Suffering
disproves the existence of God.
The existence of suffering is never left out of a
conversation where an atheist is trying to discredit the existence of a Good
God (what is meant by the atheist by "good" is "nice" and
not really "the perfection of all things" which proves already their
misunderstanding of their opponent). Interestingly, this question is somewhat
out of context of the argument because this question has no philosophical
answer, but only a theological one. Philosophy allows us to search for the
First Principle and arrive at the conclusion that God is and some of what God is (or rather is not by way of negation) but this
question asks to know neither of the two. Rather, this question asks and
answers who God is.
It is a question that our reason alone can't answer because
it doesn't ask the nature of the Being but a subjective reason the infinite,
transcendent Being has for something. The only way that we could ever know who
God is is if God were to reveal Himself to us. Thus, the answer to this
question begs Him to do so. The question asks God to give us a "religion",
or Divine Revelation. If the question of suffering is a valid argument for the
non-existence of God, then a specific religion (the true one) would be a valid argument
of His existence. (I don't believe it's an argument at all).
I don't expect an atheist to conclude that God exists at the
end of this small treatise, but if the existence of suffering were an obstacle
to proceeding with a rational search for truth, hopefully this will allow that
search to continue unhindered by sorrow and hatred towards the same reality we
are all forced to accept.
Why is there
suffering?
An extremely unique and fundamental truth of Christianity is
that the Logos (Intellect) of God became man and dwelt among us (John 1:15).
The very thoughts of God were not only spoken by a voice, but also lived out
within the context of our everyday human life. An action of His was God's
thought in act. In being born in the likeness of men, God revealed not only God
to man, but man to himself (Gaudium et Spes, 22). He showed man his Final
Cause, or what he was created to be.
Every object achieves its personal perfection when its
potentiality becomes fully actual. What that means is that an apple tree seed
becomes an apple tree (rather than an orange tree) and produces apples (rather
than bananas). But sin caused man to no longer be aware of his Final Cause; to
have a desire for happiness that moves him to perform any action at all but no
idea of what satisfies this desire and brings our most profound restlessness to
rest. Suffering and death were some of the consequences that were a result of
sin, an abuse of freedom God endowed man in order that he may love Him. If you
think this consequence is unfair, try tying your dog to a pole with paper
towels and see if they succeed in holding it in place. Eventually the towels
will break because they were performing a different task other than that which
they were created to do and are insufficiently prepared to do.
Death became that which man feared most. Suffering causes
death, so man began to avoid suffering at all costs in order to avoid death (or
to make the most out of life). Rather than making a sacrifice for the good of
another person, we now choose our own personal comfort, often times causing
more suffering for others.
Suffering deters us
from love. Love is our Final Cause, our End. Suffering caused us to abandon
love, but Love didn't abandon us.
Man's return of the Father's love having been destroyed, it
was precisely this that needed to be restored. God's majesty and love is
infinite. Therefore, to satisfy it required a response that was equal. Mankind,
being reduced to sinners by concupiscence (and unwilling to endure suffering), was
unable of making this equal response. Consequently, it was by God's design that
the Logos would take on the nature of man to make this response as a man (while
yet remaining God). Experiencing the sufferings our fallen life now entails, He
consistently and unfailingly responded to His Father's love throughout the
entirety of His life, in life and death.
"For we know it belongs to your boundless glory,
that you came to the aid of mortal beings with your divinity
and even fashioned for us a remedy out of mortality itself,
that the cause of our downfall
might become the means of our salvation,
through Christ our Lord." (Preface III of the Sundays
in Ordinary Time, Roman Missal, Third Edition)
Was it the
physical blood spilt on the Cross that which paid the price of our redemption?
As if God the Father keeps it all in a bottle somewhere up
in heaven...
"It was not absolutely necessary for Jesus Christ to
suffer as much as He did, because each of His acts being of infinite value, the
least of His sufferings would have sufficed for our redemption" (Catechism
of St. Pius X, Part I, Question 12). But, "It is love 'to the end' (John
13:1) that confers on Christ's sacrifice its value as redemption and
reparation, as atonement and satisfaction" (Catechism of the Catholic
Church, #616).
It's love that
reconciles us with God, and love is
proven in suffering. In his famous litany of love in 1 Corinthians 13, St.
Paul begins with, "Caritas patiens est." It's usually translated as,
"Love is patient." Patient
has lost its original meaning by its common use in today's language. Patient comes from the latin patiens, which is the adjective form of patior - to suffer. Therefore, "Love suffers." What you do is a
reflection of who you are; your actions flow from your being. Therefore, God
not only revealed to us that He loves, but, being the perfection of all things
and having loved perfectly, He revealed to us that He is love. And, revealing man to himself, gave us the knowledge that we are to become love (also, amazingly,
that human nature doesn't deny us the ability to live as God lives).
What does Jesus'
suffering have to do with the suffering today?
In suffering, dying, rising, and ascending into heaven,
Jesus Christ redeemed our human nature. In His preaching, He told us to call
God our "Father". After ascending into heaven, He sent the Holy
Spirit (which is the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the
Father) to fill each of our souls at Baptism, making us sons and anointing us
priests. Priests offer a sacrificed victim to someone in atonement for
transgression. In Catholicism, by baptism, each person is a priest to offer himself
or herself as a sacrificial victim to God the Father through Jesus Christ in
atonement for sin.
Jesus Christ made us
priests by offering us to the Father in Himself on the Cross. "We must
be united to the Sacrifice of Jesus, who is the only victim. Through Him, we
also offer to God the Father with the Holy Spirit all the sacrifices,
sufferings, self-denials, and tribulations of each day" (Daily Roman Missal,
Midwest Theological Forum).
This uniting of our sacrificial love with that of Jesus
Christ to offer ourselves in union with Him to God the Father is realized daily
in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, where the same moment of the Crucifixion is
made present again daily on the Altar, reconciling humanity with God (Past,
present and future are all present to God as "now" since He
transcends time in eternity). The union begins
to take place during the Offertory, where the sacrifices required to live a Christian
life and self-denials necessary to love God are offered to God the Father by
the Priest in the form of bread and wine that will then become the Body, Blood,
Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ at the moment of the Consecration.
He has united indefinitely His Presence
in the world with sacrifice, self-denial and suffering.
God is foremost an intimate lover. This is, in fact, the
definition of the Holy Trinity - Three Divine subsistent Persons sharing one
nature. He is Love in Himself. Being made in the image and likeness of God, man
is also made to be an intimate lover, becoming "one" with another. To
become "one" with another and not take on the other's sufferings is
impossible. But to do so is one of the most beautiful and intimate moments of love, where one chooses to suffer with the beloved
rather than to not suffer separated from the beloved.
Why does God make
children suffer cancer?
This question usually comes from a false compassion. No one
likes to see innocent children suffer and die, and our plan of action against
it is to disbelieve in God in order to offend Him enough to change this and to
tweet about my "rebellion of compassion" to give the appearance that
I'm actually compassionate because I don't want to actually go and visit them
to help alleviate pain by love, or suffer with them.
I don't see the difference in asking this question and
asking, "Why is the sky blue?" We know the scientific reason why, but
if God created it, why specifically blue
rather than brown? Why this child here suffers cannot possibly be
explained or revealed by philosophy nor theology in as much as the personal
mission of each specific individual cannot be explained or revealed by them,
either. What we do know is that God draws a greater good out of an evil, and suffering
with love merits graces for all of humanity and reconciles it to God. This
question also implies two things: 1) My intellect is capable of knowing all
things temporal and eternal, and 2) I have the
right to know all things. If God exists, then we need to accept that we are
mere creatures with humility (which is usually an obstacle as well because of
pride). We only need to know that which pertains to salvation. Nothing else is as
important.
We complain about kids suffering cancer while we slaughter
them by abortion; not by accident or chance but by choice.
If you were God,
wouldn't you destroy suffering?
Rephrased: If God
existed, he would do everything my way.
"In [Original] sin man preferred himself to God and by
that very act scorned Him. He chose himself over and against God, against the
requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good"
(CCC #398).
To be honest, if I were God, 1+1 would equal 45. And it
would be true because I'm God. I can't
accept truth on the basis that it is what I would want it to be. Truth is
that which is. My own personal preference has nothing to do with what it is. Nor
is it true only if it is what I would have preferred it to be. I can only
accept truth. It's already there. It pre-existed me and I can't persuade it to
change itself.
There are those also that accuse God of being immoral or
cruel for imposing laws upon humanity. But the accusation is a
self-contradiction since to act morally is to act according to design, and to
act immorally is to act against design. Morality is a matter of accepting truth
and reality as it is. The conflict is in
our corporal appetites that cause us to act contrary to design (this
suggests that sometime, somewhere, something went wrong in our human nature). If all things could act contrary to
the purpose for which it serves, we couldn't even trust the scientific method
as it could change the very next minute to what it would prefer itself to be. It
follows that design is the foundation of rights
since by design I am human and not an octopus.
Nevertheless, to destroy suffering would be like my coach
calling time-out right before I scored the game-winning shot. For God to
destroy suffering now would mean that my opportunity to gain any merit in love
would also be destroyed. He will destroy suffering and evil at the end of time
when all of the elect are accounted for. Until then, we love regardless of
suffering. If suffering exists, it's because God wants us in heaven (heaven
isn't a playground nor a living room with an xbox, but participating in the infinite exchange of love of the Holy Trinity being in the Second Person, the Son).
Conclusion
In His Passion, Our Lord intrinsically united Himself to all
those who suffer when He said, "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I
was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and
you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, imprisoned and you visited me"
(Matthew 25:35-36). Being the Suffering Servant, He called to those who wished
to be His disciples saying, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). Therefore,
those Saints who have loved Him most achieved rest for the desire for happiness
when the came to desire suffering for love more than consolation or pleasure
for self. They had conformed themselves
to Love, their Final Cause.
This short treatise doesn't aim to prove that God is nor what God is, but simply to provide a brief experience of the
profundity of the Catholic Faith. Only
with a sincere desire to know truth for its own sake, even at all costs to
oneself, will one ever find it.
"Looking back from eternity in heaven, all the
sufferings of this life will have seemed like one inconvenient night in a bad
hotel." -St. Teresa of Avila
"If the angels could be jealous, they would be jealous
of us for two reasons: We can receive the Eucharist, and we can suffer."
-St. Maria Faustina
***
For further reading, I suggest Making Sense Out of
Suffering by Peter Kreeft
