Scene I
Time: Current time.
Setting: At a modern,
University Research Hospital, Patient Wife sits in the waiting room outside the
Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU). She is waiting to visit her husband,
Patient, who is in SICU after having the first of two emergency surgeries. As a result of the surgery, he is now on
dialysis. The doctors are waiting for his condition to stabilize so that they
can continue surgery. Pastor Bubba, a friend of her husband. is seated with
her.
Characters:
Patient
Wife Doctor Pastor
Bubba Viktor Frankl
Lady
Philosophy Kathleen Norris Dorothee Soelle
Patient
Wife: Why did this happen to my husband? He has had so many health problems. He was born with his kidney issues which
required many surgeries. What did he
ever do to deserve such awful health difficulties? I know that he hasn’t always taken the best
care of himself. His diabetes has made everything worse and his heart disease is
a result of the diabetes. But this just happened so suddenly.
Pastor
Bubba:
I am sure the doctors are doing everything they can. We just need to trust God. Let’s claim his
full recovery! You and I agree on that,
so God will make it happen!
Doctor comes into the waiting room to find
Patient Wife in order to give her an update.
Doctor: Your husband is
holding his own. He isn’t in any pain
right now. We have him stabilized.
Patient
Wife:
I am glad that he isn’t in pain, but he is suffering! He has tubes coming out
from all over and he is surrounded by machines which are keeping him alive. People
are poking and prodding him. You aren’t even sure that he can undergo any more
surgery.
Doctor: Well, we are doing all we can for him. (With that comment, the doctor leaves.)
Patient
Wife:
Yes, they are doing all they can for his
physical needs, but he is suffering. Why did God let this happen? How can this be God’s plan? This is simply
awful! They haven’t really finished the surgery. They had to stop and wait
until his potassium went down and now I’ve had to sign the papers for dialysis
to help his body cope. He will be so
upset when he wakes up. That is if he
wakes up!
Pastor
Bubba: God has a plan. Even if he dies, he is a
Christian and will go to heaven. Heaven is great and he will be just fine.
Patient
Wife
(staring at Pastor Bubba in disbelief): Was
that supposed to be comforting? I think that you just need to say a prayer and
let me alone.
Pastor Bubba says a short prayer for
healing and then leaves. Once Patient Wife is alone, she falls asleep from
exhaustion. When she awakes, she finds
that she has been joined by several others in the waiting area. Kathleen
Norris, Viktor Frankl, Lady Philosophy and Dorothee Soelle are seated around
her.
Patient
Wife:
I am sorry. I was dreaming. Was I
talking in my sleep?
Frankl: Not really
talking. You mumbled something about suffering. I think.
Patient
Wife:
Well, I was just struggling with the suffering my husband is experiencing, and
why this is happening? He has endured so much suffering in his life!
Lady
Philosophy:
God has a plan even when someone is
suffering. The world is not “merely a string of random events but the result of
divine reason.”[1]
Patient
Wife:
So, you are saying God caused this? Why
would God cause this to happen to him now?
Lady
Philosophy:
Yes, surely everything happens as a part
of God’s plan. “If the true causes of
something are not understood,…it can appear to be random and confused. But
although you cannot understand the way things are ordered in the universe, you
can rest assured that a good governor does indeed keep order and has a plan.
You should not doubt that everything happens as it should.”[2]
Patient
Wife:
So, we should just accept the way things are because that is how God has
planned it? How can God be good and
allow such suffering to happen?
Dorothee
Soelle:
I also question this! Lady Philosophy,
I’m not sure you understand what you are saying! You seem to be saying that God is a
Sadist. How can God be good and inflict
suffering on people?
Lady
Philosophy:
God’s plan offers suffering as correction and self-knowledge. God can use
suffering for a good purpose.[3] “Every kind of fortune, whether pleasing or
painful, is granted to men for the purpose of rewarding or testing good men, or
else of punishing or correcting those who are bad. Every kind of fortune is
good, then, because it is just or useful.”[4]
Dorothee
Soelle:
Useful or just? I cannot agree with you! If God either directly or indirectly
causes suffering, then we truly are in danger of seeing God as sadistic![5]
Patient
Wife:
I don’t believe in a sadistic God! If I understand you correctly, Professor
Soelle, you are saying that if God causes suffering, then God cannot be good
and loving.
Dorothee
Soelle:
I am willing to give up God’s omnipotence to preserve God’s loving nature.
Lady
Philosophy:
Surely God is good and loving! God is
the highest and most perfect good that there is![6]
Patient
Wife:
But, that takes me back to my first question! Why would a good and loving God
allow suffering?
Dorothee
Soelle:
Surely, Lady Philosophy will tell you again that suffering is part of God’s
plan, Providence. I, on the other hand, do not believe that there is a
satisfactory answer to your question. There really is no answer when people ask
“Why?”[7]
Viktor
Frankl:
I must agree with Professor Soelle here. When suffering occurs, we often feel compelled
to ask “Why?” But, my question to you is
whether answering that question will help your husband to improve?
Patient
Wife:
I hadn’t thought about it like that. No. Probably not.
Viktor
Frankl:
No, probably not. Because whether we know why or not, we still have to deal
with suffering. “Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and
death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”[8]
Patient
Wife:
Well, if God doesn’t cause suffering, then what purpose does it serve? This
suffering seems meaningless right now.
What is good or useful in his suffering?
Viktor
Frankl:
When you ask about the meaning in suffering, I think you are on the right track.
The best questions to ask include “What can I learn from this?” and “What meaning
can I gain from this?”
Lady
Philosophy:
See, this actually sounds like what I was saying about God sending suffering
for corrections—so that we can learn from it!
Viktor
Frankl:
This is where I actually believe we differ, Lady Philosophy. I do not believe there is some intrinsic
meaning to suffering, but that we can make meaning from suffering.
Patient
Wife:
Well, what do you suggest can be learned from what is happening to my husband?
Viktor
Frankl:
That is a harder question, because the answer is different for each person. One
way that a person can find meaning in her life is by the attitude she takes
toward unavoidable suffering.
Patient
Wife:
Well, this suffering was definitely unavoidable.
Viktor
Frankl:
When we are facing a fate that cannot be changed, meaning in life can still be
found. “For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human
potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph,
to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able
to change a situation,…we are challenged to change ourselves.”[9]
Patient
Wife:
Change ourselves? At this point, changing anything about this situation seems
impossible. Right now, it is merely about surviving another day.
Kathleen
Norris:
I think I understand where you are because I lost my own husband. Through that
experience, I learned much about dealing with suffering. “Disasters will
strike, and great blessings will come. Our difficult and glorious task is to
live through it all.”[10]
Patient
Wife:
This sounds like a very nice platitude and I would like to believe that. This disaster
has struck and my husband is surviving. Where is the glory and blessing? He
still is suffering.
Kathleen
Norris:
If your husband can see Christ suffering with him, then he can experience a
redemption of the suffering. “Christianity
teaches that the trials in our lives can be linked to Christ’s suffering and
‘redemptive gift’ if we intend that they should.”[11]
Patient
Wife:
That sounds great but in this moment I am not sure how either he or I can do
that!
Kathleen
Norris:
My husband, David “never called his many afflictions his share of the
sufferings of Christ. But ultimately that is what it was for him, and this gave
him strength.”[12]
Patient
Wife:
Maybe this is something that will come in time. I am not sure how I create
meaning in this moment or how he can create any meaning when he is sedated. It
is horrific to watch him attached to machines that are keeping him alive. I have no doubt that he would be dead if
those machines were not breathing for him and if they weren’t dialyzing him. Watching
him suffer is difficult and unnerving. He is a good and decent person. He is a
servant of God and has given his life serving God in the church. This suffering has isolated him. Where is this
God who he has served?
Viktor Frankl: This is not a
question that I’m willing to discuss. My concern as a psychiatrist has to do
with surviving suffering, not issues of faith and religion.
Kathleen Norris: Where
is God? That is a question that I wrestled with as my husband was dying. There
were times I couldn’t even pray. I may not have felt God’s presence but I still
believed God was present. “I believed in the reality of God’s providence and
love, even when I did not sense its presence in my own life.”[13]
Lady Philosophy: Yes!
Providence! God is present through the working out of Providence!
Kathleen Norris: Lady
Philosophy, I am not sure that I completely agree with you about your idea of
providence. However, where I sensed God’s presence was through the gift of
Christian community. “If God did not seem to be there for me, it was enough to
know that God was active in the lives of others.”[14]
Dorothee Soelle: Yes,
community helps us through suffering. For surely, “all extreme suffering evokes
the experience of being forsaken by God.”[15]
Mystical theology helps us to understand that God is present in the
suffering.
(Just then the
doors to SICU are unlocked for visiting hours.)
Patient Wife: I have to see
my husband now, but I hope we will talk again. It doesn’t feel like we have
finished this conversation.
[1] Boethius, The Consolation of
Philosophy, trans. David R. Slavitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2008), 25.
[2] Boethius, 129.
[3] Ibid., 138-9.
[4] Ibid., 141-2.
[5] Dorothee Soelle, Suffering, trans. Everett R. Kalin (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 26.
[6] Boethius, 87-88.
[7] Soelle, 155.
[8] Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search
for Meaning, (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2006), 67.
[9] Frankl, 112.
[10] Kathleen Norris, Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and A
Writer’s Life (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008),
222.
[11] Ibid., 251.
[12] Ibid, 246.
[13] Ibid., 237.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Soelle, 86.
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