Suffering in Life
Look around you and you will see everywhere the specter of suffering. Try to understand it, and, more often than not it will baffle you. How, you will argue, can God the infinitely merciful tolerate suffering in the world?
And yet, there is no life without it. It is as inescapable as the rose with the thorns or the body with its corruption. It winds itself into life projecting its image in the most unlikely places. Science seeks to root it out, but its success is only partial.
For suffering is not God’s doing; it is the effect of our sin. And the sooner we realize this fact, the better it will be for all of us. For just as a car will not work if there is something wrong with the engine, so suffering will not disappear until sin, its cause, is removed from our experience.
You may ask: Could not God have prevented man from sinning? The answer would be yes, but at what price? The price is reducing us to be sub-humans with no option but to do the creator’s bidding. Surely such a conception would do God no justice! It is because God loves us and loves us intensely that there is sin in this world. For God would not think of man as anything less than Himself. And if God is free, then man, too, must be free. And because man has freedom and can choose to do what he desires, man can sin in the same way as he can rise to heights of heroism and merit.
God is as little to blame in this as the teacher who does not give beforehand to the children in her class the questions that will be asked at the examination. He is as little to blame as the mother who coaxes her child to walk even if he risks falling down, or the father who sends his son out into the world even though he foresees him falling into evil company. It is because God loves us that He has run the risk that we will sin.
Even then, despite God, man continues to sin. It is not surprising that suffering is always present everywhere. For man essentially is one family, and for better or worse influences others as others influence him. And so, a man might be sinless and yet suffer because of this solidarity with others. He is born into a family, grows in society, and depends for his entire development on others. And when he sins, it is often well-nigh impossible to say how far the implications of his sins will travel, as it is often impossible to pinpoint the origin of the disorder caused by famines, wars, or earthquakes.
There is a mysterious communion between ruin and man and between man and matter—and for every sin that appears in the world, there is somewhere a new suffering making itself felt.
Do not for a moment entertain the thought that God needs suffering or desires it in any form. He wants it wiped out, but He knows that this will only happen when sin is wiped out too. And therefore, while we should lay the axe at the root of suffering and destroy sin in our own lives, we must also endeavor to sublimate suffering wherever we find it. There is often little that a man can do. But rather than steel the person for the worst, as the stoics would, could we not make suffering acceptable so that he who suffers, suffers with the thought that his pain can be enriched and made a meritorious action pleasing to God? To anaesthetize oneself to suffering is selfish. Become insensitive to your sufferings today and you will become insensitive to the sufferings tomorrow.
For if every sin brings with it a new suffering, every suffering patiently and lovingly borne will in turn bring about a new love, a new charity that will counteract the spread of sin. Here it has a redeeming action! It becomes creative and therefore an object of love to God.
Everything that takes place on this earth is purposive and has a meaning. Suffering by itself would be meaningless except for the love of God that gives the pain its inner purpose.
So the next time you have a headache, do not yell out; the next time you are passed over in your office for promotion, do not take it out on your family; the next time you fail your tests, do not despair. Use the suffering that each of these actions entails to remind you that you can utilize this suffering to help yourself and others.
And where you can, you must help toward the eradication of suffering. Today perhaps more than ever in history, the inequality between man and man has spawned hunger, sickness, and misery. Once again it is sin, the egoism of man, his pride and negligence that have been the ruin of others. To this you must bend your will. You may be able and trained to alleviate physical suffering. Your talents may place you in a position to bring justice and peace to nations or communities. Your work and research may help benefit mankind. Suffering may lessen by your joining a union or resorting to strikes. If in all sincerity you can say you are helping to remove misery where you find it, then go ahead—you are doing the right thing.
If you prune a tree merely to cut its branches off, if you sow a seed only to see it die, if you punish a child merely for the pleasure of it, you are mentally unbalanced. Pruning, planting, and punishing all look to new growth and development as their ultimate aim. Asceticism is meaningless without a positive purpose. It must involve a richer harvest.
Suffering should be a continual reminder to man that he is a sinner. Suffering generously borne for others should be a continual reminder that he is a brother among brothers, a son under God.
Therefore, the next time you suffer, neither make a self-discipline of it, a display of heroic endurance to win the applause of others, nor let it remain an intolerable burden that saddens your journey through life. Let it instead open you up to a new love, make you sensitive to the lives of others, and more conscious of your responsibilities toward God.
~M. Mascarenha, Poona
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, Feb. 1968
