Suffering, meaning, and a holocaust survivor

Tragedy.   Suffering.  Death.

What is the point of it? 

I believe that Christianity does not offer a clear cut answer to this question - at least, not a simplistic answer.  That men make evil choices and harm others is evident.  That our suffering can bring about certain benefits is clear to anyone.  That our own choices sometimes bring harm upon us is equaly clear.  But what meaning are we to make of particular incidents like the one in Sandy Hook, now that it has happened and we have made the obvious assessment that it is evil?

Viktor Frankl was interned in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. His wife, father, mother, and others dear to him died in the concentration camps.  His life's work - a manuscript he had been writing - was thrown away when he was brought into the camps.  He faced the likelihood of death at every hour.  Reflecting upon such suffering, he found that the question, "What is the meaning of this?" was the wrong question to be asked.  It needed to be turned around.

“We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct."

When we see evil, we ought to fight against it as the work of an enemy. We ought to rebel against it in prayer, in condemnation, and in restoration - as much as feeble creatures such as we can help to restore things. 

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.  For there are those who say - using religious language - that these things are not so evil as they seem.  They assure us that these, too, are a wonderful "part of God's plan."  They say, "If only we could back up, and see it from God's view, we could see the beautiful tapestry He is weaving."   This is rubbish.  God has shown us His view, and He does not claim that all evil events are of His doing.

"Christianity-and-water, (is) the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right -- leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption.... If you think some things really bad, and God really good, then... you must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, 'If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God.' The Christian replies, 'Don't talk damned nonsense.' ( I mean exactly what I say - nonsense that is damned is under God's curse, and will - apart from God's grace - lead those who believe it to eternal death). For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up out of His head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again." - CS Lewis

We must not serenely intone that this is all just "part of God's plan." No, it is part of the cosmic war-zone that we find ourselves in the middle of.   In his bodily ministry, Jesus waged war against disease, greed, demonic influence, and violence. Even "natural evils" such as storms were confronted and yielded to his rule. We still find ourselves in the midst of a war-zone. We are not promised comfort, or life, or freedom from distress. Romans 8:38-39 assumes that we will have a hard time of it here in this war-torn world.   But the promise is that, in the midst of this chaos and evil, nothing can separate us from God's love.  Let us not go too far, and assume that he owes us protection from every evil act of others. He does not promise that.  Freedom to choose good entails the freedom to choose evil.  But even though God abhors the specific forms of evil that free beings have chosen and the suffering that comes from them, He will nevertheless use even evil things to bring about something good in the end, and even in the 'now.'   In this way, it is true that God is weaving these things into a beautiful tapestry - but He is weaving with disobedient threads, who are capable of partially spoiling parts, at least in the short run. God knows the infinite details of each life, and simply "zooming out" to an alleged "divine perspective" does nothing to eliminate the fact that some aspects of the world have gone terribly and horrifically wrong. But God is in the process of putting them right, even as they go wrong.  Let us not accuse God of ordaining every evil act so as to use it, just because he does use it for a good end.   As Jesus is our picture of God, we can see that when he is confronted with the death of Lazarus, he weeps.  He weeps even as he is planning to bring something good from it.  As we weep, we can know that God is weeping with us - even as we confidently trust that he is taking our broken threads and weaving them into something good again.

Perhaps we can catch a small glimpse of this "working all things for good" in the fact that most of us have some terrible occurrences or regrettable mistakes in our past. Often, we feel a strange gratitude to these things because we had to confront them and labor through them. We had to slay the dragon, as it were. We had to learn to suffer valiantly, or confront and realize the reality of the evil that we are called to fight against. We can feel this strange gratitude even while we intensely regret those very things, and condemn them as evil. 

The specific 'meaning' of evil events is often found in our response to them. 

Viktor Frankle, quoted above, answered his revised question in more detail:

"Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross.”

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.”

“I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance.”

Jesus, shortly before he was taken to the cross, prayed that His disciples would know God and His love, for to know God was life eternal.   In the context of his imminent suffering, Jesus reveals what eternal life is:  it is to know God, and to know the love of God for them through Jesus.  In this war torn world, we will be called upon to battle and suffer.   It is in the comradeship of knowing God and knowing that He too, suffers with us, that we may experience what it means to answer life well.