April 2005 Editorial

Suffering mostly debilitates. It robs human beings of dignity and crushes the spirit. Perhaps a case can be made for saying that suffering has the capacity for ennobling humanity, but if so it can only be made retrospectively. That is, from the perspective of those who have emerged from the tunnel of suffering, it may be deemed to have played some positive role in the shaping of a person’s responses to life for the better. But, for the most part, suffering is unwelcome and we spend our time seeking to avoid it. The religions generally speak of it as something to be overcome, transformed and transcended.

Suffering is also universal. One could venture the proposition that it is the one human experience that crosses all barriers of religion and culture with even an empathetic urgency more telling than other shared experiences, such as love and hospitality. Suffering ignores religious labels; its raw strike knows no boundaries.

Debilitating and universal: whether a Tsunami or a single person wracked in arthritic pain. What of our religious responses? Many ask: “why does such suffering happen?” or “w h e re was God?” These interrogations of religious meaning are not new, but they have been forcefully and rightly put again, especially in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Some theologians and commentators speak of the “mystery of suffering”, hinting that nothing can be explained satisfactorily; we have but partial answers, if that. Or we might resort to the Buddhist solution of not asking questions that serve no practical purpose and must remain “undetermined”; they distract us from the saving task of rescue and offering relief. We can concur with both responses. Yet can more be said, however hesitatingly? Let us make three points, briefly.

Firstly, the religious interpretation will vary according to the framework . After the Tsunami religious responses appeared which attempted to “explain” the suffering in a way compatible with the general thrust of a tradition’s patterns of believing. Roughly speaking, those from Western traditions explored the possibility of providential theism and those from Eastern backgrounds relied on the concepts of karma and rebirth . But there is a stubbornness about suffering that refutes easy explanation. For providentialist theists God did not intervene and that means that divine omnipotence must remain self-limiting in some sense. For believers in karma and reincarnation, the scale of suffering seems to defy any simple or just calculus of personal merit and blame. For all views, this world remains a place of partial fulfillment, and in this respect also a place of partial explanations.

Second, for religious consciousness the root experiences of transcendent bliss and unity are paramount and refuse to be compromised, even in the face of underserved and terrible suffering. For example, in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Job remains the classic response to the question of “why suffering?” Job dismisses the comforting words of conventional explanations and protests his innocence before God. But by the end of the book his vision of the divine fascinans is sufficient to relativize all attempts at explanation. The experience of “God” transforms the anger, humiliation and degradation caused by suffering.

Third, in terms of the praxis of i n t e r religious relations, the practical responses to the Tsunami have been impressive beyond words. As suffering transcends boundaries, so have the responses. People from many traditions have gathered in liturgical solidarity and acted through mutual compassion. More money has been pledged to this project than any other compassionate cause. This is one more sign that the interreligious movement is gaining maturity. It remains for us to build on these achievements so that we extend our co-operation and commitment for the sake of building justice and compassion in all of life’s seemingly intractable and challenging arenas.

Finally, it is important to stress that the religions are not involved in competitive comparison for the best explanation of suffering. All religions provide an approach to life, orientated on a transcendent purpose, that seeks to overcome the obstacles to human flourishing, of which suffering is the most debilitating. They invite us not to indulge in self-centred attitudes, words, and actions, but instead to practice kindness, forgiveness, tolerance, patience, and so on. Further, they ask us not to be satisfied with the elimination only of our own suffering, but to work for the re m oval of others’ suffering. As Mahatma Gandhi puts it beautifully, “there cannot be happiness to any one of us, unless it is won for all.”

Alan Race, Jim Kenney, Seshagiri Rao