Bad things happen to good people—good works cannot protect us from the natural consequences of being human in an imperfect world. But in a church where the narrative often draws connections between worthiness and blessings, it can be hard to avoid internalizing the idea that we’re special and can achieve control by doing the right things. “How do I reconcile my life experiences with the things the Church teaches about blessings?” This prompt from a listener frames Susan and Cynthia’s discussion in Episode 193. It’s a conversation about one of life’s biggest questions, and the spiritual havoc members sometimes wreak by meeting suffering armed with well-meaning answers.
Notes & Quotes:
Overview of Theodicy
God’s Answer to Suffering, by Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College
Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, by Richard Rohr
The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion, by Barbara Brown Taylor
Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith, by Sarah Bessey
Don’t Come Out Empty Handed, Everything Happens podcast, Kate Bowler & Rabbi Steve Leder
The Power of Ideas: Words of Faith and Wisdom | Credo, by Jonathan Sacks
The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days, by Kate Bowler
What About Blessings?, ALSSI Ep. 60
What About Blessings, Pt. 2, ALSSI Ep. 106
An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor
The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service, and Kinship, Father Greg Boyle with Krista Tippet, On Being Podcast, 12/19/2019
“I would define suffering very simply as ‘whenever you are not in control.’” —Richard Rohr
“In Sunday school, I learned to think of God as a very old white-bearded man on a throne, who stood above creation and occasionally stirred it with a stick.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, The Luminous Web, p. 54
“Yes, you are sad; Yes, this hurts; Yes, I can name with you what you feel, and love you in it.” —Sarah Bessey
“So the Book of Job comes to say, first verse, ‘Job was a blameless man.’ Innocent victim. Bad things really do happen to good people and worse, good things happen to really bad people. And therefore, cosmic justice and earthly justice cannot be the same.” —Rabbi Steve Leder
“Plato once said that pain restores order to the soul. Rumi said that it lops off the branches of indifference. “The throbbing vein / will take you further / than any thinking.” Whatever else it does, pain offers an experience of being human that is as elemental as birth, orgasm, love, and death. Because it is so real, pain is an available antidote to unreality—not the medicine you would have chosen, perhaps, but an effective one all the same. The next time you are in real pain, see how you feel about television shows, new appliances, a clean house, or your resumé. Chances are that none of these will do anything for you. All that will do anything for you is some cool water, held out by someone who has stopped everything else in order to look after you. An extra blanket might also help, a dry pillow, the simple knowledge that there is someone in the house who might hear you if you cried.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World
“…. I wouldn’t trade that period of my life for anything. It was about the most graced moment in my life, for as uncomfortable as chemotherapy is — and I’m sure many in the audience have been through this — I wouldn’t trade it, because it was just so intimate and so mutual.” —Father Greg Boyle
“In summary, Jesus did three things to solve the problem of suffering. First, he came. He suffered with us. He wept. Second, in becoming man he transformed the meaning of our suffering: it is now part of his work of redemption. […] Third, he died and rose. […] He transformed death from a hole into a door, from an end into a beginning.” —Peter Kreeft, God’s Answer to Suffering
“After acknowledgement of your burden, I love that Jesus says, ‘Come away with me.’ Walk with me, work with me—watch how I do it.” —Sarah Bessey, Field Notes
“Jacob says to the stranger/angel/God, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’ Somehow, within every crisis lies the glorious possibility of rebirth. I have found, and so surely have many others, that the events that at the time were the most painful were also those that in retrospect most caused us to grow. They helped us to make difficult but necessary decisions. They forced us to ask: ‘Who am I, and what really matters to me?’ They moved us from the surface to the depths, where we discovered strengths we did not know we had, and a clarity of purpose we had hitherto lacked. I have learnt to say to every crisis: ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’ The struggle is not easy. Though Jacob was undefeated, after it he ‘limped.’ Battles leave scars. Yet God is with us even when He seems to be against us. For if we refuse to let go of Him, He refuses to let go of us, giving us the strength to survive and emerge stronger, wiser, blessed.” —Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“If we can’t transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.” —Richard Rohr
A Blessing from Kate Bowler’s book, The Lives We Actually Have:
“Blessed are you, who feel the wound of fresh loss. Or of a loss, no matter how fresh, that still makes your voice crack all these years later. You are stuck in the impossibility of it. Frozen in disbelief. How can this be? It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Blessed are you, fumbling around for easy answers or quick truths to try to make this go down easier. You who are dissatisfied with the shallow theology and trite platitudes. Blessed are we, who, instead, demand a blessing. Because we have wrestled with God and are here. Wounded. Broken. Changed. Blessed are we, who keep parenting, who keep our marriages and friendships and jobs afloat, and who stock the pantry … because … what choice do we have but to move forward with a life we didn’t choose with a loss we thought we couldn’t live without? One small step. One small act of hope at a time.”
