Diary of a Theologian

Theology of Suffering

I’m preparing for my spring theology lecture—its theme is the theology of suffering—and it occurs to me that I should see how the Bible uses the word “suffer.” In the King James (Authorized) Version, you get 38 uses in the Gospels. But in the English Standard Version, there are only 16. There seem to be more than twice as much suffering in the King James. What gives?
    The language changes. “Suffer” used to mean “allow it to happen.” To take the canonically first instance, Jesus says to John the Baptist, who has protested that he is not worthy to baptize Jesus: “Suffer it to be so now.” That becomes “Let it be so now.” Many of the changes are of this sort.
    It’s interesting: to suffer used to be a more inclusive concept. One could suffer things that were not unpleasant, but perhaps merely irregular or a stretching of our preconceptions. John the Baptist suffers no pain when he baptizes Jesus, but he does set aside his preconceptions of authority and rank in allowing himself to be the one—in suffering himself to be the one—who pours the water over the savior of the world.
    There’s another famous utterance of Jesus’: “Suffer little children to come unto me” (Luke 18:16). This has become “Let the children come to me.” Here the disciples’ view is being expanded: Jesus wants the children to come to him, despite societal views of propriety, or the disciples’ view of his proper audience. Jesus has a point to make. For us to understand what Jesus is about, we have to “suffer”—change our views, and allow—children to come unto him.
    By contrast, there is one instance where the modern translation introduces the word “suffering” when it was not there earlier. It’s the centurion who has a sick servant (Matt. 8:6), who says in the KJV, “Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented,” but in the modern translation, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” To be tormented is now, simply, to suffer.
    It’s important, I think, for us to allow the older breadth of the meaning of suffering to reenter our consciousness. We think of suffering as pain, as painful harm that may be physical or mental. We are tempted by our society to think of suffering as something that has no purpose. The older language sees suffering as a broader conception, embracing not only pain and affliction and injustice, but also a patience, a receptivity to something new, a stretching of ourselves into such new possibilities as Jesus brings to us.
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    What are the possibilities in suffering? Allow a child to speak.
    As I was writing this very column (in a restaurant), there was a boy nearby in a high chair. He came over to me as his family was leaving. Beautifully verbal, he wanted to say hi. He asked me how I was doing. I looked up from my computer and greeted him, and said I was fine. I added that I liked his bright green fleece, that it was very bright. He said something I couldn’t get, and then, “Have you had a bad day?”
    This little boy! I smiled: no, I said, it’s been a very good day. And I’m delighted to see you.
    This made him happy. His parents came and explained that through their dinner he had seen me working seriously at my computer and he was concerned. I looked so serious, I must have had a bad day!
    His name was Jack. I said Jack, I’m very glad you came to speak to me. Because, if I had had a bad day, you would have just make it all better!
    He left, happy, waving at me as they went out the door, yet saying something serious about having a good day tomorrow also.
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    Here I am, writing on suffering. “Suffer little children”—indeed! That intuition of the child. That desire for connection. That unmediated openness to possibility.
    Suffering embraces that too. Suffering embraces all.
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    Sunday, April 7, will be the next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar. Our text: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to the conversation at 6 p.m.
    And here’s an article about the building in which took place the Christmas dinner of Joyce’s “The Dead.” The link was sent to me by someone who attended a reconstruction of that party (called a “dead dinner”) and then spent the night in the rooms above! A very interesting piece of recent history: James Joyce’s ‘Dead’ house on Usher’s Island goes on sale

Animals Amongst Us

 After last week’s column on meeting a possum on the trail, people wrote to tell me about their own possum encounters and more. Human beings attract other animals that can, as it were, live off us, even if they aren’t keen on making our personal acquaintance. Think, besides possums, of raccoons and skunks. One person wrote to tell me of a run she took in the twilight on which she, otherwise alone, met a cougar. The animal was elegant, graceful—and, it seems, already well-fed.
    I was passing this story along when someone told me (it was in the news) of a young man who, also otherwise alone on his run, was attacked by a mountain lion (I think not full-grown). He had to fight it and, in the end, although he had no weapon, he prevailed.
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    I’ve been reading some Aquinas on what a human being is, and an important part of our coming to understand ourselves is for us to understand our relationship with other animals. This should be obvious, but the conditions of modern life work against it. For many people, their animal encounters are only with pets, a dog or a cat. We’re surprised to come across a neighbor possum who shares our space. We’re happy to hear a bird sing. But there’s not much encounter. We have replaced horses with cars, and we are proud of our cars’ “horse-power.” But to know how to feed and tend to a horse, to know about sharing the conditions of nature with one’s horse, to go through mud or rain or dryness, not protected in a bubble with “climate control,” but in the climate itself: this is not everyday, modern experience.
    One result is this. Since we get around in machines, we are tempted to think of animals as machines also.
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    That is said to have been Descartes’ view. It’s one extreme: We humans are so different from animals, that we can consider them as nothing but machines. There are moral consequences to this view. My duty to care for my horse, say, is just the same as my duty to care for my car.
    The other extreme is more commonly met: We humans are so similar to other animals that we should treat them as we treat people.
    Aquinas’s view is in the middle. Animals clearly think, he says. They don’t merely notice us as some random thing in their vision, they make sense of what we are. Herbert McCabe would say, if you touch the tire of a Jaguar (the car), it matters not; you have no meaning to the car. But if you touch the leg of a jaguar (the animal), your touch isn’t just felt in its leg, it is significant to the whole jaguar. And we know it is significant—we know that the jaguar is thinking—because of how it acts as a result.
    The point to remember, though, is that human thinking extends beyond mere animal thinking. This is hard to specify, but it is truly there. I recently had a student use the word “scenario” to point to the difference. Human thinking can embrace the consideration of alternative scenarios: we are able to ponder alternatives, to use words like “not” and “could have” or “should have.” Animals have memory, Aquinas argues, but for us it is different, and his example is that we are able to “reminisce,” to mull over what has been, to seek patterns and understanding.
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    So here is the current question for Christian ethics. We need to find a way to elevate our relationship to other animals—to treat them in accord with their godly dignity—while also upholding the special dignity that human beings have.
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    Out & About. I am to preach at All Souls’ Church in Oklahoma City this weekend. The Saturday service (March 2) is at 5:30 p.m., and the Sunday services (March 3) are at 8 and 10 a.m.
    Then as we move into Lent, a couple of cheery topics for a seminar and a lecture:
    Sunday, March 10, I will lead a “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar on James Joyce’s story “The Dead” (it’s in his collection Dubliners). This is at Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., and anyone who reads it is welcome to the conversation.
    On Sunday, March 24, I am to give the spring theology lecture at Incarnation at 6 p.m.: “What Good Is Suffering?”