The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

I begin my comments knowing that what your expectations of my talk may be, may not be the talk I give.  I hope that when speaking on the cases, I specifically answer your questions, but now, I hope I bring to you some insights that you might not have been anticipating.

I start my comments by noting that discussions on "suffering" occur in two different contexts.  The more familiar occurs in academic discussions about the "meaning of suffering."  The less familiar occurs in those intimate settings in which someone suffering asks us for help in understanding her suffering; in that setting, we usually listen rather than talk.

In an academic impersonal context there is less interest in the actual sufferer and more interest in the question of theodicy, that is, how can we reconcile a merciful God with suffering.  As a result these suffering works tend to be theoretical and speculative, rather than practical.^[i] 

Daniel Simundson notes that the Bible deals with suffering on two different levels: the intellectual level, where we "search for reasons why there is suffering in the world and why it comes to some and not to others," that is, the theodicy question, and the survival level, where we "provide support and comfort to the person who is experiencing suffering."^[ii]   In the latter case, we rarely talk about the meaning of suffering; rather, we listen.

In light of these insights, I am not going to address the meaning of suffering as it generally is addressed, that is, academically.  Obviously, then, I do not look on my task as a philosophical investigation into "the problem of evil," but as a response to one who is suffering.  I want to examine what effect the testimony of sufferers has on health care providers.  This is the "survival" discourse that Simundson talks about.

Toward this end, I divide my talk into two parts: what is a Christian stance toward suffering and how can we learn about suffering.

I. A Christian Stance toward Suffering

In his famous book, Christ, the Roman Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx describes how different religious cultures address the question of suffering.  He remarks that while each religion has a different specific response to suffering, they share "the fact that they give the last word to the good, and not to evil and suffering... their deepest concern is to overcome suffering."^[iii] 

For instance, regarding a Jewish stance toward suffering, Schillebeeckx remarks, that whereas the Scriptures show that "Israel has no problems with suffering which men bring upon themselves through their own sinfulness,...it protests and guards against itself against unmerited suffering, quite independent of man's own folly."^[iv]  He remarks that because of belief in God, "Israel did not hesitate to direct hard questions to God.  'Is God asleep?' asks Ps. 44.23, 26." 

Christians see God and suffering as "diametrically opposed; where God appears, evil and suffering have to yield.  So there is no place for suffering..."  Schillebeeckx remarks that Jesus "breaks with the idea that suffering necessarily has something to do with sinfulness."  Looking at the description from John's Gospel of the man born blind (John 9.2f.) and the account from Luke's Gospel of the murdered Galileans (Lk 13.1-5) we see "that it is possible to draw conclusions from sin to suffering, but not from suffering to sin."^[v]

Schillebeeckx provides strong testimony regarding Christian faith and suffering that in some circles is often misunderstood.  Though he acknowledges that some suffering may actually help some individuals to become more sensitive and compassionate and, in some instances, actually transform a person, still he says decisively, "there is an excess of suffering and evil in our history.  There is a barbarous excess, for all the explanations and interpretations.  There is too much unmerited and senseless suffering for us to be able to give an ethical, hermeneutical and ontological analysis of our disaster."^[vi]  But scriptures can not, therefore, explain away suffering.  He writes:

The Christian message does not give an explanation of evil or our history of suffering.  That must be made clear from the start.  Even for Christians, suffering remains impenetrable and incomprehensible, and provokes rebellion.  Nor will the Christian blasphemously claim that God himself required the death of Jesus as compensation for what we make of our history.^[vii]

Schillebeeckx leaves us short on one point: he makes too much of "unmerited" suffering.  I want to first say that I am not denying that some suffering is tragically unmerited; for believers that is the great question about God.^[viii]  But how are we to determine practically the difference between "merited" and "unmerited" suffering?   How can we know that someone's suffering is really "unmerited?"  Does the AIDS victim have to be a child or a hemophiliac?  Does the cancer victim really have to have been taking every precaution against carcinogens?  Does the tortured political activist really have to be politically prudent?  Does the date rape victim really have to be insisting on "No" the entire evening? 

Funerals....  He smoked too much, I told him not to go out that day; she drank too much coffee.  For What benefit are these utterances?  Does anyone die a natural death.  Today, we moralize over other's suffering usually trying to distance ourselves from others who suffer by saying that there but for my own good habits go I!

Let us move now to understanding the Christian stance toward suffering, by seeing how Christians, in earlier times, responded to suffering.  Here we cannot underestimate the role that the Christian response to suffering had for the rise of Christianity. 

Recently, in The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark argues that "Christianity was an urban movement."^[ix]  Those urban areas were dreadful. Stark describes the conditions as "social chaos and chronic urban misery."  This was in part due to the population density. 

At the end of the first century, Antioch's population was 150,000 within the city walls or 117 persons per acre.  New York City has a density of 37 overall and Manhattan with its high rise apartments has 100 persons per acre.^[x]  Moreover, contrary to early assumptions, Greco-Roman cities were not settled places whose inhabitants descended from previous generations.  With high infant mortality and short life expectancy, these cities required "a constant and substantial stream of newcomers" in order to maintain their population levels.  As a result, the cities were comprised of strangers.^[xi] These strangers were well treated by Christians ^[xii] who, again contrary to assumptions, were anything but poor.^[xiii]  Through a variety of ways of caring for newcomers, financially secure Christians welcomed the newly arrived emigrant.

Moreover, their religion was new.  Certainly, ethical demands were imposed by the gods of the pagan religions.  But these demands were substantively ritual; they were not neighbor-directed. And, while pagan Romans knew generosity, that generosity did not stem from any divine command.^[xiv]

Stark writes:

This was the moral climate in which Christianity taught that mercy is one of the primary virtues- that a merciful God requires humans to be merciful.  Moreover, the corollary that because God loves humanity, Christians may not please God unless they love one another was entirely new.  Perhaps even more revolutionary was the principle that Christian love and charity must extend beyond the boundaries of family and tribe, that it must extend to "all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1:2)... This was revolutionary stuff.  Indeed, it was the cultural basis for the revitalization of a Roman world groaning under a host of miseries.^[xv]

Elsewhere Stark summarizes:

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems.  To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope.  To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments.  To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family.

Since the death of Christ, all Christians have learned to respond to the ones who hang upon the Cross.

At St. Vincent's people certainly realize that if they respond to suffering, they inevitably recognize two things: that it could be a costly response and if it is, they may be transformed by it.  This leads me now to a third writer.  Dr. Mary Catherine Hilkert, a Dominican like Schillebeeckx, discusses the importance of solidarity with those who suffer by reflecting on the lives of the four American church women (Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan) murdered twenty-one years ago in El Salvador.  Hilkert helps us to see the nature of one's commitment to stand in solidarity with those who suffer.  She looks at these four women's testimonies to see how, when, and why embracing the suffering of another is an imitation of Christ, an act of discipleship.  She writes, "These   women embraced solidarity with the poor not out of any glorification or romanticization of suffering, but because it was among the poor of the world that they discovered the good news of the reign of God at work in the world despite all evidence to the contrary."^[xvi] 

Hilkert invites us to listen to these women's decisions to stand in solidarity with those who suffer.  Ita Ford wrote of her decision to enter in Christ's own paschal mystery, the mystery of suffering, death, and resurrection: "Am I willing to suffer with the people here, the suffering of the powerless?  Can I say to my neighbors, 'I have no solution to this situation; I don't know the answers, but I will walk with you, search with you, be with you?"^[xvii]

Two weeks before her murder, Jean Donovan asked about how her own self was being stretched by the decision to stay in solidarity with those whom she served: "Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could except for the children, the poor, the bruised victims of this insanity.  Who would care for them?  Whose heart could be as staunch as to favour the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine."^[xviii]  The decision of these brave women is not unlike the decision of health care workers who time and again decide to stay and listen and be in solidarity with those who suffer.

As liberation theologian Jon Sobrino writes, standing in solidarity with those who are crucified requires a commitment to bring down from the cross those crucified on it.  

Continued - >

---