Suffering is not What You Think
(The Penitent Magdalene)
So often you hear, when people leave their churches, their gripes surround suffering. Why would God allow suffering? Why would God allow babies to be murdered and die of cancer? Why would He allow war and cannibalism and pedophilia? Why did God allow me to see my mother die? Why did he allow this or that?
What I cannot help but notice is that the people saying this are never talking about their own suffering.
"Why does God allow war?" said a cowardly young man who has never seen bloodshed. "Why does God allow cancer?" said a woman who is perfectly healthy. "Why does God allow abuse?" said a man who had the privilege of watching the sex abuse crisis of the RCC play out on the TV screen and not in the sacristy. "Why did God allow my mother do die?" said a daughter who is still alive.
We may mourn, and we ought to mourn, the sorrows and the fallenness of this world, but witnessing suffering is not the same as suffering.
(Just Take Them and Leave Me Alone)
This was never more clear to me than when I spent a summer arguing with my anti-natalist, atheist sister. She would spend hours berating my poor mother and father for the heinous crime of having children. During one of these spats, my sister turned to me and said, "How can you support natalism?" which she said like a slur, "your grandmother abused you from the moment you were born."
Now, this is true. Truer than she knew, or, if I have it my way, will ever know. My grandmother (who was my and my sister's primary caregiver) always despised me because I was born with a deformity. Her hatred only intensified when my sister was born. My sister was, in her eyes, perfect. As a child, my sister would ask for me to be abused in front of her, for her amusement, by my grandmother.
My sister witnessed plenty of my suffering, but she experienced not an iota of it. And yet, she used my suffering as a way to say that all of human life is suffering. She used it to discredit the worth of all human life.
(Ophelia)
I find this is always the case. When I was an atheist, I was confused by people who brought up the "problem of suffering". I never viewed my suffering as something that made my life worse. Even as an atheist and a child, I saw clearly how the suffering I experienced and was experiencing was driving me toward a larger purpose. This pattern of thought followed me into the sexual abuse I experienced in middle school and into my conversion.
My atheist associates, whose suffering I know well, likewise never cite their suffering as a reason for their disbelief. When you really get down to it, "God is a big meanie" is not a reason to reject His existence, say these associates of mine.
It is only being a witness to suffering-- usually an impotent witness-- that causes this specific kind of apostasy. Even if my sister had stopped encouraging it, I still would have been abused. Her behavior would have made little difference. It is the same for the sufferings I listed earlier. Regardless of what we tell ourselves, no boycotting, no Instagram post, and not even tax evasion or immolation will stop the Genocide Israel is purporting against the Palestinians. We, far removed, poor, and powerless foreigners, are impotent. We can do nothing to help someone with a terminal illness not die-- it's terminal. We can do nothing to help the kidnapped children we see on the news, taken from their homes halfway across the country. We cannot bilocate, live forever, or have infinite money.
When these people say, "Why does God allow suffering?" they are actually asking, "Why does God allow my impotence?" The implication is that, of course, they would solve these sufferings if only they were not impotent. Is this the case? I don't know; who am I to judge the heart of another man?
Whatever the case, it is clear to me that witnessing suffering is of some different metaphysical nature than the actual experience of suffering. I've written a little about this privately, so I will get around to expanding upon it in further posts.
