Thoughts from Aaron of Court House

Monday, October 02, 2006

pain

I’m going to take a quick break from the book to give you some personal thoughts.

I have been thinking a lot about pain recently. I am not contemplating that, I stubbed my toe pain, or even, my girlfriend broke up with me, pain, but real pain. The type of that rips at your soul and makes you question things, that is the type of pain I have been mulling over. You see the problem is that I don’t understand it. Now don’t get me wrong, there are many things I don’t understand. I don’t understand how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. I don’t understand why we pay athletes tons of money to put a ball into a hoop. However, I can live with those things and say, “it’s a mystery.” Yet, this concept of pain gnaws at me. It bothers me. It makes me question things.

Sometimes I think we do one of two things with pain: either we treat it too simplistically, or we tread around it too carefully. I’m going to be honest, it always bothers me when someone is hurting and another well-meaning person says “God has a plan for this you just can’t see it yet.” While that may be true to some extent, I really don’t think it helps anyone in the situation. Nor do I think it is good to totally ignore that someone is in pain and just move on.

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. I love the Chronicles of Narnia; I thought that The Screwtape Letters was an excellent book; anything he has written I have enjoyed. I thought The Problem with Pain was a masterpiece; a great intellectual discourse on why there was pain in the world, and why it had to be there. And then came A Grief Observed. A brilliant and transparent book that Lewis wrote after his wife died. He starts to understand pain and grief better.

A friend tells him that “… the same thing seems to have happened to Christ: ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’” Lewis’ response? “I know. Does that make it any easier to understand?” You can almost hear his heart being wrenched from his chest as his mind tries to play catch up and reconcile his faith with his feelings

“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

I recall thinking the same things throughout my High School and college years. God was so real to me that I couldn’t get rid of him altogether, however there were moments where I wondered what kind of God was I serving.

I remember a time when I had been healed as a freshman in high school. I suppose I should have been joyous. I expect that I should have had better thoughts, and better words. Nevertheless, all that I could really think was “Why was I, one with so little faith, healed, and my sister, one who thirsts for God daily, not?” (Before we go on, I do not want any particular responses to that question. I have come to the realization that it will never be answered, and I’m ok with that, smarter people than you have tried and failed. Thank you for your thoughts, but move on to the next section please.)

As I got older, I saw more pain, and these were the worse types. They were not caused by any act of free will, or any particular choice; NO, freaks of nature, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes caused them. My “freewill” defense went out the window on those situations. And my intellect mocked me. “Come and answer Aaron, come and fix this problem of pain.”

So what is my answer? What is my grand scheme to help all in pain or who are watching someone they love experience it?


I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. I have no intellectual reason for all of the pain in the world. I don’t know why an all-loving, all-powerful God allows for this kind of suffering either. I suppose many of you will read this and come up with something. And that’s ok. If you want to share it that is ok as well. I’m always impressed with those that can rationalize better than I. Those whose minds work in overtime, and overdrive. As for me, I’ll end with this. It is from Lewis in his last chapter.

“I thought I could describe a state (of grief); make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history …”

Until we experience real pain, we don’t understand it, and even then we are so blinded we can’t comprehend it, and once we are over that, the scars won’t let us totally recall it. Perhaps I will try to grasp it after death … and maybe not even then.

Labels:

9 Comments:

  • Aaron, nice blog, i enjoyed it. I read up on you every now and then.

    I would say, that it is simplest to look at life like an equation. You have two opposite ends to the spectrum. You have your times of pure 100% happiness, and you have your times of 100% pain and misery. Simply put, it is just to be expected. It's almost like a teeter-totter in a way.... for each notch on the perfect side of the spectrum, you have a notch mirrored on the pain side. I gaurantee at some point, for every notch achieved on the perfect spectrum, a person will hit the same notch on the pain side.

    I don't think pain is preventable, but rather, treatable. The thing is, 1 single person can react to something totally different than another who is going through the SAME exact thing. The conclusion is, no one thing can cure everyone. Each person responds and identifies with something different. While it is noble to pursue treating everyones difficult problems to cure their suffering, oftentimes it is futile. Why? Because unless we have experienced the same thing they are going through, then most of the time we have no idea of how to help them. Any attempt to help sometimes results in "oh you cant help me, you have no idea what i am going through." And, it's true. Sometimes just the fact that you are trying to help someone might just be enough. Other times, its not enough.

    I think in God's eyes, just doing what you can is enough. For a person to put aside the cares of their own life and to try to help someone when they are down, I think or hope, is good enough.

    I dont know, maybe what I said makes no sense, but maybe to someone it will. Just know that if it weren't for the bad times, we wouldn't appreciate the good times.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:18 AM  

  • "God was so real to me that I couldn’t get rid of him altogether, however there were moments where I wondered what kind of God was I serving."

    I resonate deeply with this statement, Aaron. It is something I wrestle with often. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the greatest area where I struggle with this is the, what seems to be at times, war-mongering God of Israel, sovereignly decreeing the slaughtering of whole nations.

    But maybe that's another issue (something dealing with the strangle-hold our hermeneutical paradigm can have on us....or something like that). Then again, maybe it's not. I don't doubt God existence, but there are times I wonder the very things you have expressed.

    By Blogger Ben Robinson, at 7:01 PM  

  • I posted part of this comment on another blog but if fits here too. On that blog it was suggested that the church today lacks any clear doctrine on suffering, or any appreciation for the grace of suffering. I've recently been reading the writings of St. Ignatisu of Antioch and was struck by his passionate identification with Christ through his own personal sufferings. The EC not only contained within it a theology of suffering, they actually embraced it. In his Epistle to the Romans he pleads with the Christians there:

    "I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable goodwill towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of God. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of mby body... then shall I be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall see no more of my body."

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:12 PM  

  • B: thanks for the post man, it's good to hear people actually read this.

    while your comment has a bit of a budhist slant I do think you're right. There is a ballance. I think my problem is I dont care when bad stuff happens to me, it's when it happens to those around me that I love that I feel it hurts the worse.

    Ben: when I read that by lewis I felt overwhelmed. It was as if he had looked into my pain and said "yeah that's it." I think perhaps this thought is what most christians go through?

    Doug:You're right, although I'll be honest some of the early church facination with wanting to be a martyr went a bit overbaord for me

    Also again, it's not hard for me to deal with my own pain as much as it is to deal with other's pain.

    By Blogger Aaron, at 11:42 AM  

  • huh...I've been talking to my friends a lot recently about the issue of suffering and trusting God, and we never brought up Jesus asking why he was being forsaken. That will be cool to add to our dialogue. I had not made that connection...

    BTW, this id Stephanie Immordino, and we hardly knew each other at IWU. :-)

    By Blogger S.I., at 8:22 PM  

  • Have you read Peter Kreeft's "Making Sense Out of Suffering"? Excellent on this subject. Good, btw, that you don't have an "intellectual answer" for suffering. Surely we grapple with it but easy answers are worthless. Kreeft doesn't go there.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:05 PM  

  • Aren't all maps historical version of something?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:54 PM  

  • annon ... perhaps I didn't understand your point ... which is probably true I'm not the brightest individual in blogland that's for sure.


    I think was Lewis was saying is that a map is fairly stagnate. It doesn't move, it shows one state in time, and how to get from one place to another.

    However, a history is fluid. It flows through moments, thoughts, and shows the progression of said events.

    Does that answer what you are saying?

    By Blogger Aaron, at 6:50 PM  

  • Aaron,
    You know the "facination" with suffering used to disturb me as well. But I'm beginning to ask myself, "what did they have that we don't?"

    In the modern world, where billions and billions of dollars are poured into medical research just prolong life a few more years, and where even beleivers have forgotten how to rejoice at the departure of our brothers and sisters, I think the EC has a lot to teach us about death and dying.

    For what it's worth.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:47 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home