Suffering Redux

Sixteen years ago, I gave a sermon at my local youth group about suffering. At the time I had undiagnosed/untreated depression and didn’t understand why I suffered over a pretty painless and easy life. I felt guilty about it. I wanted there to be some big reason for it, and for all the suffering and terrible things that happen to us throughout our lives. None of us is exempt from it. That is a point I made then and still make now because it’s a fact.

But I no longer need to explain it or justify it, and right now, that has given me so much relief from the idea of suffering and from the unnecessary suffering that brings.

It used to go against every fiber of my being for there to be so much injustice in the world. I believed we had to deserve it on some level (a very modern American Evangelical Christian POV) and therefore if we collectively could just get it right we’d be freed from it. And if we didn’t deserve it, I needed an answer as to why it was happening.

Why so much emotional and physical abuse, torment, exploitation on this planet, at the hands of creatures born of the same matter, wrought upon one another?

Eventually, my belief in a loving, all-powerful god broke into a thousand pieces. Those two “facts” I had been raised to believe were the ultimate truth, that there was an all-loving and all-powerful god, could not be reconciled in my mind or heart. No adage or Bible verse or philosophical treatise on the subject would satisfy me. And so I was left with this burden of a huge unanswered question, anger and resentment towards this idea of god that I had devoted most of my life to and the people who served him.

Very recently, I was listening to a podcast where someone mentioned in passing that “humans make war, that’s just something humans do,” (paraphrased) and the complete neutrality of the attitude towards that statement struck me. 

I’ve also been struck by this watching, of all things, “Wild Babies,” on Netflix, a show I put on for my son when he’s home sick. There’s a Lovecraftian amount of terrible things in the natural world that are out to kill us or maim us or hurt us in some way, and not out of anything personal but just out of a self-interest in survival.

So, what if suffering is just part of the fabric of our existence because that’s how we evolved? Maybe it could have been some other way, but it’s not. What if that’s the only reason it exists? Because it just happened to evolve with us?

Obviously, the question of “evil” must be asked. It’s one thing for a hyena to snap up a baby seal, but it’s another thing entirely for the unspeakable things that creatures, mostly humans, do to one another for profit, whether monetary or emotional. I’m beginning to believe this is also part of our evolution. Evolution is not always about the best case scenario of survival - it is ONLY about survival. And we evolved into very complicated beings and societies and systems of trauma and abuse that are only perpetuated because in the minds of the perpetrators, it contributes to their survival in some way.

Taking away the “devil” behind evil, bringing it to a place of neutrality (I must caveat - NOT to downplay the horrible acts committed, or to even begin to touch on an individual level what suffering does to a person and to communities and to our collective psyche), has allowed me to look at it differently. Not to be any less affected by it, no, in fact it has opened my heart to cry at stories read on the internet, to hold space for feelings expressed and allow them to exist, to be able to accept the atrocities and move on to the healing.

Instead of getting stuck in “why did this happen in the first place,” I’m able to move on to the fallout and the healing. Accepting my own depression when it rears up, accepting the horrors that come across my feed, allows me to be present for it, move through it, choose to do something about it.

I’ve been asking the wrong question all this time. It’s so obvious to me now, I feel a little silly even writing it down. It’s not about why this is happening - it’s about what we are going to do about it.

Evolution has not stopped. We are still ever-changing. I have never stopped believing that the New Heaven and New Earth spoken about in the Bible is coming into reality on this planet, that we, as sons and daughters of the Divine, as Gods ourselves, are going to be able to bring about collective healing and change. We can change. 

It will be really messy. We’re not going to do or say the right things all the time, and we can’t fix everything at once, and we will have to compromise along the way. We might get canceled and learn to forgive as we muddle our way through this complicated and glorious time, with a planet on the brink and humanity in the balance. What are we going to do about it?

Are you with me?

I’d love to know what you can do today that is just a tiny bit better than yesterday… our lives are made up of tiny moments, each moment a decision. Every drop of water is a literal blip, dries in an instant, but together they create oceans. Our decisions are drops of water in the ocean of our lives. We are drops of water in the ocean of our communities, our world. We can either be contaminants or we can be purifiers. 

Let your life bend towards a better world, and for the greatest good. We can’t be perfect at it, but we can always do a little bit better than before.

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.