A Few Thoughts on Suffering While Listening to Rev. Betsy Tesi Preach

Yesterday, the Rev. Betsy Tesi gave a sermon working out questions and responses to this passage:

Romans 5:1-5

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

I listened intently to her sermon and simultaneously had many thoughts during it.  I don't want to misrepresent Betsy's sermon, so I won't try to summarize what she said.  Here, though, is some of what went through my mind.

In my life as a literature instructor, when I taught Shakespeare and when I taught the ancient stories of World Literature, stories like The Book of Job,  The Odyssey, Gilgamesh and others, I often focused on the problem and the mystery of human suffering.  The question of why human beings suffer and how different stories and poems work with this question has been at the front of my mind in teaching literature and movies for over thirty years -- and as a Christian.

One of the ideas I worked on over these years was that not all pain is equal, that there is pain that one, to paraphrase St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans, cannot glory in or boast of, that does not produce endurance or strengthen character or give rise to hope.  In my classroom teaching, I called it misery or unredeemed pain.  It is the kind of pain that may not kill you, but it does not make you stronger. It is life denying.  It can destroy a person and is the kind of pain that can feed on itself.  It can also be overcome.

We would also look at pain that was, as things played out, a source of refinement, of clarification, even of redemption.  King Lear's suffering comes to mind, suffering which refines his egoism, clarifies his vision, and redeems him so that he sees and feels the suffering in others.  He become compassionate.   I trust St. Paul understood that for reasons that surpass understanding, suffering is an inevitable, irremovable reality and that suffering, not misery, can be a (not the) source of perseverance, building character,  and experiencing hope.   Misery isn't. 

Suffering, or at least knowledge of suffering, has to be present in compassion, since the etymological root of the the word means "to suffer together with".  The Latin form of the word "passion" (passio) means "to suffer".   The com- prefix comes from the Latin cum which means "with" or "together with".

My listening and thinking mind got quite a work out today. 

By the way, this distinction between suffering and misery is not a simple one and all kinds of overlaps occur and I don't pretend to have it all figured out.  It's been a general distinction that has helped me differentiate between, say, the suffering of King Lear and misery of Sol Nazerman in the movie, The Pawnbroker.  One other addition:  I'm not judgmental about misery.  You'll never hear me say, "It's a choice" as if to merely choose differently will bring relief.

In all matters of suffering and misery, I always feel over my head, in the midst of experience beyond my total understanding, and I keep on thinking and exploring and trying to be available to others who hurt.

I don't find doctrinal explanations of suffering helpful.  I find stories much more so. (Betsy's sermon was not doctrinal.  I'm just saying that stories help me more than doctrine as I think about the problem of suffering.)