The Problem of Suffering
by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos
In today’s
turbulent society there is no one who does not face suffering in
his life and taste the bitter cup of afflictions. We see people in
distress, miserable, tormented, prostrate under the heavy burden of
suffering. Their faces are downcast, but their hearts even more so. They
are tormented and afflicted. Because of this suffering, or rather,
because they handle suffering in the wrong way, they suffer various
illnesses of body and soul. We shall therefore look at some aspects of
this vast subject of suffering and pain in our lives.
1. Suffering is Part of Our Life
It is well
known that suffering is closely linked with human life. Christ declared
to His Disciples that they would have much suffering in their lives. “In
the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). We encounter this
truth throughout Holy Scripture and the teaching of the holy Fathers,
who are successors to the holy Apostles. The Apostles Paul and Barnabas
visited Lystra, Iconium and Antioch together, “confirming the souls of
the Disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we
must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of
God” (Acts 14:22). St Paul testified to the Christians of Corinth, “We
are troubled on every side, yet not distressed” (2 Cor. 4:8). The
necessary comments on the phrase “yet not distressed” will be made later
in the chapter. Here we insist on the fact that the Christian life is
closely linked with suffering and pain.
The saints
lived through many sufferings, trials and difficulties. St
Nikitas Stithatos, a disciple of St Symeon the New Theologian,
says, “The present life is full of suffering and pain for the saints.
They are afflicted by other people and by demons.” We encounter the
same testimony in St Isaac the Syrian: “For it is impossible, when
we are travelling along the path of righteousness, for us not to
encounter gloom, and for the body not to suffer sickness and pain, and
to remain unaltered, if indeed we desire to live in virtue.”
The Apostles
and saints insist on this fact, because many Christians, like many
of our contemporaries, wrongly think that, provided we live Christian
lives, we shall be joyful all the time. To be sure, as we shall see
below, we have joy and consolation, but this consolation, joy and
comfort come through experiencing the Cross. “Through the Cross joy has
come into the whole world.” First come trials, then joy follows, and we
rejoice inwardly, in spite of external temptations.
2. The Causes of Suffering
It ought to
be made clear that suffering has many causes. The holy Fathers, speaking
from experience, teach that the three main causes of suffering are
the devil, other people and fallen human nature, with all the passions
that exist in our heart. Suffering that comes from the devil is very
painful, and is experienced by those who do good and attempt to keep
Christ’s commandments. Abba Dorotheos describes a case of this sort of
unendurable suffering caused by the devil:
“While I was
still living in the monastery, on one occasion I was afflicted
by an intense and unbearable sadness, and I was in such a state of grief
and distress that I was almost on the point of dying. That suffering
was due to an attack by the demons; this sort of temptation comes about
through their envy. It is extremely severe, but short lived; heavy,
dark, inconsolable, with no respite. Distress is all-embracing, and we
are hemmed in on all sides. The grace of God, however, comes swiftly to
the soul, as otherwise nobody could endure it.”
Suffering is
also caused by other people slandering and maligning us.
This often provokes us to complain about those who, in spite of being
well treated, behave in this fashion. Sometimes people persecute
God’s servants, as happened in the case of the Prophets and the holy
Apostles, thus creating problems and sufferings. The Apostle Paul writes
to the Corinthians: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of
our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out
of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life” (2
Cor. 1:8)
Then there
is the suffering that results from our fallen nature and the passions
that exist in our heart, as mentioned earlier. Abba Dorotheos writes
that it is possible for us to be in a good state and have inner peace
and calm, then our brother says something to us and we become agitated,
turn on him, and accuse him of causing us distress. “This is ridiculous,
completely unreasonable. Did the person who spoke implant the passion
in him? Quite the opposite: he [the speaker] revealed the passion in
him [the hearer], so that the latter could repent of it if he wished.
So these are
the three basic causes of the suffering that befalls us in life: the
devil, other people and our fallen nature. The first two types of
suffering are experienced by the saints, whereas the third type usually
affects those of us who have not yet been purified from passions.
Sufferings due to the first two causes do not touch the inner state of
the soul, so with a little patience the sufferer receives abundant
grace. The third cause, however, can, if we are not careful, create
a dreadful state. There are therefore two types of suffering: external
and internal.
Obviously
spiritual fathers [and mothers] who have been granted the gift of
discernment can distinguish which suffering is caused by the devil,
which by other people and which by us ourselves; which is according to
God’s will or permitted by Him. They will then help us accordingly. This
is why spiritual fathers [and mothers] can heal us more effectively
than psychiatrists, who cannot make this distinction and
regard everything as due to a person’s poor psychological state.
3. The Benefits Derived from Suffering
Suffering
and pain are essential in our lives because they are a
participation in Christ’s Passion. In Orthodox teaching much is said
about imitating Christ. This imitation, however, is not external or
ethical but mystical. We have to go through what Christ went through,
including of course the temptations and afflictions that He suffered.
The Apostle Paul writes, “I…rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill
up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh” (Col.
1:24). According to the commentary of St Theophylaktos, Archbishop of
Bulgaria, “This statement means: If perhaps Christ needed to suffer
still, but He died before paying the whole debt of His suffering, I,
Paul, pay off this debt of Christ’s and undergo those sufferings
which Christ had to undergo for your sake and for the sake of the whole
Christian Church.” This whole theology of our participation in the
sufferings and death of Christ is set out again by St Paul in one of his
Epistles: “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord
Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that
the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So
then death worketh in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:10-12).
The
sufferings and trials in our lives bring many benefits. Pain is a
new revelation of Christ to man. Through pain a new being is born. Pain
creates the right conditions for another world, previously invisible to
us, to open up.
St Maximos
the Confessor repeatedly speaks in his writings of
the beneficial presence of suffering and pain, or, as he describes them, “involuntary
afflictions”. For St Maximos these “involuntary afflictions” are
a powerful means of purification from “voluntary passions”. This pain
of “involuntary afflictions”, which comes from sufferings and trials,
defeats the power of the passions. “All suffering, whether voluntary or
involuntary, brings death to sensual pleasure, the mother of death”,
provided the sufferer accepts it gladly. Apart from the patient
endurance of involuntary afflictions, we can equally well fight
voluntary passions by means of godly suffering.
The same
Saint writes, “Trials are sent to some in order to take away past sins,
to others so as to eradicate sins now being committed, and to yet others
so as to forestall sins which may be committed in the future. These are
distinct from the trials that arise in order to test men in the
way that Job was tested.
St Gregory
Palamas shares this same perspective when he says “Misfortunes help the
faithful to put right sins, to become trained and experienced, to
apprehend the wretchedness of this life, and to desire fervently and
seek diligently the eternal adoption as sons, redemption and truly new
life and blessedness.”
David the
King and Prophet says in one of his Psalms, “Thou hast enlarged me when I
was in distress” (Ps. 4:1). According to St Nicodemus the Hagiorite, “The
more troubled and distressed a person is in the present world, the more
his nous transcends the narrow confines of this world. He goes beyond
the height of heaven and finally arrives at an immeasurably wide open
space. Once there, he rejoices and finds repose in the sweet theoria of
God. Even before the dissolution of his body, he lives a blessed and
happy life. The Lord indicated this when He said ‘In the world ye shall
have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world’ (John
16:33). And Habakkuk, revealing the repose that comes from suffering,
sang in his song, ‘that I might rest in the day of trouble’ (Hab.
3:15).”
Through
suffering we remember God, we turn to Him and thus the precious gift
of prayer develops, provided that we con-front suffering with the
appropriate seriousness and within the at-mosphere described by the
Orthodox Tradition.
The saints
were aware of the benefits derived from suffering. That is
why, according to St John Climacus, they thirsted for afflictions. St
John Climacus says that the characteristic of those who have reached
perfection in godly mourning is “thirst for dishonour, voluntary
craving for involuntary afflictions…blessed are those who hunger for
hardship and thirst for dishonour, for they shall have their fill of
food that does not cloy.” They longed for suffering because the greater
the suffering, the greater the consolation. The Apostle Paul
writes, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all
our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any
trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For
as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also
aboundeth by Christ” (2 Cor. 1:3-5).
4. Dealing with Suffering
It was
stated earlier that the important thing is not so much the presence
or absence of suffering, as whether we deal with it well or badly.
If we are
spiritually healthy, we shall do what the Apostle Paul himself
did and recommended to Christians: “We glory in tribulations also:
knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and
experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God
is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto
us” (Rom. 5:3-5). We should glory in the Lord because we have been
counted worthy to endure every kind of suffering and misery, whether it
comes from demons because we are striving for virtue, or from evil
men because we want to walk in the path of God’s commandments.
We should
also consider that we deserve not only the suffer-ings that afflict us,
but even more and greater sufferings. This is part of repentance. “A
sign of true repentance is the acknowledgement that we deserve all the
troubles, visible and invisible, that come to us, and even greater
ones” (St John Climacus). Repentance remedies the distress that may be
caused by external pressures and suffering.
As for
suffering due to other people, we ought not to turn against
those concerned, but patiently endure the suffering, in the knowledge
that much good will come of it.
Unfortunately we behave like the dog that Abba Dorotheos describes:
“Someone
throws a stone at him, and he leaves the person who threw it and
goes off to bite the stone. We do the same. We leave God, Who permits
these calamities to befall us for the purification of our sins, and we
turn against our neighbour saying, ‘Why did he say that to me? Why did
he do that to me?y Although we could derive great benefit from such
troubles, we work against our own interests, ignoring the fact that by
God’s providence everything happens for the good of each of us.”
Self-accusation
is also linked with repentance. Each of us should
blame himself, reproach himself and regard himself as deserving his
suffering and as being its sole cause. Because we do not reproach
ourselves we suffer inwardly and inflict suffering on others. As for the
man of God, whatever should befall him, “whether harm or dishonour or
any kind of suffering, he immediately regards himself as deserving
it and is not at all disturbed. Is there any greater freedom from
anxiety than this?” (Abba Dorotheos).
Suffering is
not the same as sorrow. Outward affliction is different from
inner depression. The sadness and depression that often engulf us are a
substitute for godly sorrow, which is repentance. Nowadays we suffer not
so much because we have temptations great or small, but because we lack
repentance. We are obsessed by a sense of self-sufficiency. This is the
source of many psychological illnesses and even physical sufferings.
We should
always bear in mind the Apostle’s words: “We are troubled on every
side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor.
4:8-9).
Source-thoughtsintrusive.wordpress.com
http://orthognosia.blogspot.gr/2015/03/metropolitan-hierotheos-of-nafpaktos.html
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