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Human suffering in the Christian and Jewish traditions
Peter Stravinskas and David Zucker
Christianity interprets human suffering in light of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, believing that this is the only way in which sense can be made of the phenomenon. For Christians, the paschal mystery of Jesus is both revelatory and salvific. What does that mean?
The death of Christ teaches and saves in a manner heretofore unknown to those who have confronted such questions. His innocent and patient endurance of agony and ignominy reveals the depths of God’s love for us, inasmuch as Jesus as the God-man or God-in-the-flesh unites divinity and humanity in his own Person. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in Christ, God literally loved the human race to death. And this completely free, unconditional, absolute form of love is exemplary; what Jesus did was not simply a personal act, never again to be repeated (although his death, like his life, has a once-for-all dimension to it). Indeed, Jesus invites and even demands that his followers pursue his way of suffering and do so with an attitude of calmness and even joy: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23); “Greater love has no one than this, that a one lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13).
Christians are frequently invited to meditate on the death of Christ, which death was offered in atonement for the sins of the whole world, including one’s own, leading to a deeper apprehension of the depravity of human sin and equally the depths of divine love. This type of introspection and sensing personal responsibility for the Passion of Jesus is designed to move the believer to repentance and also to commune lovingly with one’s Savior who, remarkably, was willing to die for sinners, thus proclaiming the immensity of God’s love (cf. Rom 5:8).
Because of the identity of the One who suffered and the way in which he accepted it, this experience was also redemptive, in the tradition of the Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah. As a result, what would normally be ascribed to the realm of human wickedness or human tragedy (i.e., the untimely death of a just man) is instead seen as the greatest event in human history. For in and through Christ’s passion and death, we learn the depths of God’s love which has a transforming power to it; furthermore, in Christ, human beings who believe in him are given the ability to live and die like him. Not by accident, then, has the cross become the symbol par excellence of the Christian faith, so that Christians begin and end their prayer with the sign of the cross; they wear crosses; they top their church buildings with them. The Christian cannot be ashamed of the cross, but like St. Paul, declares: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). Hence, the Catholic Church keeps in her calendar on September 14 the feast known as the Triumph of the Cross, for evil ones did not have the final say: A gracious and loving God took sin and nailed it to the cross, which is how every other sinful act and situation should be handled according to Christian theology. Out of that seemingly negative experience shines forth the love of Almighty God who, as the liturgy says, takes the cross, the instrument of our defeat, and makes of it the instrument of his victory: “Where life was lost, there life has been restored, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Humanly speaking, all suffering is pointless, which St. Paul acknowledged quite frankly: “...but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23). Therefore, this point of view is inseparable from a faith perspective.
How does Christian theology envision the participation of Jesus’ disciples in the reality of suffering? Christians do not avoid it at all costs; nor are they masochistic seekers of suffering. Their attitude should be that of Christ himself, which is described by the evangelists in a telling scene from his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he died. We read in the Gospel according to St. Matthew that two times Jesus prayed to his heavenly Father for relief from the impending torment, but ended each petition with a fervent desire to conform his Will to the Father’s, in the final analysis: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (26:39). Similarly, in his earthly life and ministry, when Jesus encountered the sufferings of others, his instinctive response was to alleviate their sufferings and those who endured these with them; and so, he gained a reputation as One Who healed the sick and even raised the dead, with the result that the people “glorified the God of Israel” (Mt 15:31).
What do Christians take from all this? First of all, suffering is generally to be seen as a negative or an evil, to be avoided or eliminated, whenever possible. Secondly, when suffering is inevitable, it should be regarded as coming from the hand of God who, we trust, intends to bring good from evil. Thirdly, suffering allows us to identify in a most personal and dramatic manner with the suffering Christ; once more, St. Paul is instructive in this case: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church...” (Col 1:24). In other words, the redemption of the world continues until each member of Christ’s mystical body, his Church, suffers with him and in him, for the sake of all. In fact, certain schools of spirituality have asserted that being given a cross to bear is a sign of divine favor; while that can be true in particular circumstances, the great Spanish mystic and theologian of the sixteenth century, St. Teresa of Avila, remained cautious on that score and playfully told the Lord: “If that’s the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few of them!”
And so, several things result in the practical order. Individually, Christians imitate the example of their Lord who did not go out of his way to endure suffering but, once convinced that it was the Father’s holy Will, embraced it willingly and lovingly. Believers in Jesus also accept their various crosses in union with Christ and seek to accomplish good in their difficulties or to allow good to flow from them. Holding that there are things more precious than life itself (e.g., truth, the honor of God), Christians submit to martyrdom rather than betray these ultimate realities, again in imitation of Jesus Christ. At times, suffering can be a punishment for personal sins, about which Jesus warned the paralytic (cf. Jn 5:14), while in other circumstances, suffering can be but a wonderful occasion “that the works of God might be made manifest” in recovery and new life (Jn 9:3).
Beyond that, we do not believe that we ever suffer alone but that Christ is intimately associated with the suffering of each of his brothers and sisters. This realization caused Pope John Paul II to reflect on the situation in this fashion: “If one becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, this happens because Christ has opened his suffering to us, because he himself in his redemptive suffering has become, in a certain sense, a sharer in all human sufferings” (Salvifici Doloris, 20). Yet more, “those who share in the sufferings of Christ preserve in their own sufferings a very special particle of the infinite treasure of the world’s Redemption, and can share this treasure with others (ibid, 27). On behalf of others, either individually or collectively, Christians are called to alleviate human suffering, as their Lord did when he walked this earth. Hence, it should come as no surprise that the largest systems of relief for widows, orphans, the poor, the oppressed, the sick and the dying have been begun and operated under Christian auspices. Clearly, this is what Pope John Paul II has in mind when he writes: “...suffering is present in the world in order to release love, to give birth to works of love toward neighbor, to transform the whole of human civilization into a ‘civilization of love’” (ibid, 30).
Facing suffering, the Christian is never permitted to respond with bitterness toward God or with a desire for revenge toward human perpetrators. Toward God, the believer echoes the dying and trustful words of Jesus: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 24:46). And evil-doers are to be given the benefit of Christ’s prayer for them on the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). In the Christian scheme of things, to harbor resentment is to destroy the power of love to transform suffering into glory; from a psychological standpoint, obsession with evil done only concedes to the enemy the final triumph. We believe that the victory of Christ was total because of the quality and quantity of his love: he loved unconditionally and totally.
Is this hard to accomplish in one’s personal life? Undoubtedly, which is precisely why so few people have successfully negotiated the task. But Christians should know that “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13), and that God’s “grace is sufficient...for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Finally, Christians look at human suffering sub specie aeternitatis; now this should not and cannot lead to an attitude of passivity before suffering (anxiously waiting for “pie in the sky”), but it does provide one with a unique reference point - even a still point. That is, all is viewed with an eye on the time of future vindication and glory, like Christ himself: “That I may know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:11). And all this is predicated on a firm faith in the promise of Jesus to would-be disciples in every age: “...and I, when I am lifted up from the earth [on the cross], will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:32). For Christians, therefore, suffering is truly revelatory and salvific, which is to say that it has value, meaning and purpose, because of him who endured it first and showed the way.
Peter Stravinskas
In Judaism the question of human suffering is connected to the wider question of theodicy, namely the relationship between God and the presence of evil within the world. The Bible has a variety of responses to the question of suffering. The over-arching rubric is that God is the Creator of all, and as Judge of the world he pays out according to our deeds. Among the prophets, Amos takes the position “Does disaster come...unless the Lord has done it?” (3:6) Likewise Jeremiah suggests that should you ask “Why have these things come upon me? (The answer is) it is for your great iniquity” (13:22). Lamentations offers the observation “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” (3:38). The Psalmist who asks “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, why are you so far from helping me?” certainly expects that God knows about human suffering, and will bring relief (Ps 22:1 (22:2 H). We learn elsewhere that suffering is not an end in itself, rather that once the punishment is complete, and expiation has taken place, reward will come (Is 40:1-2).
The Book of Job wrestles at length with the question of human deprivation, and considers human faith within the midst of this suffering. Beginning in chapter 38 God “answers” Job, but these answers are really rhetorical statements - “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?” (38:4). “Shall a faultfinder debate with the Almighty?” (40:2). “Would you even question my justice, will you condemn me that you would be justified?” (40:8). Job learns to accept that God who is involved in cosmic responsibilities also cares enough about the human condition to provide a response, even if the answer is not necessarily satisfying.
An even terser explanation for human suffering is offered in the Book of Proverbs: “For the Lord reproves the one he loves” (3:12). The Rabbinic writings of the Talmud and Midrash continue to address the (essentially unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable) question of human suffering. There are many, many Rabbinic statements about suffering. A famous dictum begins with the thought that perhaps you yourself are to blame. Examine your conduct; you may have brought this grief upon yourself. If your conduct truly is exemplary, the suffering may be divinely decreed. “When you see that suffering has come, examine your conduct...If you find wrongdoing in yourself, repent. If upon self-examination you find no wrongdoing, attribute your suffering to neglect of Torah study...If, having attempted to attribute your suffering to neglect of Torah, and this could not [have been the case], then you can be certain that the suffering comes from God, that they are ‘chastenings of [God’s] love.’ ‘For the Lord reproves the one he loves’ (Proverbs 3:12)” (Babylonian Talmud Berachot 5a).
A variation of this idea is that suffering is really a gift from God. This is articulated in the Sifre to Deuteronomy, Piska 32. Through suffering, God provided three wonderful gifts to the people Israel: Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World-to-Come. “Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai says: Precious are chastisements, for three wonderful gifts which were coveted by the nations of the world were given to Israel, solely on the basis of suffering. These three are Torah, the Land of Israel and the World-to-Come. Torah, because it is written, ‘for learning wisdom and chastisement’ (Proverbs 1:2); and ‘Happy is the person that you chastise, the person whom you instruct in your Torah’ (Psalm 94:12). The Land of Israel because it is written, ‘God chastens you... your God is bringing you to a good land’ (Deuteronomy 8:5,7). The World-to-Come is explained by the line, ‘The commandment is a lamp and the Torah a light, and reproofs of discipline are the way of life’ (Proverbs 6:23).” Elsewhere in the Rabbinic literature we learn that God suffers watching the sufferings of Israel (Babylonian Talmud Hagigah 5b and Midrash Lamentations Rabbah 1:45ff).
In the Middle Ages such thinkers as Saadia (ninth century) and Nahmanides (thirteenth century) suggest that people have free will, and the question of suffering is beyond our ken and will be revealed only at the end of days, and/or that the righteous who suffer in this world will find their reward in the World-to-Come.
Moving to the modern world, there are those who have suggested that the sufferings of the Holocaust (the Shoah) are connected to the establishment of the State of Israel. While that may serve as an answer to some people, it certainly is not reflective of mainstream Jewish thought. The modern philosopher Richard Rubenstein, in facing the Holocaust, concludes that while “God is dead,” there is an even greater need for reaffirming the Jewish religious community. His contemporary, Emil Fackenheim, explains that we do not and cannot know what God was doing at Auschwitz, nor can we know why God allowed such horror, but nonetheless we need to insist that God was at Auschwitz. The Holocaust and the re-establishment of the State of Israel are connected, for what the Shoah would seem to deny, the latter would seem to affirm: God’s very presence in history. As William Styron explains in the novel Sophie’s Choice (1979), the real question is not “Where was God” at Auschwitz, but rather “Where was man?” (513).
A most compelling answer to the question of God and the divine connection to human suffering in the world is formulated by Harold Kushner in his work When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981). He writes, “I believe in God [but]...I recognize His limitations. He is limited in what He can do by laws of nature and by the evolution of human nature and human moral freedom....God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws” (134). Kushner continues with the thought that “God has created a world in which many more good things than bad things happen” (138). Further, in terms of suffering, Kushner raises the issue that even more important than wondering about the origin of suffering is to ask to where does it lead? It might lead us to appreciate that there are people near us 4who do care, or it might inspire others to act in such a way as to bring repair to the world.
David Birnbaum in God and Evil: A Unified Theodicy/Theology/Philosophy (1989) posits that “God is in a state of contracted real-time consciousness for the higher purpose, elected by man, of allowing the totality of [humans] to grow up in a state of bonafide personal freedom, so that they may grasp the totality of their potentialities” (163-164). He goes on to say that a “Deity exercising contraction of real-time consciousness for the greater good, man’s freedom and potential, clearly - not inscrutably - commits no crimes of breach of covenant or complicity of silence. He is guilty only of the crime of increasing man’s freedom - an option exercised by man at Eden” (166).
Bernard Malamud addressed the eternal question of suffering in his wonderful short story “Angel Levine” (from the collection The Magic Barrel, 1958). The central character, patterned on Biblical Job, is an old Jewish tailor named Manischevitz who questions the purpose of his anguish and distress. He wonders why “he had been given so much to suffer. A tailor. Certainly not a man of talent. Upon him suffering was largely wasted. It went nowhere, into nothing: into more suffering” (48-49). Through hisaffliction, however, Manischevitz learns about pity for others, and realizes that despite all he has endured, he still believes in God.
There are no answers to the questions of human suffering that will satisfy all people. For some, the Biblical notion that “the Lord reproves the one he loves” serves as a healing balm. Others are comforted by the notion that the human suffering of the righteous in this world will find its reward in the World-to-Come. That God suffers when we do is another possible answer. A limited God or a self-limiting God is another response. Human suffering just may be the terrible price we pay for moral choice and freedom. In Malamud’s story, the tailor may or may not find an answer to his question why he had been given so much to suffer. Yet his life experience tells him that nonetheless God does care about people. “If you said it, it was said. If you believed, you must say it. If you believed, you believed” (55). In the end it comes down to a matter of faith.
David Zucker
This article is a slightly edited form of “Suffering:
Jewish View; Christian View” which appeared in A Dictionary of the Jewish-christian Dialogue, A Stimulus Book edited by Leon Klenicki and Geoffrey Wigoder, Paulist Press, 1995. It is reprinted here with kind permission.
Peter M. J. Stravinskas is Administrator of Holy Trinity Lithuanian R.C Church in Newark, N.J. The author of ten books and numerous articles, Fr. Stravinskas serves as an adjunct professor of education at Seton Hall University at South Orange, N.J.
David J. Zucker, ordained by the Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion, received his Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, England. He is the Community Chaplain in Denver, Colorado, and serves on the faculty of Regis University. He is author of Israel’s Prophets: An Introduction, and is director of the interreligious dialogue firm, Bridges for Understanding.
