I started class again tonight; it's a promising course called Spirit and Church. We're hitting a number of topics based on the epistles. Tonight, we started off with the topic of suffering. It is, of course, a weighty subject; I still feel somewhat subdued as I think over the various threads of conversation. One thing in particular, though, struck me as significant, particularly in light of my previous post. We were reading and discussing an article by Chuck Colson in which he was reflecting on the lack of resources that the evangelical tradition offers when dealing with issues of suffering. (He turned, interestingly enough, to the mystics such as Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. I was somewhat surprised - I never thought of him as having a mystical bent.) What struck me forcefully, though, was the realization of the nature of suffering as opposed to the typical approach to scripture-as-answer-book I discussed previously.

It's sort of obvious, isn't it? The reason that the evangelical tradition offers virtually nothing in terms of a meaningful theology of suffering is that suffering, by its very nature, resists answers. Our prof read an excerpt from Nicholas Wolterstorff's Lament for a Son that is stunningly beautiful yet simultaneously tragic. Wolterstorff writes:

What is suffering? When something prized or loved is ripped away or never granted - work, someone loved, recognition of one's dignity, life without physical pain - that is suffering.

Or rather, that's when suffering happens. What it is, I do not know...I understand nothing of it. Of pain, yes: cut fingers, broken bones. Of suffering, nothing at all. Suffering is a mystery as deep as any in our existence.

I've written previously about some of my marker stones, so to speak, on my spiritual journey. Most of them are captured under this thread about hope. I think that all of us have defining moments, experiences in our lives that form us and shape us so deeply that, once experienced, change us forever. Some of these are joyful experiences; often, they are not.

What do we do when we are confronted with the wildness of God? I don't pretend to understand it. I have questions but no answers. I find myself in the position of Wolterstorff, confronted and confounded by mystery that I cannot grasp, and holding nothing but a theology that claims to have "all the answers," nicely packaged and bound in new leather and red letters. But when I turn the pages, I am not confronted by answers. I am faced with questions, pages upon pages of questions that remain unanswered. "Why do the wicked prosper?" "Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?" "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But it's in the questions that I find comfort. Particularly the last, one uttered by Christ himself as he faced greater suffering than any of us have ever known. Christ who suffered, Christ who questioned, the Word himself unanswered, pouring himself out in lament.

I read these words and know that I find myself in the best of company.

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