The Depths and the Shallows

See: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Life is a series not simply of ups and downs, nor of hills and valleys, but of heavens and hells, of summits beyond imagination and depths beyond words. Any philosophy or religion must account for the fullest range of human experience, and for the heavens and hells of this life. Any and every moment must be looked at as meaningful, though not every moment can be looked at as equally good.

Viktor Frankl was right when he said that if life as a whole is to have any meaning at all, then suffering too must have some meaning in it. The hard times of life cannot, and should not, be ignored or discounted. It is not enough simply to live into the good times of life and to soak them up. For the suffering that is bound to come will not simply be erased by reflecting upon good times. Very few people can so surround themselves with ease and comfort that they can simply escape from suffering and pain. And what is lost if one does achieve such a life? Might there not be some value in participating in the pain of the world?

Nor is it enough to somehow deny that suffering is, in fact, suffering. I can never get past this aspect of the Buddhist thought. It takes it for granted that personal escape from suffering is a goal to be sought seemingly at the expense of all else. But it seems to me that alleviating the suffering of others must have some place alongside the alleviation of my own. If it takes me 40 years to achieve nirvana, but in the meantime I could've helped thousands of people, wouldn't the latter minor alleviation of overall suffering outweigh the total alleviation of my own. And indeed, I may need to share in the pain of others to help them feel less. Co-suffering can be redemptive and helpful, and we do much good by truly sharing in the pain of others. And suffering cannot be erased for those who are in its depths. They must find meaning in life in the depth of their suffering, and not simply be goaded into escaping it by letting go of desire. It is like telling them that their suffering is their own fault. It is blaming the victim.

So I must find some way to find meaning in the pain of this life, in the hells (and I mean hells) I experience on a regular basis. Yet I cannot, in the final analysis, throw my hat in with those who handle the problem of evil by making it a gateway to some greater good, by justifying suffering and evil by putting it all in the hands of an all-powerful and providential God who is also good. In this way what looks evil to us is really good in disguise. This is simply to deny an experience that seems as palpable to me as any other. For suffering and evil are experienced by me as GENUINELY wrong. In this sense there is some truth in the Buddhist attempt to escape from suffering. It is a recognition that suffering is very much a spiritual assault and comes to us that way. That is the result of real evil.

The other side of the problem is my desire to alleviate suffering while still seeking the good life. The good moments of life, ephemeral as they are, come to me as a kind of call, a call to soak it all up. I don't think that we should simply avoid the wonder and beauty of life, and in fact I think we should take every good moment and push it as far as it can go, drinking it to the dregs. Buddhism is wrong: life is not only suffering. It is wonder, and enchantment, and awesome, and just simply kick butt. Christianity too often tries to take the wonder as the sole and primary lens of interpretation, all negative experience is filtered through that lens and so all is labelled 'good' even when it obviously is not. Buddhism takes the negative as primary and filters all through that lens, and so all is labelled 'bad' even when much is not. Scientism denies the depths and the shallows, and leaves us with a stultifying neutrality that speaks to the objective world, but not our subjective encounter with it. In all three cases what you have is an over-simplification of the world. Life is wonderful, and terrible, and our philosophy must account for it, and find meaning in all of it.

I take personal suffering as an opportunity to share in the suffering of God. The suffering of God is not good, in fact it is very bad. But it is God's choice to make Himself vulnerable to suffering that makes the world possible, and I think existence is inherently better than non-existence. When God identifies with the victim of every suffering, that victim's plight is eternalized. It is always remembered and never let go of. The joy and experience of the attacking entity is lost, forever, into oblivion. That person's internal existence comes to nothing. The sufferer however is eternalized, and judged right in the attack. What's more, just as a person can grow from hard times, God also grows and learns something from every experience. But this is not to say that God wills these experiences. The sufferer need not have suffered to learn what they did. They may have learned or experienced something better. To say value is pulled from a situation is not to say that a greater value wasn't possible, nor is it to say we cannot mourn the loss of that value. But we can be thankful that nothing we go through is wasted. For even if we learn nothing, God does. And so suffering becomes something from which we can gain value. We don't have to embrace it altogether, but nor do we put our heads in the sand about the suffering of others. Seeking to share in the pain of others is to find a path to God.

The good moments in life are just as important. Whenever we soak up a moment of joy and happiness, we are simply giving that joy and happiness to God. That moment may be fleeting for us, but it is eternal in God. It never dies, is never forgotten, and never loses it's sharpness. God experiences the good AS us, and so we get to love life to the fullest, without mourning the loss. It may be lost for us in this world, but in God and in the next world, it is remembered forever. Life is a heaven because every good is made eternal Somewhere Else. Life is a hell for all suffering is the crucifixion of Christ. Both are real, and both are important. Both matter for both are a part of the life of God.

There is a Trinitarian lesson in here somewhere.