Problem of Pain Musings - Part 1

The problem of pain, of evil, is a difficult one. It's been grappled with for some time now, and we reach no easy solution. Hypothetically, you can argue that God and evil aren't incompatible existences, and that evil can exist with God in the same universe, but how do you explain that to a refugee from a war zone? A mother who loses a child, a trauma victim, a torture victim, or to someone whose child suffers from cancer or agonizing affliction? 

It's hardest with the children. What have they done, the toddlers, the pre-births, the adolescents stricken with pain from the moment of consciousness until whatever ensues - how is this rectified with a perfectly good, all-powerful God?

I have no answers.

Why do we have a problem with evil and pain, anyway? Biblically, we know sin entered the world through Adam, and with sin, death. Romans 5:12 tells us: Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. This doesn’t console unbelievers and, frankly, doesn’t console suffering believers in the slightest, either. Why? Shouldn’t we know that sin, death, pain, and the horrible entered the world through our rebellion against God? Why do we suffer such angst over intolerable pains, knowing the fault originates in our ancestral transgression? Do we feel blameless for such a distant past?

Partly, it’s the disparity, the randomness, the unFAIRness of who suffers – and who doesn’t - that conceives a self-righteous entitlement and anger. Is it a valid displeasure? Who knows. We live all our lives admitting and hearing that life is unfair, and expect it should be anyway. It’s never our fault that it isn’t fair, like a twisted, alternate, Dunning-Kruger syndrome. But it still should be, right? Equality, in opportunity and person, seems like a righteous aim for a religion of love and impartiality.

Since life is unfair, God must be either malicious and cruel or missing-in-action in deistic fashion – this is our conclusion. Are we right, and are those the only two options? Really, it’s such a difficult and pervasive problem, and even if you theoretically arrive at an understanding, the instant your child suffers from endless pain without surcease, the invectives loosen from the lips.

I’ve been reading Job, and I’m no expert in Job theology (JG – that’s you), but it’s clear right from the beginning that Job is considered a blameless individual as per the story. He’s not a child, and a bit of the powerful symbolism inherent in child-metaphor is removed, but the story is important. God allows, even suggests, the absolute destruction of a faithful follower.

Right from the start, God himself (in the story) says that Job is blameless, and allows (even encourages) Satan to destroy Job as proof of Job’s faith. With Abraham, God tested his faith by asking him to sacrifice his only son; with Job, his entire prosperity: children, home, health, wealth. David as punishment for a sin was chased around the world by armies and lost a son as well; Eli’s entire family was doomed by the sins of a father.

God does not take sin lightly, but we cannot fully comprehend the punishment of sin – how is a baby’s death punishment of sin? Who sinned? Why was this baby punished with death or this child with torture, and not that one, whose parents swindle and steal and murder with a capitalistic vengeance? We have tunnel vision, but why-why-why must the innocent suffer? Are they truly suffering the sins of their parents? Why does it always seem so arbitrary?

I think following this path easily leads to bitterness. When a baby or child suffers, the parent suffers immensely. So perhaps that could be some twisted form of justice over the iniquity of a parent, but even though we see that happening in the Old Testament and we can somehow make ourselves understand it, when the faces of our children and the people we love endure these pains, it’s an injustice, an atrocity. There is a difference, yes, but still none of these answers why, or whether we are right, or what sort of God we believe in that allows these sorts of things.

There are a lot of troubling aspects about the story of Job, but one that has been running through my head is the punishment of others to prove the faith of Job. All Job’s children die, all his servants – and even when Job’s wealth is restored, and he regains children, the originals are not returned. How do you recompense a life?

Personally, this is something I’ve been contemplating a bit over the course of my life. I lost a little brother at birth, as my mother suffered from pneumonia and was forced into labor too soon.  My brother, Jonathan, was not developed enough, and the medical technology at that time was insufficient to support his underdeveloped lungs and heart. He would have survived if the same occurred today.

In momentary evaluation, this is a tragedy, and I think it was, and perhaps still is, though one far removed and numbed for my family over time. The hidden blessing, one only seen four years later, was my little brother Sam. My parents only wanted three children, and if Jonathan had been born, my parents would have been content with those three, but his death meant another try, and the hardship of years without child. It took four years, and when they had a child finally, they named him Samuel because they asked long of God, and a child was delivered.

It would be heartless of me to say that every evil is justified by subsequent goods, and not honest. But in this case, I cannot diminish Samuel’s person by wishing Jonathan had survived, nor can I forget that Jonathan did die, and how difficult that was. When referring to life, saying: the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away feels cruel, terrible, and unjust. But Samuel has been a great blessing to our family and to countless people, and though Jonathan would undoubtedly have been as well, we have Samuel, and not he.

This is a tangent, of course, and one specific to a case of mine. It does not answer the problem of pain, but only shows one of my experiences with seeing the other side. There is often grace and mercy to follow when the hurt is great, but not always for the one who suffers. This is another facet to the problem of pain which hurts like stones in the gut.

To Be Continued

Selflessness

Selflessness. Our culture spends years cultivating an indifference to other, an intrinsic individualism that shuns all external influence and tells us we may rely upon only ourselves. Yet, without selflessness, there is no understanding love, no understanding marriage and how Christ gave himself up, or Abraham’s sacrifice with Isaac – without selflessness, you imagine he made none but the ram that day - and the selflessness of being a lover, a friend, or a parent who must give up everything to foster life. That’s what selflessness is: fostering life.

I’m a novice to this, a remora on the under-fins of a great, deadly shark. How do we coexist when this beast might snatch me up for a tiny feast? Is this love or even living, this fear?

I paid my dues to selfishness, and now I must let go the coals I’m clasping so tight between my fingertips. I’m no authority, no heroic image or paragon mythic having attained a buddhistic peace and zen relief from hungering to steal for myself. I’m a novice, a shell-less hermit crab seeking new identity, and scuttling along the bottom of a very muddy sea and wondering whether I’ll be et or find a place to be. I’m a fledgling with broken wings, a newborn fawn or foal with flopsy legs.

It’s freeing, this release of selfish identity. A proud, narcissistic king can trust nobody, for if clouds form on the horizon instead of sun, or if food is scarce or the battles no longer won, who will serve him then? And that was me. I’m David running from the Saul of my soul; the Balaam’s ass of my body refuses to go any further with me, for the angel of destiny blocks my path of selfishness with a mighty sword.

I’m learning, please bear with me. The road is long, but not empty, and I expect everyone will be with me, coming and going. I was contemplating on my favorite portions of love, as per 1 Corinthians 13: It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love always perseveres, friends. Always. And it always protects, and it is not self-seeking. Love is not selfish – but am I?

I feel like the sea, bashing up against a coast and getting nowhere. Even if the stones retreat, over time and infinite time, what am I gaining, really? So much purchase in the battle against stone? Love is the gentle retreat of waves on the beach, the mist in the mornings, the opening of the bulbs to receive the dawn dew and light, and the dance of fingertips across the strings of violin as an old woman and an old man hold hands in a garden where no eyes exist.

Binding of Laughter

Full of sacrifices, life is, and I am not complaining. Over and over again, my faith is tested, walking up the mountain with my money in tow, with responsibilities or love holding my hand, with other facets of my spirituality tested on similar slopes: patience, kindness, love, grace, mercy, hope. Moriah grass is lonely, bristly, and the wind always blows into your face abrasively, and there is no thoughtless path. I’ve tread this many times, and will continue to do so, and the place of sacrifice always looms before me, on the third day.

Behold, the fire and the wood, my heart says, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?

God himself will provide the lamb, and the lie is bitter in my throat, though a thousand times I’ve lived this story, a hundred thousand times, God has shown faithful. The binding of Isaac is heavy: lead in my footsteps, burdens on my back, scorching muscles and a tortured heart, self-inflicted and mythical, for I carry only a knife and a light for the wood that laughter carries. Laughter, joy, why do you mock me with your faith?

Up and up we go, his innocent hand so small and mine so bloody, and who is my son, this time? Do I know? Patience and you’ll always understand, my son scratches his legs and arm on a thicket, not far from a pile of stones, and I bind it, for he bleeds too soon.

How do you build an altar for your heart and joy? But you must, and bind your only son with the wood he’s carried so faithfully (oh, where is mine now? Oh, father, where art thou? He cries so plaintively). I stretch forward my hand, raising it to the heavens – it’s between me and the divine, my hand, blotting out the sky, my murderous hands – and I ignore the bleating cries of Isaac, the lamb for the slaughter.

But Christ always stays my hand, and the clouds part and a dove alights on my shoulder, sheltering my face in spiritual wing. But I’ve brought no sacrifice, ah!

Do not fear, for a ram is caught in the thicket, and my patience, faith, grace has suffered another gauntlet.

All stories are part of the Story. I am caught in the hands of grace. I am the ram, I am Isaac, I am the stones beneath which my son lies, I am Abraham and the mountain, and Adonai-Jirah is real to me now, always, and never until the right time. That is the mystery, and grace. There is always a passing over, always blood over the threshold, and always God, even in the shadow of the mountain, the trails over the brambles and briars along the way, the stiff, ragged climb, the precipitous paths, and even as I stack the stones at the solemn summit – nowhere is it my clear that the sacrifice must always be made, in good faith, before the parting of the waves of the heavens makes clear what will be gained.

There is a heavy burden on this world’s heart, forever and always now. A man has been shot; children are dying and suffering from significant trauma as rockets sound and airstrikes shriek overhead and mortars crash into the streets; and starvation, dehydration, and displacement are the monster nipping at the heels of children who, before their teens, have already felt a handful of wars. Too much retribution and not enough reconciliation, in homes, villages, cities, nations, and across the world – how can we engender justice, and walk an extra mile when our knees are so weak, and the miles keep coming.

Simply at Peace

In some sense, the future is always uncertain. Get too entrenched into your dreams, and if they must change, it’s a great pain. I am a tree who wished but to be, but the storm uprooted me, the man carved and fashioned and set thee out to sea, until my roots become but memory and what’s left? Only to be drifting now to dream.

I’m locked and loaded into a cannon, and I can plan my trip into the sea, but what if I land on the moon? There’s joy there, too, just of a different sort, and one I didn’t see coming. Part of contentedness is knowing of the uncertainty of the future, and seeing the difficulty of the past, and still being joyful in the present. It’s in the passage in Matthew 6, regarding the sparrow, and not simply a dreamy naiveté of “don’t worry, be happy”, but a conscious effort of joy and peace.

I’m often good at this, and still must remind myself of it.

Tricky Linguistics

English is tricky. Many times we have attempted to teach computers human language, and it has failed. I remember my father telling me at a young age about a computer they were working with that spewed every time with the sentence “time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.” The twisted, clever, manipulative means of the English language are seemingly boundless, and this may work as both boon and barrier to understanding. In the hands of the skilled writer, it can be as much a sword as a scythe as a plowshare. 

I’ve seen this. A writer plays at the edges of things, manipulating the frills on the fringe of the garment and deftly contorting the webs of weaving. But this obfuscation, this vague toying with greys and hues can confuse the audience, and invites in duplicitous meaning. Intentions are skewed by the bemused, and in the uncertainty – worse, the confident misunderstanding – of the creative work.

I’ve seen this, and I struggle with it myself. Dancing on the borders is attractive; it lends a dangerous, capricious, playful, attractive tension to a piece, though delusion seeps through the cracks and seams. 

It’s a tricky language, and it can be hurtful if not careful used, or inadvertently cruel. 

I was contemplating this capacity for misunderstanding, wondering how often my own words are misleading. I don’t have a lot of works, none of which are particularly important or well-read, but I love the fringes and crave the double meanings, and I wouldn’t change my writing style to accommodate simplicity.

This same truth holds true for speaking, or actions. The more investment a person has in a situation, the more likely, it seems, they are to make hasty assumptions on intuitive leaps. I was reading an article that made a few bold statements, and they were quickly misconstrued into very hurtful replies. The problem being that topics such as depression, anxiety, hurt, psychological disorder, and the like are dangerous topics for any writer to make bold claims upon, as everyone has some connection to these things, and strong opinions abound. Whether or not each person has suffered from depression personally, it is quite likely that each reader has encountered someone dear to them who does struggle, and maybe continues to struggle. I think the writer should have framed the topic as a discussion rather than a dictatorial claim to knowledge and truth.

Conflict, and so on.

I’m learning how much of a mess it is trudging through media representations to find the truth of anything. It’s like walking through molasses-thick mud dragging behind a great carriage harnessed to your waist – often enough, simply no progress is made.

I have something of a knack for odd discernment, though that may be the incorrect word. I’m like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, capable of finding the nugget of good in a dark knight; though this monster may have murdered many of my friends, and may try to destroy me as well, there is good in him. I don’t shy away from the negative, but when people are hurting, bothersome, anxious, annoying, angry, disturbed, stressed, or uncomfortable, I usually find myself slipping into their shoes and walking with their heart cradled in my arms. It isn’t difficult, I think most people just don’t bother.

People are hurt and angry over some slight, but there is often a burr behind an incessant itch, or a poison. I’m good at making excuses for other people’s distresses, pains, and petulance, and better at imagining how much worse I’d be given their situation. But the more obfuscated the topic, the more convoluted the webs of relationships and pains, the less I’m able to grapple and pull back to earth, and the less I understand.

When it comes to larger conflict, I’m swimming through a muddy sea, trying to find a smoky pearl that has sunk far beneath my flailing feet. It’s as silly and foolish as politics, with every side lying, betraying, and claiming self-righteousness. Governments are large, affluent, powerful children with violence in their palms, and the sufferers often have little to say about the decisions over their lives, homes, families, and victimization. A wounded child is a media marvel more than a face for each opposing side, and personhood is suffocated in grotesquerie.

Both sides are wrong, don’t you know? And both sides cling to a vestigial truth and a spark of quality that they brandish before every naysaying malcontent. And who is fooled but the jester? Only those hungry for what they already crave to hear. If you offer an alcohol addict a free round, why wouldn’t they snatch at that opportunity?

A thousand tiny hands are scraping up through the earth beneath a funereal bed of shrapnel, and “how much worse it might have been” they say. A hundred thousand cannot sleep at night for fear of loud noises, anxiety, ulcers, trauma, and one and a half million have no reliable food, water, resting place, or electricity. Who do I support, and who is to blame? Perhaps the question isn’t who, but what do I support? Is there any reasonable solution? How quintessentially masculine of me, skipping straight into seeking a solution, but I’m grasping at straws, and I think everyone wishes an easy solution was present.

Of the serpent

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/08/slithering-dreams/ ‎

I dreamt last night of a large group, a crowd, meandering around a plaza, waiting for something. That something was a speaker, or a leader of some sort, though really the ambling was aimless and random. Around the plaza was a garden, filled with large raised beds of strawberries, squash, peas, beans, tomatoes, and other assorted shoots and vines. I traipsed about the mob a while, entertaining the notion that I might fit into any number of cliques or groupings, but found no easy inlet, and settled for joining a group of friends near the garden.  As I approached, hundreds of snakes, garters and blue racers, wiggled their way through the grass away from me, as though fleeing a giant. As I neared my group of friends, they nodded and told me to mind where I sat, to avoid sitting on snakes.  Just before I sat, I brushed the grass, and several small snakes skittered away, and I sunk into the soft green of the lawn, squishing several small snakes and sending others sliding away.  We watched the plaza like a stage for a while, but nothing was said amongst these friends I’d found, and I soon grew weary of their silence and sought my own in the garden. In the center of the garden between the raised beds was a fountain, and beside the fountain, a large fluffy couch. I ambled along the edge of the raised beds towards the fountain, and the number of snakes seemed to increase with every footfall. Now they were slithering up my legs and onto my arms, falling off as I lumbered onward, and I was uncomfortable with them, though they were not biting.  I kept brushing them off, and the vines of the nearby plants transformed into serpents that snagged onto my clothes and climbed my limbs. I raced onwards, hoping to sit down on the couch and be safe, away from the gardens, but as I set down, I sat into a pile of snakes thick as spaghetti, and they began twisting around my arms and constricting me – thousands of tiny snakes no longer than my pinky, or some a cubit in length, twisting around my arms. Then they began biting. Countless pinpricks and little stabbing needles up and down my body, but the sheer weight of the snakes prevented me from standing up or escaping from the cushions of the couch. They were in my hair and around each finger, on my legs and in my shirt and pants and latching onto my forehead.

What’s strange about this dream is that it didn’t feel like a nightmare. There are a lot of different opinions on the topic of dream interpretation, but many of them cycle around topics of: surprise (it’s surprising being bitten); phallic (general serpent shape, I suppose); opportunity and being overwhelmed (especially with hoards of serpents – a lot of snakes can mean opportunity but also being overwhelmed); and anxiety. Having a lot of people in a dream, especially nameless, faceless individuals, is often interpreted as reflections of yourself. (Even with named, faced people, many interpretations often conclude those are patterns of yourself)

I took it to mean some different things, but mostly that it was an odd dream, and an odder interaction with it on waking.  There has been plenty enough going on in life to keep me overwhelmed. That’s certainly not a negative, yet I’m still exhausted and ready for a rest on a couch without snakes.

What is the grass?

What, in the earth world,

is there not to be amazed by

and to be steadied by

and to cherish?

Oh, my dear heart,

my own dear heart,

full of hesitations,

questions, choice of directions,

look at the world.

Behold the morning glory,

the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.

Look at the grass.

-          Mary Oliver

There simply isn’t enough time in life. Add a few hours, and still they’d be filled before sufficient purchase was gained. Choices must be made at the expense of others. And occasionally there is no choice, or no foreseeable alternative. This poem reminds me of part of the Walt Whitman poem:

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full

                hands;

How could I answer the child?. . .I do not know what it

                is any more than he.

This week has been full of prayers, passions, and incessant motion. I’m the boulder Sisyphus rolls interminably up that hill, and I’m scraping, bouncing, bounding, tearing down, expecting I’ll reach a rest shortly before I’m clawing up again. And what is the grass I’m trampling beneath my stony toes? I just don’t know, sometimes. But it’s soft and reminds me of my dreams. What a wonderful world.

Vineyard Picnic

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/08/vineyard-picnic/

Can we just remember this is a beautiful world? For a moment? Tonight, we went to a Shakespeare production in a park, beautifully backdropped by the harvest vineyard, rolling hills of green and golden earth, and the ridges of chehalem mountain and bald peak at our backs. The oaks hovering over our heads were sparse, but offered the perfect shade for an evening show, and the clean country air: perfect – pluperfect, perhaps. Metaperfect, superperfect, extraperfect.

Just because man sinned does not mean God’s creation invariably became un-good. I witnessed a piece of its marvel today. And Shakespeare was an exquisite accent on the bountiful blessings of our landscape, showcasing the creativity of the creation itself. Who spins words as that, since?

It can feel wrong to revel in such things when, around the world, people endure, and are contemporaneously enduring, agony, pain, sickness, angst, suffering. As my best friend and his wife attend to her mother who, even now, lies on what may be her deathbed; as malnutrition drags children to their knees, and injustice psychologically scars thousands and is not punished, remedied, or healed; as people die at the whims of country leaders sitting in comfortable chairs – how can I be so insensitive and admire this world, sighing at its grace, form, color, and clever creativity? This world that has, too, inspired a million poems, countless plays, dances, celebrations, relationships, love, painting, music, sports, books, and a thousand thanksgivings – can I cherish so simple a thing as a sunset over a vineyard, tonight? Can I feel the Spirit moving over the hills, and smell the heady wines in the air and the sugar grapes at their vines, and can I wait on the Lord, and be still in the wooded grove, listening to the whispering world sing praise?

If not I, then who? And so I must, and though I remember (or try) all their pains, the glory is here, also. I am thankful for that. God is not gone, and never was. But sometimes, I’m hard of seeing, poor of hearing, and dumb of speech, and the country is the perfect remedy for this disease. Lord, oh let me just be at peace with this beautiful sky full of stars for a little while, and the poplars brushing with the breeze, and the orchards thick with the redolence of green, and the apples collecting on the sidewalks and thick in the branches, and the plums plump in the leaves, and the blackberries bulbous on the vines, and the comfort of friends forever close, and the patience of a picnic in the crook of the hill – I’m a lamb in the pasture, forever by still waters and thick grasses lead, and let me follow, please.