Embracing Paradox - Bad News for Good People

Introduction
This semester I have enjoyed speaking to you twice. Each time I have talked about paradox. The first time I talked about how sometimes we have vision but still cannot see. Then I talked about the paradox of grace which extends good news even to those like Leslie who have struggled.

As I told you last time, you will likely hear me say much about this theme of paradox over the months and years because I believe that learning to grapple with complexity and ambiguity and apparent paradox is perhaps the single most essential element of a liberal arts education.

Today, as I did last time, I wanted to talk to you about my philosophy of education; how growth is all about stretching ourselves intellectually, morally, and spiritually. But that was before I reflected on what the last six weeks have meant. That was before Kosovo, Littleton, and a call from Barnes Hospital

Events Since 3/22!
Kosovo:
On March 24, only 2 days after I spoke to you last time, bombing began over Kosovo. In the few weeks since that time, over 500,000 ethnic Albanians have been thrown out of their homes and country and forced to flee to refugee camps in neighboring states. 750,000 or more are homeless. There are countless dead, including many civilians from NATO airstrikes but also from the genocidal murders uncovered by satellite photographs of mass graves.

The U.S. has already spent $1 billion on this undeclared war, and has appropriated a total of $12 billion more. That is enough by itself to feed all the starving people on earth for months or even an entire year. While 3 American soldiers have been released, the bombing continues, people are dying every day, and with almost daily alusions to Vietnam, we are haunted by the question, "Where will it end?"

Littleton:
On April 20, at 11:25, 2 young men about your age, with hearts poisoned by anger and self-indulgence, deliberately savaged the place where they were supposed to be learning. It was Hitler's birthday. Time magazine, on their front cover, called them the "Monsters Next Door."

And what was perhaps more horrifying than even the murders themselves-if that is possible-was their laughing attitude about it all. I believe it was in Tolstoy's A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich that he says the purest form of evil is laughter in the face of suffering.

Among the most sickening accounts of Littleton was that of a young girl interviewed within hours of the shootings describing how she had begged not to be killed, and then watched as her assailant agreed but turned with a laugh to shoot her friend in the face instead.

And we have all now heard of Cassie Bernall. When she was asked by one of the killers, "Do you believe in God?" she paused, and then apparently quite aware of what the consequences might be, responded, "Yes, I do." Her fellow student, turned murder asked her "Why?" then killed her before she could answer. Last night I did a web search for her name and found 22,000 entries in news groups alone!

Barnes:
On April 1, I spent a glorious day at the zoo with my daughter. It was warm & sunny, and one of those special father-daughter times. We even slept on the bench in front of the brown bears, her favorites. We were waiting for my wife Ellen to have a routine bone scan as she established new doctors in a new area. Over the next few days, we had a wonderful Easter with our son joining us too.

But after they both had left, on Monday, April 5, Ellen took a call which you all now know told her that her cancer had returned after 11 years. Yesterday we took another call which gave us mixed answers. It set the stage for treatment but left the long term prognosis very unclear. So there were tears in the Mannoia house last night.

Suffering
In one way or another each of these events since the last time I spoke to you is actually about suffering. So I would like to talk to you today a little about what that means. It is surely a sober and somber topic. And in many ways it is both uninteresting and difficult. It is uninteresting, at least sometimes for young people because often you have not experienced it much. Of course for many of you, that is not at all true. Abuse and prejudice are no respecter of age. But for others, suffering is a stranger. And to hear of the suffering of others hardly makes a dent because young people cannot help see themselves as immortal. Bad things...even Littleton…only happen to other people; it could never happen here, to me.

But the subject is also difficult. That is because first, the nature of the human spirit is to close out of memory those experiences which have involved suffering. People just don't remember it well. But second, and what is more, even to those for whom it is fresh, suffering is a shocking kind of experience. There is profound initial grief; the kind I have described to friends over the past weeks that makes you want to throw up every moment. You can't believe it is happening to you. But quickly it becomes shock. And shock numbs the experience of suffering into an anesthesia which is dreamlike and unreal.

You don't feel anything at all. Just look at the TV images of refugees streaming from Kosovo and you will see an empty look which explains why it is hard to talk about suffering. So it is difficult to say much about suffering because one who suffers can hardly tell how they feel. I stand before you numb, finding it hard to feel much of anything at all, and so it seems with little to say. But let me try.

Philosophical and Pastoral
Suffering is a big part of the problem of evil. That is the longstanding problem of how a God who is all powerful and at the same time all loving can allow evil to occur at all. For millennia Christians have struggled to understand this. In addressing the problem one must not fail to distinguish 2 approaches: the pastoral and the philosophical.

The pastoral is supportive, concerned with the heart of the sufferer, while unfortunately, the philosophical often seems cold and calculating. But since here at Greenville we are engaged in the life of the mind please understand my intentions. My words are hardly soothing to me or to any others who suffer. What I want to offer you today is not a triumphalist statement of anyone's victory over suffering, but rather a model or at least a testimony for embracing that paradox of suffering which makes it a means to share in Christ's suffering and become like him. How can that be?

C.S. Lewis
According to C. S. Lewis, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, and shouts in our pain…it is His megaphone." (p93). What does this mean?

A. In the first place, pain shatters our illusion that all is well, taking with it our concept of self-sufficiency. As St. Augustine put it, "God wants to give us something but our hands are full." To put it more plainly, the proud are in constant danger of finding the present life so good we do not turn to God. This is especially true for the young and unfortunately, for those in academics.

It is almost an endemic sin that academics, whether faculty or students, suffer from the illusions of self-sufficiency. It is surely very American! But pain shatters self-sufficiency and allows instead only true self-sufficiency…the presence of God in us. But "God in us" is not happiness. Instead it is character building, shaping us to be what we are designed to be; willfully submissive to our creator and Lord.

In James, chapter 1, we read "Count it all joy my brothers, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (James 1:2). In a word, suffering is "soul-building." It may be joy, but it is not happiness.

B. But there is more to suffering than soul-building. There is a mysterious cosmic participation at stake as well. Because the fall has alienated our desire from God's will, the only way to be SURE we act for God's sake is if we act contrary to our desire; contrary to what we like. The ultimate test or expression of a creature's highest good, her return to God, is obedience born of will stripped naked of desire.

So acting out surrender REQUIRES pain. Only one motive is then possible, surrender to God in us. So when we do act FROM God in us, prompted by the presence of suffering which authenticates our surrender, we are live instruments of creation, participating with our brother Jesus himself in UNDOING Adam's act. This is why martyrdom, whether that of our great Suffering Servant or our own, is the ultimate Christian act.

Suffering And Education
We have talked of physical suffering in Kosovo and Littleton. And we have imagined the numbing effects of emotional suffering too. But what of mental suffering? Here, unsurprisingly, my words circle back to the liberal arts. Oswald Chambers says there is always a struggle for self-expression: Make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. (p350). Our position is not ours till we make it ours by suffering. The struggle is to express your inarticulate feelings. Liberation comes after suffering. That is the reason that suffering, even in the apparently trivial way you may feel you are doing so now during the days of your final examinations, is essential to the liberating arts and to this place.

Paradox
So after all this, what is the paradox of suffering? Let me suggest two answers:

First, suffering is a good but not one to be pursued. One might suppose that if something is good, it should be sought out and cultivated. But this is not true for suffering. It is a good means but not a good end. What is good is the submission to the will of God, and suffering can help. As Oswald Chambers puts it (223), "No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God's will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not. (310) Thank God for a broken heart but don't ask for it." With this in mind we can avoid the danger that suffering will be for naught. As Chambers puts it, "Too often we sit on the threshold of God's purpose and die in self-pity aided by sympathetic friends." The point is to embrace our suffering though we have not invited it.

That last phrase from Chambers illustrates a second paradox related to suffering. It is the paradox that, sympathy, our response to suffering in others, is a good to be offered but not a good to be received. It is dangerous to those who suffer because it can engender self-pity As C.S. Lewis puts it (108), "Indignation at others' sufferings, though a generous passion, needs to be well managed lest it steal away patience and humility from those who suffer, and plant anger and cynicism in their stead." Chambers argues the same principle (223), "No saint dare interfer with the discipline of suffering in another saint…..The people who do us good are not those who symnpathize with us, they always hinder, because sympathy enervates….Jesus said self-pity was of the devil (Matt16:23)." (Cf. 124)

This sounds altogether cold and ungracious. How can the tender sympathies of friends be dangerous? I have felt the kindness of such sympathy deeply over the past weeks. Remember, the danger here is not for the one who offers it, but for the one who may allow it to detract from the work suffering must do in his heart. That is the work I want for myself and should you suffer, the work I would pray for you too.

Bernall's Poem
So with all this talk of suffering, perhaps little has been said. Let me finish by taking us back to Cassie Bernall, perhaps, just perhaps, a 17-year old Littleton martyr. According to the Boston Globe, on the night of her death, Cassie's brother Chris found a poem Cassie had written just two days prior to her death. It read:

"Now I have given up on everything else
I have found it to be the only way
To really know Christ and to experience
The mighty power that brought
Him back to life again, and to find
Out what it means to suffer and to
Die with him. So, whatever it takes
I will be one who lives in the fresh
Newness of life of those who are
Alive from the dead."

Jim Mannoia