The Thing about Suffering

 This struck me last weekend: The thing about pain and suffering: when you're in it, you ask "why" or even "why me" (as though if others suffered that's okay, but to be singled out for suffering is intolerable). When you receive a terminal diagnosis, you may think, "I have no problem with death. We all have to die, but why me now? Why can't I get the full span of life, the whole piece of cake? I don't want the whole cake, but I want more than a mouthful, the whole slice, the part that everyone gets." This "everyone" is extraordinary, this competition. But I can't pause on that now. The thing about pain and suffering is that once one is done with them, however intense and prolonged, once they are gone, they are dismissed without resentment, most of the time, by most people One comes to terms with pain. And the reason is that life itself is such a gift, so fundamentally unwarranted, that just to have it puts you in debt to the giver of life no matter how much pain intervenes. No matter how long or how intense. One good year at the end of a long painful life and the long painful life is not forgotten but it is forgiven. Or if not then the gift is wasted, and you, though no longer suffering, have wasted it. The point is this: the problem of suffering is not one God needs to let off the hook for. We'd like to have the problem explained. We'd like for God to use God's power to eliminate or alleviate it. But God does not owe us this, or anything. God's goodness is not impugned by suffering. You can read a book with a torn page. If I give it as a gift, I have given you something, I have not withheld something. This is the parable of the workers. You have no complaint against God. You can have a curiosity. You can look for answers. But you cannot say because we suffer God is not good or God does not exist. That is not evidence.