taken in the past.

First, my foundational credo on suffering: I believe that God willed me and wills each of us to know God's love in whatever situation in which we find ourselves. I believe profoundly that God never abandons us --- even when others do. I believe that to whatever extent suffering is part of our lives because of the brokenness and distortion of our world (because most forms of suffering** are the result of the sin or estrangement from God which afflicts our world), our God will be there offering (his) comfort, encouragement, and empowerment --- even when we do not recognize the nature or the source of these things as we find ways to continue to live our lives and be our truest selves.  I do not believe that God wills suffering, sends suffering, or somehow manipulates our lives and responses with suffering so that we might answer this vocation or that one. As I affirmed in the post linked above, God does not send us the crosses that come our way, but he does send us into a world full of them so that, through (his) grace, we may redeem them, and he certainly commissions us to carry those that come our way.

When I look at my own life I recognize that some of the pivotal circumstances of that life along with the life/love of God that dwelt and dwells at the core of my being together gradually created the heart of a hermit. But as I also noted, I could have lived that truth as a religious doing theology in the academy, working in a hospital chaplaincy program or in full time spiritual direction, as well as in a hermitage. I don't believe God created me to be a hermit, but I do believe God created me to be the fullest version of myself I could possibly be, that (he) continually worked to shape my heart, and when it began to look like a hermitage might be a place living my truth could happen, the shaping God had done helped me to perceive the promise of this way of life despite my own prejudices against it. (He) helped me listen to my heart, to the profound questions and yearning that resided there and to appreciate the way eremitical life might answer these beyond ordinary imagining. On the other hand, had I not discovered the possibilities or even the contemporary existence and meaningfulness of this vocation, I am certain God's shaping of my heart and movement within it would have empowered my recognizing and embracing another way to live the truth of who I am.

Whatever sense we make of suffering it is important that we do not truncate a theology of human freedom or a theology of Divine goodness and mercy in the process. I don't think your use of the term sadist is necessarily too strong in reference to a God who sends suffering or makes us suffer. Manipulative might be a better fit in some cases, but in either instance, the willing or sending of suffering is unworthy of the God of Jesus Christ who is Love-in-Act. Always God calls us to the fullness of human existence. What God ALWAYS wills is human life in abundance. When suffering comes our way God will accompany us and love us in a way which can prevent suffering from being ultimately destructive ("all things work for the good in those who love God," Romans 8:28), but this is far far different from sending or willing suffering.

I hope this is helpful.

** N.B., There are four forms of suffering that are "natural" or "existential"; that is, they belong to the human condition itself without reference to sin. Douglas John Hall outlines them in his book, God and Human Suffering. These are loneliness, anxiety, temptation, and limits. Loneliness underlies our hunger for love or the completion that comes to us in the other; it points to the dialogical nature of our very being. Anxiety is part of our need for security, peace, and the ultimate comfort of and communion with God. Temptation allows us to grow and mature in expressing our human dignity, to develop into persons of character, while limits are part of our drive for and achievement of transcendence; limits open us to surprise, to dreaming, to wonder and joy. There are also pathological and sinful versions of these forms of suffering but Hall is not speaking of these here.

More Questions: Does God Will ANY Suffering?

[[Dear Sister O'Neal. Again, thanks for your response. It is clear you don't believe God causes chronic illness, nor that he actively wills it. Do you believe that ANY suffering is the will of God?]]

Actually, I do believe that God wills some suffering. This would include forms of suffering that are simply part and parcel of being (or becoming) authentically human on and in their journey towards union with God. Such a journey involves struggle and struggle involves suffering. For instance, loneliness would be a form of suffering I think God wills because it causes us to be open to others, to our own sense that we are not isolated or non-relational monads. It also underscores the gift quality of the love relationships we share in; these are not things which are necessary (in the technical sense of that word). That is, they might not have been and in fact they might not be again. Above all this "existential" or "ontological" loneliness marks us a made in the image of the Triune God, relational and made for love in all aspects of our being --- solitary (eremitical) as our lives might also be.

I think that some non-pathological forms of anxiety are normal and willed by God, not only because such anxiety marks us as incomplete and finite of ourselves and also opens us to those things which bring comfort and actual joy, but because we find creative outlets for it. The peace of Christ is not the numbness that can come with drugs or other forms of artificial distraction, etc. It includes a kind of anxiety, a yearning for more, a sense of being made-for more and challenged to embrace it. Similarly, temptation is part and parcel of the human situation (temptation is clearly present in Scripture prior to sin) and leads either to sin or to self-transcendence. Of itself temptation is neutral but it can serve life and spiritual maturity.

Even death itself (the greatest cause of anxiety) is intended by God. But this is, as I referred to in my earlier post, death-as-transition, not sinful, godless, death-unto-oblivion. We are made for eternity. It is death as limit (and this includes all the limits of contingent being we meet each and every day) that reminds us we have but one life which we are called to live and in which we are called to achieve authentic humanity. We are made for eternity, and God sustains us eternally, but growth into authentic graceful humanity is a task we have only a limited time to complete. We need the spur of death to put things into perspective, to remind us who God is and who he is for us, who we really are and what the ultimate challenge before us is. But note well here that ordinary death does not call attention to itself, it does not serve itself. (Sinful death is a different matter.) Ordinary transitional death witnesses to the eternal "more" or fullness and abundant life we are called to. This is true with each of the forms of "existential" suffering I have referred to here. None of them call attention to themselves. They all witness to something other and more than suffering itself. They are life-serving and it is this that predominates.

What I think we cannot do is make a religion out of suffering. Our experience of the God of life and wholeness, the God who enters our existence exhaustively, must be what puts suffering in perspective, not vice versa. The living God can use suffering and transform it with his presence, but he does not wield it like a weapon nor does he send it directly; some of it it is built into the situation and structure of human life and is necessary for growth and development in authenticity and maturity. Other suffering is the result of sin and evil per se and we especially cannot trivialize this by minimizing its reality as evil and an example of the absurd. Especially we cannot attribute such evil to God. Ultimately, as those who proclaim the Gospel of the God of Jesus Christ however, our witness is to be to life, to wholeness and holiness, and to all the ways God empowers transcendence, not to suffering per se whether that suffering is existential or the result of sin.