BSP #9 Q&A - Question 2: Suffering
Edmond May 25th, 2009BSP #9 Q&A
Question 2 (Group I): You said after baptism, it doesn’t mean less sufferings/wounds, maybe even more. For those non-believers will ask: why we trust God if we will have more sufferings or wounds. For what? How should we answer this question?
The non-believers will indeed ask why and what for. This is exactly why we need to evangelize: to help them understand the true meaning of suffering and the real reason why we choose to follow Christ.
We choose to follow Christ not because we want earthly goods and prosperities, including physical health and success in everything we do. These things are important and desirable but they are not the reason why we choose to follow Christ. In fact, if somebody comes to the Church asking for baptism because he wants good health and prosperity, he’s come to the wrong place! He will do better if he goes to a health club, a hospital, or a bank.
As Christians, what we care is not so much our bodies but our souls. Earthly goods and prosperities are important to our bodies but cannot do a thing for our souls. As a matter of fact, obsession with earthly riches and successes has an adverse impact on our souls. Similarly, earthly sufferings in the forms of poverty, poor health, business failures, unemployment, etc. also have no direct bearings on our spiritual well-being. However, when put to good use, suffering can help strengthen our souls and bring us closer to God.
This Christian mentality – the mentality that sees our spiritual well being as more important than our physical well being – enables us to overlook the ups and downs of earthly gains and losses, including sufferings.
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May 30th, 2009 at 1:05 am
I would like to share my reflection on this question of suffering and I hope to inspire more sharing of views in the BSP forum.
Suffering comes from evil, after the fall of man. The parable of weeds comes to mind immediately for the present state in the world. The wheat and the weeds are allowed to grow side by side on the same soil. But we are not at the harvest time yet and therefore sufferings are inevitable. Nowhere in the Bible does it teach that Christians are to be exempt from personal sufferings, tribulations and natural disasters that come upon the world. On the contrary, Jesus fortold of his own sufferings and the tribulations that his disciples would face.
I am lifting the following 2 passages from the book – An invitation to joy, selections from the writings and speeches of His Holiness, John Paul II.
These are the words of John Paul II.
“People react to suffering in different ways. But in general it can be said that almost always the individual enters suffering with a typically human protest and with the question “why”. He asks the meaning of his suffering and seeks an answer to this question on the human level. Certainly he often puts this question to God, and to Christ. Furthermore, he cannot help noticing that the one to whom he puts the question is himself suffering and wishes to answer him from the cross, from the heart of his own suffering. Nevertheless, it often takes time, even a long time, for this answer to begin to be interiorly perceived……. Man hears Christ’s saving answer as he himself gradually becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ.”
“In order to perceive the true answer to the “why” of suffering, we must look to the revelation of divine love, the ultimate source of the meaning of everything that exists. Love is also the richest source of the meaning of suffering, which always remain a mystery: we are conscious of the insufficiency and inadequacy of our explanations. Christ causes us to enter into the mystery and to discover the “why” of suffering, as far as we are capable of grasping the sublimity of divine love. “
From Salvifici ( On the Christian meaning of Human Suffering), Vatican City 1984
It seems the question implies a faith that is conditional on less sufferings.
Are we asking for returns, that are immediate and measurable in exhange for our faiths ?
Let us use the characters from Genesis that we learn in this year’s BSP program to speak to us on the question.
In Genesis 12:1-3, God made 3 blessings on Abraham , then Abram .
Does Abraham get instant reward from the blessings ? No.
In Genesis 15:5, the Convenant with Abram, God brought him outside, and said,” Look now toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your seed be.”
Then in Genesis 15:13 “Then the Lord said to Abram: “ Know for certain that your descendents shall be alien in a land, not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.” God did not sugar-coat his blessing. He revealed the suffering of Abram’s descendants.
Sarah and Abraham had to wait 25 years after they “went forth” from Haran and 13 years after Ishmael’s birth before they had Issac, the promised seed. It was a long wait , not to mention , between these years, Abram had to endure several crises.
Genesis 25:7-8 Death of Abraham, “ Then he breathed his last, dying at a ripe old age, grown old after a full life .“ At every stage in his life’s journey he counted himself as blessed even though he did not live to see all the blessings fulfilled.
The moral of the story is that a close intimate relationship with God ,as Abraham did in his frequent conversing and walking with God, does not exempt one from suffering in the earthly journey. Abraham surely earned his blessing of the Convenant by demonstrating the maturity to look beyond immediate gratification towards a heavenly goal.
If we are only concerned with all the earthly rewards, something that are tangible , instant and visible , then we would be like Esau, who is preoccupied with a moment’s pleasure, the satisfying of his immediate hunger on bread and lentil stew in exchange of his birth-right.
Jacob , through deceitful means, sought / stole a blessing but instead found a curse that plagued him with guilt and loneliness, having to run away as a fugitive from his home, his family and his mother. Is this curse or suffering something he brought on to himself?
In Genesis 28:20, Jacob’s dream at Bethel on his way to Haran to meet his uncle, Laban , Jacob made a conditional vow. “If God remains with me, to protect me on this journey I am making and to give me enough bread to eat and clothing to wear and I come back safe to my father’s house, the Lord shall be my God.”
Does this echo what the question is about ?
At this point in his life, Jacob only places hope on God but he is not ready to fully embrace God’s blessing.
Genesis 29-32 , we see Jacob’s endurance and perserverance pays off. Jacob worked 14 years to earn Rachel as his wife and endured a 20-year exile from his family and homeland. Deep inside his heart, he never felt that he had secured his father’s blessing but finally on the shores of Jabbok River, he was reassured he did when he wrestled with God.
Jacob’s story teaches us the power of endurance over suffering for a delayed gratification, his father’s blessing.
Joseph never felt victim to different adverse situations, as when he was sold into slavery by his brothers or unjustly thrown into jail. Joseph interpreted his own suffering as part of God’s plan. He told his brothers, “God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”
I came across a poem, which goes like this.
“I asked for riches, that I might be happy;
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life;
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.”
On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us The Beatitudes — the best means to deal with sufferings, knowing that sufferings are as sure as clouds and shadows.
“Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are they hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”
There is no difference between believers and non-believers, when it comes to suffering, except that the believer looks beyond the present transient predicament to the eternal reward in heaven.
How many times do we find an Esau within us ? Let us look to Abraham, Jacob and Joseph as examples to guide us through trying times in our lives..
Danny Tse
May 30,2009