Making sense of the mystery of suffering

Diane Langberg, PhD, has said, “As hard as we try to make sense out of suffering, it rarely makes sense.  Suffering is.  In my experience, the ability to easily explain suffering is the clearest indicator of never having suffered.  Suffering is often a mystery and it requires humility and respect for that fact.”

Suffering rarely makes sense.  Rarely if ever in the place of suffering can we make sense of it, and only afterward may we make sense of it, IF our purpose has been trained through it, particularly in the tradition of 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, in that we learn the comfort of God from others who have been comforted by God such that we can be the comfort of God when we’ve moved through our suffering, which can take years and longer.

As others who have been comforted by God give us their comfort, we experience a comfort that can only come from God, and that equips us to give the comfort of God to others.  This is the essence of compassion: to suffer with someone.  Suffering teaches us compassion.

Because from within the core of suffering itself there can be no answer or escape given, and only a comfort that accepts that comfort is all that can be given, suffering does its work to somehow refine us and make us more dependent on and closer to God.  Suffering is meant to undo every cliché.  It is meant to reduce our words to folly.  It is meant to confine us to silence.  It is meant to make fools out of those who insist upon answers.  Suffering is meant to herald the mysteries of life and of God.

The more we accept that we cannot make sense of the mystery of suffering, the more we will make sense of it.  That is to say that making sense of it isn’t the point.  And we accept it.  To accept that which we cannot change is a most obvious wisdom, but the rubber hits the road when we’d do anythingto change a thing that we absolutely cannot change.

Imagine that.  The first time you come to a circumstance that leaves you absolutely bereft for response, that takes you deeper into depression, dread and panic than you’ve ever been before — and it’s usually our first time — is the first time we realise we cannot do anything to change it, to alleviate it, to affect it.  We’re deep in the mystery of mysteries, an enigma, a conundrum.  We can only ride it out, one white-knuckled terror day at a time.  Until we’ve been in this place, we have no comprehension really what suffering is.

So let’s not make sense of suffering.  Let us instead recognise that not only must suffering be respected, but that it requires our respect, and indeed that it will teach us respect.  Whatever comfort we receive also demands our respect.

Photo by Lily Banse on Unsplash