Some Thoughts About Suffering

This one's been percolating for a number of years inside me and around me. It's not been a stranger to me in my life experiences in the past and it certainly is alive and well in the real life situation of being a person living with ALS today. I've addressed it a time or two in sermons (OK, maybe a dozen or so times!) and in many conversations in Sunday School classes and elsewhere over the years. Books have been written about it - others much more learned than I have added their two cents to the endless  dialogue - and yet, I feel the need to address it again in light of this disease that dictates much of my living, the comments offered by well meaning friends and family, and most importantly because it is so central to the life experience of us all, whether religious or not. Oh, and perhaps most importantly I'm weary of people being hurt by some of the things we religious types say.

I choose to consider the matter as I perceive God's relationship to it for that is where I am most profoundly astounded by the attitudes of some who offer their well-intentioned words of insight or/and encouragement and those words and way of thinking often being perceived as judgement and adding more hurt/pain. Let me further note here in this early blog that will hopefully be the precursor to others that I am not going to make much effort to biblicize around the topics I consider. I'm not going to use the Bible as a trump card. That is not to say that the Bible doesn't have a role in my life and way of thinking and acting, because it does. The Bible has helped shape me. It has done so though as a whole book or library of books. Oh, I have my favorite verses, stories, books and might on occasion address such but generally what I offer will be my reflections from a life of living, thinking, reading, and talking with others.  We United Methodist christians have named a portion of it the Quadrilateral (Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reasoning), but my sense is it also includes psyche, personality, and emotions.

So, enough of the preamble. "All suffering is not God's doing!" "It is not God's will when suffering happens." "God is not the cause of suffering and thus will not necessarily make it go away."  "Some suffering simply happens."  "It's a matter of luck or circumstances."  These are some of the ways I've put it over the years. I quite simply do not believe God caused me to develop ALS! I do not believe that much of the suffering in this world is the result of some grand design on the part of God. I don't believe that everything that happens is the result of the will of God and we just have to trust God. Oh, I trust God alright but not because I think God is causing me to suffer because God has plans to use my suffering in some way for good. No, I believe that God and I and others can resurrect good out of this bad but God didn't cause the bad so that ....

I want to challenge us all to be a little more careful how we use the phrase "the grace of God."  When a fire destroys your neighbor's home is not a good time to claim it's because of God's grace that yours was not damaged. When your teenager survives a car accident and others lose their lives is not an appropriate time to claim it's because of God's grace. When your favorite athletic team miraculously beats a favored team it's not because God chose it to be so. When your health is restored after a near-death encounter it's not because God intervened on your behalf. I could go on with other specific instances when we are guilty of saying it's because of God that something good has happened or bad has been avoided or we've been spared of being the suffering ones, but you get the picture.

Here's my concern/bias/reflection: When we claim God's grace in such circumstances we basically proclaim the misfortune of others impacted by the evil as being deprived of God's grace - specifically of some arbitrary doling out of it - of good, of grace. Do we really think our prayers and hopes, the prayers and hopes of our family and friends are really more effective than those offered by those experiencing suffering? It's not a matter of who can get the most people praying for a certain result - desiring it more than the other person - the selective compassion of God.

I have come to the place where I simply am more comfortable with the notion that I have ALS because of luck, coincidence, some circumstances beyond my control or doing, perhaps even the result of something that I did or that happened to me in the past that no one yet understands, than any simple, random choice on the part of God. Oh, I talk with God - I ask to know God's comfort and peace, for God to stay close to me and my family and friends while we are on this journey, for the work of doctors and researchers looking for more information about and miraculous solutions/cures for this ALS monster. Oh, I also talk about my desire to get better, be healed, my hopes, my pain about what I can no longer do,, but it's not for some selective compassion on  God's part.

Blessings friends!