God and the Mystery of Human Suffering

by Fr. Robin Ryan CP

A Theological Conversation across the Ages

(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2011)

Book review by Fr. Martin Coffey, CP

Was published in 2011.  It is no surprise that Robin would explore the mystery of suffering since he belongs to the Congregation of the Passion whose mission is to ponder the mystery of Jesus’s suffering and how it is related to the suffering of people.  Robin’s book does not aim at providing a Christian explanation or justification of suffering.  No such thing is possible.  He wants rather to search the scriptures and the long tradition of Christian reflection for some helps in responding pastorally to people who are suffering.   Throughout the ages many thoughtful and saintly people have raised serious questions about the Christian belief in a good and omnipotent God who seems to do nothing in the face of monstrous suffering.  Christians feel compelled to respond to these searching and challenging questions by trying to make sense of their faith in a benevolent God in the face of the stark reality of evil and terrible human suffering.  Can we still believe in a good and omnipotent God who apparently allowed the holocaust or Shoah?  Robin Ryan’s book belongs to this tradition of serious and unquiet questioning of God.

Elie Wisel, Shoah Survivor

There has been so much suffering in the history of the world but maybe none so calculated and evil as the suffering inflicted on the Jewish people by the Nazi regime.  Contemporary theological thinking about suffering has been greatly influenced by the horrors of two world wars and especially the Jewish experience of the Shoah.  Ryan’s reflections are enriched by his pondering on the writings of Elie Wiesel, a Jewish survivor of the Shoah.  Wiesel saw many of his family , friends and neighbors die in the Nazi extermination camps.  He remained a man of strong belief in God but he had to struggle with the fact that God remained silent and allowed these horrors to happen.  He felt great anger and bewilderment that God could allow his chosen people to go through such a hell of mindless suffering and death precisely because they were God’s people.  He cried out in anguish and dismay.  He questioned the justice of God.  He imagined dragging God before the courts to answer the charges he was bringing against him of indifference, neglect and silence in the face of evil.

To the end of his days, Elie Wiesel wrestled with these questions and this pain but never ceased to believe and to cry out in anguished prayer to God.  He could never accept that there was any possible reason or justification for such horrors.  The only thing he could do was bring his anguish and dismay to the God he still believed in and join his prayers to the countless laments of Jewish people throughout the ages.

Two other survivors of Nazism are considered here, the protestant theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jurgen Moltmann. How can a Christian believer respond to the overwhelming reality of human suffering? And how can she reconcile this abiding cloud overshadowing human life with her belief in a good and omnipotent creator God?   The many questions directed at the believer from critics and unbelievers suggest that her faith may be misplaced or irrational.  There is a glaring contradiction between her naïve belief in a good God and the evidence of experience.   Is the creator God responsible for suffering too? Or does God send suffering as a punishment or as a test?  Throughout this book the many Christian witnesses insist that God does not want people to suffer. God is not the author of suffering but God responds to suffering by healing the sick and resisting the forces that threaten and diminish human life in any way.

If suffering does not come from God and God does not want suffering, how does it happen and from where does suffering come?  This was a great puzzle to Christian thinkers from the beginning.  St. Augustine was the one who developed most fully the idea of original sin and how it gives rise to suffering and death.  Julian of Norwich had a similar insight into suffering and its relation to sin as its ultimate origin.  It is not that a person’s suffering is a direct result of that person’s own particular sins.  It is rather that original sin has introduced disorder and chaos into creation and especially into the human being so that now our every thought, desire and action is somehow affected negatively.

Pope Benedict XVI

This gives rise to the history of sin and the consequent history of great human suffering.  Pope Benedict XVI said in Spe Salvi that the suffering that is part of human existence “stems partly from our finitude and partly from the mass of sin that has accumulated over the course of history.”  Does original sin also account for the suffering caused by sickness and disease and the consequences of natural disasters?  Here once again human thinking has reached a limit and must acknowledge the awful mystery of inexplicable suffering and disaster.

If God does not want us to suffer, why does God allow it?  Much ink has been spilled in discussing this problem.  Time and again theologians are forced to re-echo the words of Job in the First Testament and of St. Paul who wrote, “Who knows the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11, 34).  Some theologians (Moltmann, Schillebeecks, Elizabeth Johnson) have spoken about the divine kenosis and suggest that God, in creating the universe, chose to limited Godself.  God created the human being with the capacity to choose freely and likewise gave all created things the ability to act according to their nature and the natural laws of evolution.  God does not intervene randomly to redirect or reshape creation but freely accepts to abide within these freely chosen limits on Godself.  This shows God’s great respect for the integrity of creation and of human beings in particular.  To act otherwise would be to dominate, devalue and destroy creation, including the freedom of humans.  Therefore, when suffering and catastrophe result from the free action of created things God does not intervene to prevent it.  God does not will things to go wrong but time and again has shown a readiness to help us and to rescue us.  This is the story of God’s dealings with the people of Israel in the First Testament, especially the story of the Exodus, and then in the New Testament when God sent Jesus to save us.

But God’s self-limiting does not rob God of divine power.  God is always the omnipotent one but God’s power is not the sovereign imperial power, like that exercised by human tyrants and others.  It is not at all the same as human power or as human’s think God’s power should be.  God’s power is not imposition and force.  God does not want to dominate creation by power.  God’s power is demonstrated throughout the scriptures and especially in Jesus as the power of self-sacrificing love.   God has no need of us but freely chooses to create us and to love us ever after.  This love is shown in compassion for our weakness and our suffering.  We cannot fully explain this but we see it time and time again in the story of Israel and in the life and ministry of Jesus.

Does God care about our suffering?  If God is perfect and impassible, as classical theology teaches, can God be moved by our suffering and our prayers for help?  Classical theology has insisted on the transcendence and freedom of God.  God is not a creature like us and does not react to suffering the way creatures react.  God is not afraid of the unknown.  God does not lament the loss of anything the way we do.  God is not affected by the things that cause us suffering and distress.  Does this mean that God is always the impassible One, the great unmoved and unmovable one?  The God revealed in the scriptures is one who is close to the people, a God who sees their suffering and intervenes to set them free from slavery and delivers them from their enemies.  God does not suffer like us but God chooses to suffer with the people.  God walks with them on the arduous ways of their history. God chose to care for this special people and through them and because of them to care for all people.  God does not suffer like his creatures but God has chosen to suffer with the people.  In the words of St. Bernard Impassibilis est Deus sed non incompassibilis.

Where does the passion of Jesus fit into this?  The crucified Jesus seems to be just one more innocent victim of mindless hatred and suffering.  How can this be a source of consolation or meaning for suffering people?  Does God not also succumb to the relentless force of evil and suffering? Are we not left entirely bereft of all help or rescue?

Christians believe that in Jesus, the Son of God, God really entered into our situation and freely chose to live our life and endure our struggles and suffering.  Jesus showed real compassion and care for suffering people and cured many. He responded to hungry people by providing bread, he comforted widows and wept at the death of his friend.  Jesus acted to free people from the burdens of suffering.  He also had great anxiety in the face of suffering showing that he appreciated the horror of it.  There is nothing in the life of Jesus that suggests that God treats suffering lightly.  Everything points to the truth that God is always close to us and acts on our behalf against all that diminishes our life and causes us suffering.