William BorstLike the Wall Street Journal, one of my best resources for this column has been song and movie titles. Carly Simon’s rendition of a broken-heart love song serves as my title for this essay. Because of my advancing age, I think about pain and suffering…a lot.
I started writing this piece on my birthday on September 6th, which marked my 82nd birthday. It reminded me of one of my stock lines I have used throughout my Golden Years, which should be re-named the ‘Olden Years.’‘ I think I am at the age where my body gives me much more pain than pleasure. This has prompted me to meditate on the importance of pain and suffering, not just in my life, but also in those around me.
Pain is a universal condition that in many cases can dominate a person’s entire life. I am thinking mostly about those who have serious diseases, have suffered crippling injuries, or are experiencing what my exercise group at the YMCA a half century ago, called the ravages of age.
There are essentially three kinds of pain: physical, emotional and existential. Physical pain is the most dominant and necessary for our survival into old age. It can also come in a host of different intensities, which vary among sufferers.
God endowed the human body with millions of nerve endings that were not designed to torture us but serve as a natural alert system that something is wrong with an internal organ or one of our limbs. Were we not to be warned by a severe pain in a leg or our stomach, we might miss our body’s signal that this area needed medical attention. Think of a small child who puts his hand on a hot stove and how quickly he removes it. Without this pain, his hand might be damaged beyond repair.
Emotional pain can be more insidious since it creeps into our lives through loss, heartbreak or disappointment. This is the kind of emotional pain of a lost love, which Simon dramatizes in her 1974 song. This kind of pain can have a far greater reach into the depths of one’s soul and consequentially have a far greater deleterious effect on its victims. I remember, only too well, the Angst of my teenage years.
Mental illness is probably one of the worst kinds of pain, which cannot only make one very sick, but can result in serious mental breakdown which can emotionally paralyze its victims for the rest of their lives. A truism might read while physical pain may ravage one’s body, emotional pain can destroy a person’s soul and with that, their lives.
Lastly, existential pain challenges us to face our own mortality. Sometimes it can cause us to question the meaning of our existence. Existential pain has been described as suffering with no clear connection to a physical or a mental condition. I would add that, generically, it is a deep-felt sense of dread that that all is not right with the world. Chaplains describe it with an emphasis on internal guilt and unresolved religious questions. I would add that the fear of death and eternal judgment can be added to its generic definition.
These thoughts inevitably extend to a discussion of pain and pleasure in the moral universe of right and wrong. It was the pagan philosopher, Epicurius, who wrote that we must first seek to avoid suffering ‘aponia’ and that the greatest pleasure lies in ‘ataraxia,’ free from the worrisome pursuit or the unwelcome consequences of ephemeral pleasures. Then there is the theory behind Hedonism, which claims that good and bad consistent ultimately in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Pain has a special relationship with morality and ethics, especially the Catholic Faith, which has an entire philosophy and theology of pain. Authors, such as the late Timothy Keller, Gerald W. Peterman and Andrew Schmutzer, have written books on this subject.
The former pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, Dr. Keller, who died in 2023, is still well known for his unique insights into religion and culture. His book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering relies heavily on biblical wisdom and personal stories, which he had collected on overcoming adversity, and serious pain. His views are still fresh and offer a much-needed viewpoint on this salient issue.
Walking with God also attempts to answer the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people.. This question has vexed believers and non-believers alike on just how an all-loving God could allow his creatures to suffer such inhumane treatments, such as plagues, famines, wars and the Holocaust and the persecutions of Jesus’ followers well into the 21st century.
Keller demonstrates that there is meaning in all our sufferings and we should not let the intensity of our pain threaten our belief in God. Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God Himself walks with us in the fire. Even atheist Fredrick Nietzsche realized That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer seconded this when he wrote: Life without Pain has no meaning.
The Moody Institute’s Gerald W. Peterman and Andrew Schmutzer’s book Between Pain and Grace: A Biblical Theology of Suffering is the fruit of their joint efforts in a popular college course. The authors focus on the fact that, despite how common pain is to the human condition, we still question why it happens. According to its reviewers, Between Pain and Grace gets to the heart of this struggle for understanding. Especially important is the authors’ detailed portrait of life, which challenges our assumptions toward pain, emotion and God Himself.
The college professors also raise several additional questions on this topic, such as God’s involvement in the world’s pain, how Christians should handle grief and anger and what the Bible says about related issues, such as sexual abuse and family betrayals. They accomplish all of the above because of their elegant balance between both scholarly and pastoral and their skill in delicately mixing of the spiritual with the academic.
Existential thinkers believe that through suffering we can achieve personal freedom and authenticity. They contend that we are often forced to make choices, which define our existence, making us the architects of our destiny. Unfortunately, the existentialists leave God out of their equations. No one, in my opinion has described God’s role in our pain better than C.S. Lewis when he wrote, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our consciences, but shouts to us in our pain…It is His microphone to rouse a deaf world. It is my view too many people fail to admit that pain and suffering are also a religious matter.
Fr Dino Vanin
Paul Suski
