Compos Mentis

On Pain

The existence of pain and suffering is a fundamental question for all. A time of grief or despair is one of the few instances where individuals almost universally come to grasp questions that they may have previously scorned. Why did this have to happen? Why does this happen to me? These searches for reason in what, to an objective eye, seems to be chaos is often the first steps to philosophy or religion. But for religion itself it poses a problem: the objection from time immemorial against theology: if God existed, is good, and is supremely powerful, why is there evil in the world? And, related, why is there suffering?

This question drives The Problem of Pain, one of the most memorable books penned by C.S. Lewis. It is a book that has often given me questions to grapple with, because in the end no answer satisfies. Hume pointed it out reasonably. We have three positions: God is all-beneficent; God is willing to intervene for the good; and evil exists in the world. Logically we cannot hold all three positions, and so either our idea of God needs to be altered or God does not exist. Evil is far too prevalent to consider the other alternative seriously. Hume, not being well read in the history of philosophy, missed out on Augustine's theodical answer to this problem. First, evil is privation and cannot be said to exist in the proper sense. Second, God can be willing to act but still refrain from doing so if he has an sufficient moral reason for holding back. For Augustine, this reason is free will; God would be violating our autonomy if He were to directly prevent evil from happening.

These arguments are related to but not connected to the problem of suffering. Evil is theologically important for all who are not salvational universalists. The existence (or persistence) of evil is a prerequisite for the idea that some humans or angels may not reach paradise. Suffering does not have this theological importance. Where the thought argument of a created world without evil is impossible to conceive, the idea of a world without pain is relatively easy. One could imagine a world without pain to still have evil. Why, then, we ask the author of theodicy, did and does God allow suffering?

C.S. Lewis answers, in a nutshell, that suffering is necessary in order to stimulate humans to maturity. Pain is a learning experience. This has always come across two ways in my mind. Sometimes it seems eminently plausible. Other times, it seems like a cheap cop-out. I waver between thinking that pain can actually cause one to mature and thinking that suffering merely dulls the spirit and mind. Here, I think it is quite legitimate to ask: surely God could have come up with something better to teach us with? Surely there is some other way of becoming the type of person we need to be? Perhaps one could argue the same way as utilized against the equivalent problem of evil: any other learning mechanism, at least any other that was more effective, would violate our free will again. God is determined to hide, it seems, as frustrating as it may seem to some of us.

There is an old story that came up from the Cabbalist tradition. Two rabbis, one young and impetuous, the other old and seasoned, begin debating some theological matter. For hours their arguments are considered and attacked, and as a crowd gathers it seems like both of them have an equal grasp on the situation, both of them have the scriptural knowledge to face any objection. Finally, though, the elder draws his trump card. "May God bring lightning if my position is correct." And God answers with lightning. As the crowd begins to realize the significance, the younger rabbi remains unperterbed. "Is it not written," he asks, "that no one shall interupt two rabbis while in discussion of the scriptures?" And a voice from heaven cries out that the young rabbi is in the right.

The idea is that God is not looking for slavish, passive worshippers. As C.S. Lewis writes in the Screwtape Letters, He wants saints, gods like himself. Is hiding away and prodding us with random bouts of suffering the best way to bring this across?

Sometimes I think that I finally have something that I understand. It usually does not take much to have that happy, naive view come tumbling down around me. But understanding is not a prerequisite for obedience, whether you believe it to be obedience to God's wishes or obedience to your own conscience, striving to make you a better person. And obedience to others does bring about changes, which does require some measure of pain: think of the value of boot camp, or more poetically the fire which cooks the clay into a meaningful form. Pain comes when we have to give up something which we hold dear to ourselves, something we think we own. The idea of ownership is one of the most corrosive and dangerous ideas morality has to face down. Reason, spirituality, or common sense experience all tell us that we can never own anything permanently. Everything can be taken from us. Relinquishing this idea of ownership, this conception that X is mine empties places where pain can take hold. This is the polar opposite of becoming numb, cutting oneself off from feeling. It is something far greater: losing our fragile ego in order to become something more.

I will miss you, friend.

posted by Emmett @ 19:14