One of the most pressing questions people have, young students especially, has to do with the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? And, if God exists, how can he allow so much suffering and evil in the world? Questions about the tragedies that befall the innocent are very puzzling to say the least. They are downright scandalous for some, to the point where many have simply rejected outright the very notion that a good God exists.
The philosophical resolutions of such questions are certainly interesting and perhaps persuasive to a good number of people. They usually include the point that human beings have the power of free choice and, when we choose to do things our way instead of God’s way, life begins to fall apart. A more sophisticated response is that God is all powerful and he is supremely and perfectly good, which means that 1) he wills your perfect happiness and 2) has the power to bring about your greatest happiness; hence, whatever God allows to happen to you in your life, he allows ultimately for your greatest happiness.
There is nothing wrong with these arguments per se; they are sound. However, they are also insufficient. One does not want to be engaging in this kind of discourse when in the presence of someone who is broken by the loss of her own son, or who has been suffering from clinical depression all her life, or who lives with PTSD as a result of being exposed to the horrors of war or the evils that are around us but hidden from most people — except police officers and undercover agents. It’s much easier to be impressed with certain abstract ideas in the presence of like-minded people who are far removed from actual suffering, but when in the presence of a person who is in deep darkness and suffers in ways that we’ve never experienced, we begin to sense the inadequacies of our neat and tidy solutions.
If we were to push these ideas onto our suffering brethren, ignoring our deepest intuitions to keep quiet, we’d see firsthand that our answers only increase their feelings of alienation, isolation, and darkness. The only response their situations call for is utter silence. We just need to be present to them in their suffering, for there are no words that can relieve them of their darkness and the pain they must live with. The only thing that will bring them any sort of consolation is our silent presence, which acknowledges our inability to console them with words, ideas, platitudes, or rational discourse.
Their suffering is a great mystery, for their lives and all that has happened that plunged them into darkness is in many ways beyond our ability to fully comprehend. It is opaque and larger than us, and our task is to remain quiet and listen, to share in their suffering, to participate in it, to feel it. The more we feel it, the more we relieve them of their loneliness and sense of abandonment.
And that is why Good Friday is the ultimate answer to the mystery of suffering. God does not deliver us a series of premises that entail a conclusion that is supposed to satisfy the mind. Rather, God the Son descends among us, joins himself to our human nature, and enters into our darkness. The light of the world enters into the darkness of human suffering, not because he wants to understand our suffering–God is all knowing, so he does not lack any understanding. Rather, he joins himself to our flesh, our suffering, our human situation; tastes misunderstanding and rejection; becomes the object of death threats and attempts on his life; is rejected by some of his disciples who couldn’t tolerate his claim to be the Bread of Life; and experiences the worst physical suffering — his passion and death — all this in order to be silently present in the sufferings of each human person, the sufferings we have undergone and are currently undergoing and have yet to undergo in our lives. He who is Life Itself dies in order to be present in our death, that we might find him there. He does all this so that our suffering will not be an experience of complete and utter desolation and loneliness.
Of course, we still suffer, but there is a divine presence in that suffering, a Person who is there paying close attention to each one of us. Scripture assures us that this Person, this presence is even in the very bowels of hell: “If I climb to the heavens you are there, if I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there” (Ps 139, 8).
I have always said to my mental health patients that they accompany Christ in his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and he accompanies them in theirs — while Peter, James, and John sleep. The disciples could not stay awake, but my patients stay awake, for their depression keeps them from the peace of restful slumber. That is their gift to Christ and it is the deepest sharing in his passion. Moreover, friendships are based on common qualities, and my patients have something in common with Christ, namely innocent suffering and mental anguish, and this common factor establishes an identity that is an eternal source of joy.
God is so good that he chooses to taste complete alienation even from himself. God the Son experiences the anguish of the Father’s silence: Jesus receives no response from God to his anguished prayer to let this cup pass him by (Mk 14, 32-42), and there is no answer to his final words on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15, 34). This very lament had been uttered centuries earlier by a victim of injustice:
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why so far from my call for help, from my cries of anguish? My God, I call by day, but you do not answer; by night, but I have no relief (Ps 22, 2-3).
The psalmist’s words became Christ’s words, or better yet, they were Christ’s words from the beginning, for God the Son is eternal, embracing all time and place. Like the psalmist, we too keep Christ company when we suffer what he suffered. Nothing but the silence of his presence joined with ours adequately responds to the mystery of suffering. This alone gives us the strength to trust that our darkness and death are not the final word; the final word will be uttered three days later.
Image: “L’église Saint-Martin (Ciry-Salsogne)” (CC BY 2.0) by dalbera
Douglas McManaman was born in Toronto and grew up in Montreal. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Jerome’s College (Waterloo) and theology at the University of Montreal. He is a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Toronto and ministers to those with mental illness. He taught Religion, Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge for 32 years in Southern Ontario, and he is the current chaplain of the Toronto Chapter of the Catholic Teachers Guild. He is a Senior Lecturer at Niagara University and teach Marriage Prep for the Archdiocese of Toronto. His recent books include Why Be Afraid? (Justin Press, 2014) and The Logic of Anger (Justin Press, 2015), and Christ Lives! (Justin Press, 2017), as well as The Morally Beautiful (Amazon.ca), Introduction to Philosophy for Young People (Amazon.ca), Readings in the Theory of Knowledge, Basic Catholicism, and A Treatise on the Four Cardinal Virtues. He has two podcast channels: Podcasts for the Religious, and Podcasts for Young Philosophers. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Ontario, Canada.
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