The Problem of Pain

My sister-in-law posted a short comment on her blog earlier this week that has had me thinking.  It’s not the first time I’ve thought of the topic, not even close.  I would wager that, outside of inquiries into the reason for our existence, she was asking the most frequently asked question since the beginning of time.  In essence, she was questioning the reason for pain in the world.  Among the people that I’ve discussed this with, the generic answer is that God is in control and that there is a reason for everything, whether we know what the reason is or not.  I don’t disagree with that assessment but it is a rather unsatisfying one.  I liked Hannah’s response to this line of thinking.  She asks, “Why do you use such dark hues if you are allegedly painting a masterpiece?”  Great imagery and an honest question – one that I used to ask on a regular basis.  I don’t ask that question any more though.  I can honestly say that I am no longer troubled by the fact that I believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God and that there is pain and suffering under his watch.  Don’t get me wrong, the existence of pain and suffering distresses me greatly and I long for the day when it all ends.  I just no longer see the existence of pain and the goodness of God as mutually exclusive things. 

Perhaps my favorite explanation of this apparent problem I’ve heard is that of Dr. Jim Denison.  In response to the pronouncement that God fails to protect his children (which is what we all believe a loving father would do), Dr. Denison explains that, as a father, he wants to protect his children.  He doesn’t want any serious injury or illness to befall them.  In fact, he doesn’t want any minor injury or illness to befall them.  Further, he doesn’t want any discomfort at all to come upon them.  Nor does he want them to have to deal with any sort of inconvenience in their lives.  His point is obvious.  Where do we stop?  Once you stop the most egregious evil, the second on the list now seems exceedingly evil.  No matter how many evils God prevents, we will always be unsatisfied that he did not prevent the next one on the list.  Who are we to say that God has not prevented a myriad of evils from ever occurring and we only see the tip of the iceberg?  Not only is our perspective flawed, but we are only looking at a small section of the artist’s canvas.  (Note: Dr. Denison’s son recently had surgery to remove a malignant tumor and has been given the opportunity to live out what he has been preaching for years in regards to dealing with pain and finding joy in the Lord.  Check out his website - denisonforum.org - for lots of great essays, commentaries, and a plethora of information.)

I’ve always known that I have a different perspective than God has.  This used to frustrate me because, again, it was an unsatisfying explanation to an epidemic problem.  Over the past six years, however, I have been given a perspective that I never had before.  No, I can’t see the world through God’s eyes but I have a lens that I didn’t used to have.  Six years ago, my first child was born.  We now have three children and with each one, my view of the concept of permitted suffering has been deepened.  I could go on forever about what it means to me to be a parent and how awesome I think it is that God created the institution of parenthood.  He could have had us procreate and develop into adulthood in any manner he wished; it was his idea after all.  Giving birth and then having a sustained period of intimate interaction with our children as they grow up is not “just the way it is.”  It is an institution designed by and ordained by the Creator of all things.  Therefore, it would be foolish to not closely examine the ramifications of this.

Throughout scripture, God refers to himself as our father.  It follows that a parent’s relationship with his children is designed to be a reflection (albeit flawed due to the reality of sin and the fact that we’re, you know, not God) of how God relates to us.  There is an evident disparity in the amount of understanding that a parent and young child have.  When I see one of my children in a situation that could result in pain, there are times that I can see what the result of the pain will be.  If I see a necessity of the strife I do nothing to prevent it.  As my daughter learns to read, there are many times when I see her struggle to figure out what a string of letters means.  Sometimes it pains her a great deal to not get it right the first time which leads to a reticence to attempt the next new word.  As a loving father shouldn’t I intervene and stop her suffering?  It would be very easy for me to just tell her what the word is.  The problem is that it would very quickly digress from a session of her practicing her reading to a session of me simply reading to her.  I suppose that she could potentially learn to read like this but it would take an exceedingly long time and she would not likely ever be a particularly proficient reader.  In fact, the most loving thing I can do is allow her to struggle.

I have a different viewpoint on reality than my children do.  There is a significant gap in knowledge between us.  Likewise, I have a different viewpoint than God does and the chasm in knowledge between us in infinite.

Another, and perhaps more significant, problem is the idea that there are innocent people suffering.  The simple fact is that there is no such thing as an innocent person.  We are born into a world marred by sin.  None of us is innocent.  The fact that we don’t all suffer all the time is a demonstration of God’s grace and mercy.  After all, that would be the fair thing to do as it is what we all deserve.  Still it is unsettling.  There is one more thread to the discussion that helps me find peace with the problem of pain.

In Timothy Keller’s book Counterfeit Gods, he tells the story of a woman that struggles with relationships.  He describes her as a woman that “had the misfortune of being born beautiful” (p. 23).  Her beauty led to her being zealously sought after and ultimately mistreated by men.  This description stood out as I’m sure was Keller’s intent.  The misfortune of being born beautiful?  That seems like a counterintuitive statement.  Isn’t beauty what we all long for?  Or wealth?  Influence?  Safety?  Comfort?  These are things that are valued in this life.  If this world is stained by sin wouldn’t it make sense that our desires are similarly tainted?  I don’t think that all the material things that we long for and are so grateful to have will be the things we are thankful to have had in retrospect.  I don’t think that people in Heaven speak about how great it was to have lived in a first world country and to never have had to worry about where their next meal would come from or to have been blessed with exceeding physical beauty or with great natural intelligence.  Jesus tells us that the first will be last and the last will be first (Matthew 19:30) in the kingdom of heaven.  I firmly believe that if there were to be pity felt for fellow citizens of Heaven, it would be those who suffered greatly on Earth having pity on those that coasted through life while encountering few difficulties. 

Does this mean that we should embrace evil and suffering since it leads to blessing in the next life?  By no means!  Those that have been materially blessed have a duty to use their resources push back darkness in the world and combat evil.  We should grieve with those that grieve.  Suffering should distress us because it distresses our Father. 

The reason that I am no longer bothered by the simultaneous existence of an all-loving God and a world full of suffering is that I see the flaws in my perspective.  God is a good father.  The things that he allows to happen are for our good.  Not only that, my understanding of what is constitutes pain (from an eternal perspective) is flawed and, quite frankly, juvenile.  Sin exists and therefore sins exist.  Sins beget pain. Sin was never God’s plan.  Although because of his great love, unending mercy, and infinite grace, he allows it to exist, for a while at least.  But he redeems all that which he allows.  Sin and pain and suffering are great in this world.  The good news is that we have a Savior that is greater.

Why Community?

In class we’ve been looking at different types of communities, how they are structured, and what roles they can play in our lives.  Coming up with an all-encompassing definition for “community” was an interesting exercise since the idea of community is a very broad one and communities come in all shapes and sizes.  One of the most interesting part of the discussions we had as a class was what was left unsaid.  We never discussed the overriding purpose of communities in general.  Yes, we talked about roles and purposes of specific communities but it was in the context of which communities we belong to rather than whether or not we belong to a community.  This assumption didn’t surprise me and isn’t uncommon.  There is something in us that tells us that we need to be a part of a group.  We all have a deep longing to be accepted and to belong.  But why?

I think that the answer is written on our DNA.  In Genesis 1:26, God refers to himself in the plural.  Before man is created, He says, “Let us make man in our image…”  As a Trinity, God is, in His very essence, a part of a community.  Since man is created in the image of God, it is a part of our makeup to exist as part of a community. 

After each stage of creation, God looked at what He had made and commented that it was good.  However, in Genesis 2:18 God makes a note of something that is not good.  It’s not a thing created that isn’t good but rather the condition of a created thing.  He says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”  God immediately sets about rectifying the situation, the solution – Eve.  God led Adam through a search of the animal kingdom to find a helper but none could be found, highlighting the uniqueness and special qualities of Eve.  The solution to the first problem faced by humanity was for God to create a community.  We are designed to be in community. 

This design can be seen in all facets of human life.  Most of the burdens we face are too heavy for us to carry on our own.  In sharing burdens with our fellow man lightens the burden.  Many times when we experience joy the first thing we want to do is share it with someone else.  Sharing joy with those that we live in community with makes our joy more complete. 

Living in community makes us better people.  Proverbs 27:17 tells us that “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  A piece of iron does not sharpen itself nor do we improve as people on our own.  The more varied our community is, the more likely there is to be someone with similar interests.  Being around someone that excels at a thing that we excel at (or try to excel at) challenges us to strive for our best.  At the same time, a varied community also means that there will be others that are not like us.  Being around those that have different interests and talents from us exposes us to things that we may not otherwise be familiar with.  This leads us to expand our horizons and become more well-rounded people.

Perhaps the most telling thing about the idea of community in the Bible is found in comparing the condition of the people at the beginning and at the end.  The Bible starts with two people, the first human community, living in a garden.  The Bible ends with multitudes of people, the pinnacle of community, living in a city.  The goal was never for us to forge out on our own and interact with other people only when necessary for procreation and the occasional exchanging of goods.  The goal is for us to live intimately in community, together in a city, living life together daily, sharing burdens and joys.

Spending time thinking about why we live in community has helped me understand the concepts of types of communities, structures of communities, and maybe most importantly, the possibilities of communities.

My Cubans?

I have been using the online handle "mycubans" for several years now.  In some ways it's like getting a tattoo when you're 18 - when you're 60, you're still dealing with a decision you made as a teenager.  The analogy quickly breaks down though since I could change my handle much more easily than a tattoo could be removed but there is some sentimentality there so doing away with "mycubans" is not as easy as it may seem.

The origin is simple to explain: there is an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer (my favorite character in my favorite all time television show) leaves a lit Cuban cigar in a friend's cabin that leads to a fire that burns down the cabin.  When Kramer returns to the cabin to find it ablaze, he begins to run toward the cabin in an attempt to rescue the remaining cigars and shouts, "My Cubans!"  A ridiculous scenario, to be sure, and funny because no sane person would react in such a way.

Add to that line by Kramer the fact that my dad was born in Havana, Cuba (making me half Cuban) and that I have been known to enjoy the occassional Cuban cigar and the handle "mycubans" made perfect sense.

When I first created the name there was little more to it than what's on the surface - a funny line in a funny show.  As I've gotten older (and, I'd like to think, more mature) it has come to mean more than just that.  One of my favorite verses in the Bible is in the book of Ecclesiastes.  Written by King Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, the book is in its essence the summary of a grand experiment to find out if there is anything on earth (ie. under the sun) that can provide us with meaning, happiness, fulfillment, and joy.  Like the book of Proverbs that Solomon also wrote, Ecclesiastes has many one-line words of wisdom.  My favorite is found in Chapter 7, Verse 6 and reads:

Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools.  This too is meaningless. (New International Version)

The meaning is not immediately clear (at least not to me) but when broken down and read in its context the meaning is evident.  When thorns are on fire they make hissing and crackling sounds.  Likewise, a fool laughs when he is on fire.  The point being that nobody in their right mind laughs when on fire.  You frantically try to extinguish yourself and cry out for anyone within earshot to help you put out the flames.  The fire doesn't have to be a literal, physical fire for the advice to make sense. 

If you are being consumed by the flames of an addiction or of some secret sin, you would have to be a fool to laugh about it.  If you are trapped in despair or depression it would be unwise to try to get out of it on your own.  A wise man does not approach his dire situation lightheartedly but rather screams, "I am on fire!" and pleads for his fellow man to douse the flames that are suffocating him. 

The scene in Seinfeld reminds me of this.  Kramer doesn't give a moment's thought to the cabin that is being destroyed or whether there could be any people in harm's way.  He is only concerned with a few rolls of dried tobacco leaves and ignores the fire as tries to rescue his precious cigars.  Only a complete fool would react like that.  I pray that I am never so oblivious to the flames that life engulfs me with to laugh at or ignore them.