Scene III
Time: A year has
passed since Scene I.
Setting: Patient Wife is now sitting in the waiting room of the Transplant Clinic
where her husband has a follow up appointment after receiving a kidney
transplant in the previous month.
Characters:
Patient
Wife Patient Pastor Bubba
Viktor Frankl Lady Philosophy Dorothee Soelle Kathleen Norris
Patient Wife: This year has been a long journey. It has been a
year since the surgery that put my husband into dialysis. Now he has a new
kidney and is recovering well from the transplant!
Lady Philosophy: You
see, I was right, this has been Providence’s plan. Your husband has received
the kidney and been restored. In the
process, many others have been touched and uplifted by his witness. God was at work in bringing him to this
place. “For
all things desire the good, and the good is the goal and end of every thing.”[1]
It is through Providence that all things happen.
Patient Wife: Believing that it was
God’s plan for my husband to have gone through all that he did in the last year
does not encourage my belief in a good and just God. Surely, God is love and God loves
God’s creation. I would rather err on
the side of saying that God is not omnipotent than to ascribe this suffering to
God. A God who is all-good and not all-powerful is more attractive to me.
Lady Philosophy: But God is omnipotent! Through suffering God’s providence provides both
correction and self-knowledge.[2] When we rightly understand
that God is the cause of the suffering and it is given for our betterment, then
we can grow in our faith.
Patient Wife: I am sorry, but
I just can’t agree with you on the nature of Providence.
Dorothy Soelle: Good you are to
challenge that. You would be a masochist for believing that God would be the one
who serves up such suffering which you should just accept. Surely, God has
worked through the ministry that your husband has offered to others that are
suffering like him. He has been in solidarity with them. He has offered love
and peace as he suffered alongside them.
Patient Wife: His focus on the
suffering of others has to some degree eased his own.
Viktor
Frankl:
It seems to me that your husband has survived and thrived this year because he
found a purpose in his suffering. A
person can lose everything but he will always have the freedom to choose his
attitude.[3] He
found a meaningful way to spend his time and he endured the suffering that was
imposed on him.
Kathleen Norris: God provides “a
way where there is no way; this is what God and only God can provide. This is salvation….
As we move from death to life we discover grace….”[4]
(Pastor Bubba enters the waiting room door and sits
down with Patient Wife.)
Pastor Bubba: Well, I’m glad that I found you! How is your husband doing? I’m sure that he is praising God for the
kidney!
Patient Wife: They are running a test on him right now. I am
waiting with my friends here for his return.
I was just discussing the idea of Providence and why there is suffering
in the world.
Pastor Bubba: I always say the rain falls on the just and the
unjust alike. Everything happens for a reason.
Patient Wife: Do people really find comfort in the things you
say?
Pastor Bubba: I don’t know. I haven’t ever really asked. They usually ask me to pray.
Patient Wife: Pastor Bubba, I believe the calling of pastors
is not to offer platitudes, but to sit with people in their suffering. Perhaps even sitting in silence because none
of our words can change their suffering. We can sit in silence as Job’s friends
finally learn to do. Maybe then, our presence can offer the reassurance that
God has not abandoned them.
Pastor Bubba: Is this what
your friends here have taught you?
Patient Wife: I am not sure
how much I have learned from each of them, but each has given voice to things I
have heard at various times in my life.
I have experienced a lot of suffering personally and I have walked along
side persons who have suffered.
Certainly, though, this past year has been the hardest of my life as
well as my husband’s life. Each one of
my friends has offered something in trying to explain suffering that I would
perhaps think worthy of understanding. Each has offered other statements with
which I would disagree. In some ways they find small agreements, but in other
ways they are vastly different.
I
believe that all of them have challenged me in some way to think more deeply
about suffering. Lady Philosophy, I
still find myself unwilling to agree that God causes all suffering through
Providence. Yet, what I really
appreciate is your strong belief that God is good.
Lady Philosophy: I am
sorry that you do not agree with me, but truly God desires our very best and
sometimes that involves suffering.
Patient Wife: Like Dorothee
Soelle, I cannot square this idea of God causing suffering with my own beliefs.
I find Soelle convincing when she argues that this makes for a sadistic god.
Professor Soelle, I found your critique of classical theodicy to be very
helpful. I also appreciate your analysis of Jesus in Gethsemane for it results
in an understanding that we can be strengthened when we accept and embrace
suffering in our lives.
Dorothee Soelle: “We can
say that in every prayer an angel waits for us, since every prayer changes the
one who prays, strengthens him….”[5] Suffering forces us to pay attention.
Patient Wife: Yes, that is
what happens to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and may happen to us when we
are suffering. Kathleen Norris, I know you appreciate this analysis as well.
Yet, some of what you tried to say about suffering was not helpful to me in the
midst of the emergency a year ago. What you said seemed to trivialize the
suffering that was occurring and minimize the pain of the moment. As time has passed and I can reflect on what has
transpired, I find more value in your thoughts.
Kathleen Norris: I
am glad to offer my own personal experience because as I have written, sometimes what
looks like a hopeless situation from the outside can be very different for
those who are living through it.[6]
Patient
Wife:
Perhaps, Viktor Frankl, you have been the most influential to my personal
thinking. As you discussed meaning in suffering, you emphasized that it is up
to the individual to find a way to make meaning which gives one a purpose for
living. In many practical ways, I have seen this lived out through my husband
in the last year. Asking the question why was not a comfort. Finding a way to
give purpose to each day, my husband was able to survive a very difficult year.
Viktor
Frankl:
I am glad you found it useful. This is one of the reasons that I was able to survived
the horrors of my own life, so that I could write my book to help others with
their personal suffering.
Patient
Wife:
Finally, James Cone is not here today, but his writing about encountering God
speaks directly to my understanding of how we manage to work through pain and
suffering. Within my personal life, the
suffering I experienced prior to this year, led me to read several books on
grief and suffering. These have been
formative. In some ways they touch on
what you all have said, but it other ways, they go even deeper into this
encounter with God and learning from our suffering. Henri
Nouwen’s book With Burning Hearts
helped me to think about suffering in very practical terms.[7]
Nouwen poses the question of how we respond to suffering as an either/or
choice. We can chose either resentment (and bitterness) or gratitude.
Viktor Frankl: I agree with
Nouwen that we have a choice. Often
those who chose resentment will not survive suffering and remain intact.
Patient Wife: Yes, Nouwen advocates
for gratitude rather than resentment.
Through acceptance of the suffering, one must also acknowledge any part
the individual played in causing the situation.
Dorothee Soelle: I
certainly advocate for acceptance, but I am not sure about acknowledging having
a part in the situation.
Patient Wife: I believe he
means this more for the suffering that we bring upon ourselves, perhaps from
engaging in sinful behavior. I doubt he
would say that we have a part in causing our own oppression which is the
suffering you generally are discussing.
Dorothee Soelle: Ok, I
can see that.
Patient Wife: Gratitude
comes after acceptance and includes asking the question, “What can I learn from
this?” For Nouwen, the reframing of how
we look at suffering in our life, allows us to gain a modicum of peace and
healing.
Kathleen Norris: I think
perhaps that is the goal of my writing about suffering.
Patient Wife: Norris, I can
see that. The other book which has formed my prior understanding of suffering
is Naming the Silences by Stanley
Hauerwas.[8] I believe that Hauerwas offers a critique of
a number of the issues around suffering and finally arrives at the conclusion
that ultimately suffering is about God seeing our suffering. In his book, Hauerwas takes a narrative
approach as he discusses the plot from the novel, The Blood of the Lamb whose main character is Wanderhope. Hauerwas offers
this in summarizing his arguments.
“Of course, we see Wanderhope ends up at the foot of the cross under a
Jesus crying tears of cake frosting. The
suggestion is that Wanderhope is comforted by a God who suffers with us, who
can share our agonies—who has, in short, become like us. There is no hope for us if our only hope in
the face of suffering is that ‘we can learn from it,’ or that we can use what
we learn from the treatment of that suffering to overcome eventually what has
caused it…, or that we can use suffering to organize our energies to mount
effective protests against oppression. Rather, our only hope lies in whether we
can place alongside the story of the pointless suffering of a child like Carol
a story of suffering that helps us know we are not thereby abandoned.”[9]
The image that has stayed with me is that of Jesus
crying with us as Christ suffers with us. I do not believe that Hauerwas is
saying that we can’t learn from suffering or use it to overcome oppression.
Rather, I believe he is saying that these cannot be our only hope. Our hope as Christians is centered in the cross.
Pastor Bubba: It is all
about Jesus, isn’t it?
Patient Wife: I am not sure
how much you have really gotten out of this conversation.
It is easy to stand outside of suffering and have
theological ideas about what it means. I hope that the skill you learn as a
pastor is to sit with those who are suffering and listen. Bring God’s presence
to them and listen. Maybe you can say a prayer, too.
Bibliography
Boethius. The
Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2008.
Brennan, Frank. “Suffering Seeks a Voice.” In
Perspectives on Human Suffering.
Edited by Norelle Lickiss and Jeff Malpas. 261–71. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012.
Cassel, E. J. “The Nature of Suffering and
the Goals of Medicine.” New England
Journal of Medicine 306, no. 11 (March 1982). 639–45.
Chittister, Joan D. Scarred by Struggle,
Transformed by Hope. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
2003.
Cone, James H. The Spirituals & the
Blues: an Interpretation. Mary Knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991.
Cooper-White, Pamela. “Suffering.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical
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Coulehan, Jack. “To Suffer With: The Poetry
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Springer, 2012.
Frankl, Viktor E. Frankl. Man’s Search for
Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
Gutiérrez, Gustavo. On Job: God-Talk and the
Suffering of the Innocent. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell. Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 1987.
Hauerwas, Stanley.
Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and
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Publishing Company, 1990.
Newsom, Carol. The
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Norris, Kathleen. Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and A
Writer’s Life. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.
Nouwen, Henri J.M.
With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the
Eucharistic Life. Mary Knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994.
Soelle, Dorothee. Suffering. Translated by Everett R.
Kalin. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975.
Wiesel, Elie. The
Trial of God. New York: Schocken
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Nicholas. Lament for a Son. Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987.
[1] Boethius, 97.
[3] Frankl, 66.
[5] Soelle, 86.
[7] Henri J.M. Nouwen, With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the
Eucharistic Life (Mary Knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994).
[8] Stanley Hauerwas, Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the
Problem of Suffering (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1990)
[9] Ibid., 34.
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