Suffering and God: Make it make sense

Speculating about the purpose of suffering is dangerous. Providing someone with too quick a response about its meaning does not respect the trauma of violence, especially violence suffered by the innocent. Easy answers about the loss of innocent life are especially glaring during a year like the past one, when violence in the Middle East has consumed the lives of so many. Prolonged indiscriminate loss of life can appear incomprehensible. Making sense of violence, however, is precisely where the reflection for the readings on this Sunday begins.

The opening verse from today’s first reading is shocking: “The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity” (Is 53:10). A different translation offers, “It was the Lord’s will to crush him with pain.” Who exactly is speaking? Why does it say that God is pleased to inflict pain? There are two considerations, neither of which answers these questions adequately. 

First, the Hebrew Scriptures in general are more likely to attribute all actions to God, good or bad. Humankind simply can not comprehend how it all fits together. The New Testament is more likely to attribute only good actions towards God, source of all blessings. Last Sunday, for example, Jesus told the rich man, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mk 10:18). Meanwhile, evil actions are attributed only to their source. For example, consider the case of Peter's mistaken attempt to rebuke Jesus. “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus responds. “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Mk 8:33). The bad idea started (and ended) with Peter. Isaiah comes from the world of the Hebrew Scriptures, which helps to set a context, but does not provide much of a justification for unsolicited violence.

Second, the passage comes from a set of texts in the prophecy of Isaiah called the “Servant Songs” and this context is helpful. There are four of these songs, (Is 42:1-6; 49:1-6; 50:4-11; and 52:13–53:12) and each speaks of an unknown individual whose personal suffering on behalf of others expiates the sins of the entire group: “If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him” (Is 53:10). These passages remain perplexing even today for their theological insistence that one person’s suffering can atone for the sins of another. Early Christians answered this puzzle by identifying the suffering servant as Jesus Christ. This is the idea behind this Sunday’s Gospel conclusion: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). 

These insights only begin to respond to the question posed at the beginning of this piece: How can the scriptures claim that God is pleased to inflict pain? Perhaps that’s the wrong way to approach the problem. God is not pleased to crush anyone. God does not rejoice in any violence that happens at any time. Isaiah’s enigmatic passages serve to explain the effects of human suffering, not its cause. Isaiah is asking the reader, Can you make sense of suffering in your own life for yourself? Christ’s disciples have to answer that question for themselves if they choose to follow the footsteps of the Lord. “Can you drink the cup that I drink,” Jesus asked James and John, “or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mk 10:38). They respond in the affirmative but they do not understand its full implication. Suffering is part of the human experience that we share with Christ and with each other. No theological insight will ever give a satisfying answer to its cause.