Suffering
By scientist and priest Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

To all that, we have to add the scourge of terrorism, racial and religious hatred, the exploitation of the helpless, subhuman levels of existence in so many places of our planet. What can the answer be, logically and theologically, to the obvious query: How can God have made a world where there is so much pain, so much EVIL?

Theology speaks of "The Mystery of Evil" as something that cannot be clearly answered with any simple reply. The old objection can be stated with the drastic dilemma formulated by Epicure: "If God does not want to suppress evil, God is envious; if He can't, God is weak". In both cases the answer is incompatible with the idea of God as infinite Love endowed with infinite Wisdom and Power. What can our Science and our Faith offer as a reply?

In the Old Testament there was an effort to explain the perplexing fact of the suffering of the just Man, either through natural causes or the oppression of unjust and Godless powers, while God did not always appear as saving the innocent. In the Book of Job we have the mystery of suffering presented in the most dramatic form, when he loses his family and possessions as a result of an unforeseen storm and also of attacks by criminals. When he complains that he is "punished" without deserving it, the only answer he gets is that God is not obliged to justify his actions before any human tribunal!

And, lacking any horizon beyond the level of earthly life, the only redress Job can get is to recover a state of even greater wealth than he had lost. But still no solution is offered for the basic and deep problem, since that kind of recompense isn't always given to those who suffer without deserving any punishment, whether that happens through natural agents or by human malice.

In the Gospel, Christ teaches that a material tragedy -a tower that crumbles causing several deaths- should not be interpreted as a punishment of sinners. Sickness is not evidence of any sin, either of the sick person or the parents. On the contrary, many saints have suffered all kinds of limitations and sicknesses, without implying that they were rejected by God.

We must distinguish physical "evil" from moral evil. Human freedom necessarily implies the possibility of heroic virtue, and also of depravity. God created the world in order to establish a personal relationship with beings endowed with intelligence and free will, and He doesn't suppress our liberty to make us some kind of robots already programmed for instinctive behavior.

We cannot blame God for what we do against His will. His grace is always sufficient to overcome our evil tendencies, but it doesn't force us to act in a predetermined way: we are responsible for our actions, even if our responsibility can be lessened due to social and educational factors, as well as to insufficiently controlled passions.

Cruelties and injustices of all kinds -either at the personal or social level- are due to our free will acting against the norms of "Natural Law" (our conscience) and of "Revealed Law", (in the Ten Commandments and in Christ's teaching). This is strongly stressed when we are told that the way we act towards even the most humble and least "important" of our neighbors, Christ will consider as affecting Him, either for reward or for punishment, even when there is no direct offense, but only an indifference that refuses help when needed, to body or soul. How much pain would be avoided in the world if this were taken seriously!

We are impressed and shocked by the number of victims caused by an unforeseen natural phenomenon, but we have become hardened and unresponsive facing the barbarous crime of millions of aborted babies, and now a "merciful death" is presented as a "right" by which pain is made to disappear by killing the sick. Prostitution -a kind of human traffic- is still maintained, children work in a practical slavery, and those who can hardly hold a rifle are drafted as expendable soldiers in tribal conflicts or in terrorist attacks that explicitly seek to target the innocent and helpless. Drug traffic destroys human dignity while enriching the cartel bosses and their criminal minions. There is little doubt that most of the suffering in the world is due to human wickedness, frequently disguised under solemn pronouncements.

Still, even in a utopian society of holy people acting always from pure love untainted by egotism or abuse of power, we would find physical suffering due to sickness, death, natural causes like geological processes or even normal changes in the weather patterns. This would again require a rational and theological answer.

Is it possible to say that the Universe was made for Man, with an extremely precise adjustment of initial properties (the Anthropic Principle), and still accept that the same natural laws will lead to events like the earthquake that devastated China? And that -in a far future- the same physical laws certainly imply the destruction of all structures where life can function?

Even authors who profess their Faith in a loving God (for instance, the biologist Francisco Ayala) are led to deny that God has made the world "full of imperfections, defects, suffering, cruelty, even sadism". He mentions things that are wrong in the human body and "animals that cruelly devour their prey, parasites that destroy their hosts" while 500 million people suffer from malaria that kills one and a half million children every year.

As an alternative answer to "Intelligent Design" by an Omnipotent and loving Creator, this state of affairs is attributed to the blind result of natural evolution, by CHANCE, without realizing that the evolution was obviously foreseen -with all its consequences- by the a-temporal Creator who knows beforehand everything that will happen in the whole history of the Universe.

A correct viewpoint should consider the necessary limits of any existence conditioned by the properties and laws of matter. One cannot have biology based upon matter without accepting that its activity will depend upon the environment, with its consequences of changes, wear, decay, and finally death.

The earthly environment is constantly renewed, a process that is required to keep the planet as habitable: plate tectonics -the reason we have earthquakes and volcanoes- renews the crust and the atmosphere. No other planet in the Solar System has comparable processes. The winds and ocean currents that distribute heat over the whole planet are also the reason for tropical storms, torrential rains and deserts.

The Earth is a habitable "home" through many millions of years precisely because of the constant play of forces controlled by internal and external factors, from the iron core in the center of the planet to the emission of high energy particles in solar flares. To all this we must add the possible effects of the biological activity in continents and oceans, as well as the changes due to human agriculture and industry from the time Man developed.

All those factors, only very recently a matter of study, should be considered when we speak of ruined cities, flooding, lack of food in some concrete area: we shouldn't be surprised that those things happen, still less reacting to them with the denial of the Wisdom of a provident Creator. If a town is built at the foot of a volcano -perhaps inactive according to historical records- one can fear the consequences of a possible eruption.

With a more accurate scientific study, the norms for buildings in seismic areas will include requirements to ensure their stability in the case of likely earthquakes. If that was not done in the past -either through ignorance or an optimistic guess of probabilities- one cannot expect that the Creator will change the laws of nature to avoid all damages, even those suffered by innocent people.

We should also take into account that the environment will affect each living thing in multiple ways, and that biological activity will imply some type of wear that modifies the organism. As a result of those factors, from natural radiation in rocks to cosmic rays from the Sun and the Galaxy, and from the chemical composition of the atmosphere and food (possibly modified by its preparation) as well as the presence or absence of microbes that are either needed or harmful, different types of sickness can develop.

Suffering in the animal world (without intelligence and free will) cannot be compared to human suffering: animals are "biological robots" that we should not judge in human terms to qualify them as cruel when they need other animals for their subsistence, classifying them in poetic tales as good or bad. And to require than Man should have a mechanically perfect skeleton that will not lose flexibility or strength with age would be logical only if earthly life were our ultimate destiny.

Biological evolution (like its cosmic preparation) cannot occur independently of the Creator. If we find its effects unpleasant we cannot "absolve" the Omnipotent Creator (infinite in Wisdom and Love) by attributing them to chance. The world was designed with initial conditions whose consequences through cosmic history were clearly foreseen. On the other hand, one cannot require that this should be "the best of all possible worlds" according to our way of thinking: any finite created being necessarily will be limited in multiple ways that will have consequences painful in some degree.

Any living being, including Man, is born and develops in a constant interaction with an environment where almost everything is helpful in a limited measure, but harmful in either a total absence or in excessive amounts. It is logically impossible to expect that all harmful effects will be avoided during an entire lifetime from conception (with its dependence upon genetic factors) up to an age when organic decay must finally result in death. Nobody dies in perfect health, except through some accident or violence.

We are saddened -and we should be- by the sufferings due to all sickness, especially in children where we encounter perfect innocence and whose pain seems so meaningless. It is difficult to accept that a life will begin in such suffering and then end without a chance to develop the full potentialities of somebody destined to be an Image and Likeness of God in an enriching search for Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

If our thoughts remain just at the elementary level of earthly existence, we will end up with the empty despair of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament: "The fate of Man and of an animal is the same: the one dies like the other. Both have the same destiny, both come from the dust and both return to the dust".

The same negative conclusion is obtained by modern Science that predicts for the Universe a final state of emptiness, darkness and cold, leading the Nobel winner Steven Weinberg to end his book The first Three Minutes by writing, as in despair, "The more we know the Universe, the more absurd it seems".

The full disclosure of our destiny, given by Christ and already achieved in Him as Head of redeemed Humanity, avoids the absurd and gives a meaning to our existence and even to suffering and death. If we find it difficult to understand and accept that a God who is infinite Love and Power will not free us from so much daily pain of body and soul, at least we must realize that our sufferings are not foreign to Him: He became Man and shared all of them. He knew hunger, thirst, being tired, disillusioned, betrayed, abandoned and alone, and then He suffered the most painful and shameful agony and death.

He never performed a miracle for his own profit, but He showed compassion for all those who suffered near Him, even those who did not know how to ask for help. His Death and Resurrection changed the meaning of human pain, making it precious by being joined to his redeeming Passion, so that as his members we might also share in his victory. God will then "wipe all tears" in a "new Heaven and new Earth" that will not be a senseless recycling of present existence, but a new way of being proper to the divinity, outside all limits of space and time and thus free from all conditionings of material laws and evolution.

The Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict XVI, Saved by Hope, is a beautiful development of these ideas. In no. 24 it says that, due to human freedom, there will never be in this world a "Kingdom of Goodness" definitely established. Our suffering has a double root: our finiteness -that limits our ability to remedy all wrongs- and our sins, the improper use of our freedom. We can't avoid all pain in the world, but we must soften it and diminish it as much as possible (n. 35). Our remedy isn't to avoid all pain, but to find its value in union with Christ (no. 37).

In an eloquent description he tells us that the greatness of human dignity is found in our relationship with suffering and those who suffer (no. 38). Without acceptance and compassion, society is cruel and inhuman: if my own comfort is more important than truth and justice, violence and lies will reign. Love itself cannot exist without generous sacrifices, since egotism kills love.

When describing in a poetic tale the original state of Man, Adam and Eve are presented as destined to live in the garden of Eden without any suffering or death, due to a special privilege given by God to surpass the limitations proper to all living things. We cannot take that literally as applicable to real existence: in a hot summer day, our first parents would also feel uncomfortable under the sun. And they would get tired walking, hurting their feet on the stones of a rough terrain. They would need hard work -just as we do- if they wished to cross a river or the ocean by making a boat, to say nothing about the current technology that allows us to go anywhere with air travel.

And a world where all animals would be vegetarians has never existed (nor could exist, since vegetal life arose later, not first): even without human sins or presence, animals would suffer. All this was inevitable even if our familiarity with God had not been lost by original sin.

The finiteness of every creature, mentioned by the Pope, implies limitations and dependence from the environment. Work is not a punishment, but a privilege and a duty: "Exercise dominion over the earth and subdue it". We are thus cooperating with the Creator, developing his work to make a common home for human existence, where every person will be able to live in a way suitable to the dignity of "children of God" even with respect to material needs, for which there are still plentiful resources.

But only by mutual concern and cooperation will the world provide everything needed, everywhere. And even natural calamities will be avoided -at least in part- and their effects prevented or mitigated by a technology unfettered by nationalistic selfishness or by egotistical and myopic economic considerations.

Let this be a reason for our hope and for the concern for those in need. Christ died in such a helpless state that, before expiring, He had to express the pain of his intimate loneliness, that we cannot fathom, addressing the Father: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned Me?"

Let us never abandon those who suffer, since God's Providence acts through human means, not by miracles that would magically correct immediately every wrong.

And we should remember the quote of Christ recorded by St. Paul: "There is more happiness in giving than in receiving", as constantly evidenced by those who left everything to help the neediest in the whole world.