Michael Amaladoss

The Questions
One of the existential problems that people, religious or non-religious, face is the experience of suffering. The source of suffering could be a natural catastrophe like an earth quake, a tsunami, a heat wave. It can be physical like various types of illnesses or being victims of natural or human caused accidents. It can be mental when we are hurt by some remark or other unwelcome behavior on the part of others. Natural and physical sufferings too can cause mental stress. It can be psychological when it is caused by some psychic disorder. Some of these may even be unconscious, though with conscious effects. People expect and want to have a happy life. So when suffering intervenes the question often is: why me? We may be quite aware of the causes of the suffering. But our question is why an accident or illness should affect me. Why should I be the victim? A second question often follows this: What have I done to deserve this suffering? We almost take it for granted that suffering must be a punishment for some wrong doing. Based on such a supposition the problem can become acute when an innocent person – a child, for instance – is afflicted.

We all know children born with various handicaps. What have they done to deserve this? For people who believe in God there is a third question. If God is good and powerful, why does God allow such suffering? So the dilemma: either God is not good, if God does not bother or Godself may be the cause of it, or God is not powerful so that God cannot stop it, supposing that the suffering comes from elsewhere. The suffering of the innocent or unmerited suffering is also experienced as unjust. So one questions God’s justice. Such questioning may lead some people to say that God does not exist or God does not bother. Others may affirm their faith in God, but see suffering as a mystery beyond their understanding. Some may satisfy themselves by saying that God is not punishing them, but just testing their loyalty and faith. Such people will also look for a reward. So if suffering is not a punishment, it must be oriented to a reward for acceptance and good behavior.

Sometimes people think that a good God cannot cause suffering. It is then seen as evil. Good and evil are not merely descriptive, but moral terms. Since God is all good, evil can only be explained by an evil principle. Then the problem is how to reconcile a good God with an evil principle, which may even be personified as an evil spirit. For any believer in God, who does not believe in two originary principles of good and evil, evil can only be subordinate to the good. Then, how does God handle the evil spirit? Why does God need it in creation? So some people deny the evil spirit. Others assert that evil spirits are creatures who have become such by disobeying God. The story of creation in the Bible suggests that suffering and evil come into the world because of the humans who disobey God by misusing their freedom. But not wanting to put the whole blame on the humans, it is said that they are tempted by a serpent, who is obviously evil. Then the question is where did the serpent come from.

We see here two series of questions. The first series in the first paragraph talk about suffering. They are more experiential. The second series in the second paragraph rather talk about the cause of such suffering. These are more reflective or theological. By talking, not of suffering, but of evil, they add a moral dimension. People who talk about the “problem of evil” make it a moral and theological issue. The focus is more on God than on people who suffer. Without ignoring the second series of questions I would like to focus more on the first, because these are the questions that people usually ask. If these can be answered the second series of questions too will find a solution.

My Approach
I am not adopting here a purely rational, philosophical approach. My orientation is theological. I take for granted a belief in God, though what this involves is kept open. At the same time, God is not a kind of stop-gap answer. We are open to God’s mystery. But God will not be brought in to justify a refusal to look for an answer. The scholastics, following Augustine, considered evil as non-being. God is good. Beings created by God are good. Evil is only a privation – a sort of negative being. The Indians would have called it maya. These theologians ignore the real suffering that people experience. Others may invoke Jesus Christ’s suffering and our need to be in solidarity with it. But suffering, including Christ’s suffering, is taken as a punishment for sin. Of course, there is one book in the Bible that challenges this assumption: the book of Job. But this does not influence much of the discourse in the Bible. The Old Testament takes for granted that all suffering is a punishment from God for the sins of the people, mostly idolatry and disobedience. In the New Testament it is repeatedly asserted that Jesus Christ suffers and dies to make reparation or satisfaction or expiation for our sins. This link between suffering and sin will have to be questioned. Sin is evil, moral evil. But suffering is not evil, but a painful fact. Imposing it on someone may be evil, but not undergoing it. I shall also attempt to look at suffering as understood in the Indian – Hindu and Buddhist – tradition. I shall try to avoid a metaphysical approach to what is called ‘the problem of evil’.

The Phenomena of Suffering: From Nature
There are different kinds of suffering that humans endure in the world. The first kind is what happens when there are natural phenomena like tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, etc. Human habitations may collapse or flooded and people may lose their lives. We know that the earth is evolving for millions of years after the ‘big bang’. The evolution is not over. Various earth plates are still moving, though slowly, and when they dash against each other there are earthquakes and tsunamis. There are unseasonal rains and floods. God could have created a clocklike universe, all ready-made, where there are no catastrophes. Then the world will not be what it is. God is not interfering either at every moment to direct the evolution of the universe. So accidents of nature are natural – if this is not tautological. We have to learn to live with it. We are part of it ourselves.

We are learning now that some of our actions can affect the earth and its ing. We know that the earth is warming up because of the carbon dioxide, coming out of the various fuels that we are burning, being emitted into the atmosphere. This is making the sea warmer, melting the glaciers on the mountains and on the poles of the earth, affecting the monsoons, etc. We are also destroying various fauna and flora by our overuse or misuse. We are having acid rains. The earth may be slowly becoming uninhabitable. The slow destruction of the earth may also lead to other diseases. Therefore the suffering that comes to us from the earth is partly natural due to an evolving universe and partly human-made because of the way we handle the goods of the earth, interfering with its natural sustainability and balance.

We humans are living in this universe. We have a body that has evolved from the earth. It is made of various material elements. There can be various imbalances in the system owing to heredity, the place where we live, the atmosphere, etc. There are all sorts of bacteria that infect us. Once again these are natural for a body that is an imperfect and growing organism, sensitive to its surroundings, to our way of life and our use of material goods. All of us are destined to die some time or other. The length of our lives and the time and kind of death are once again due to so many factors, beyond our control.

Some of the illnesses may be brought on by our style of life, by what we eat and drink, etc. People may smoke tobacco or use various other drugs or over-consume alcohol. These lead to various illnesses like cancer.

We have to live with these sufferings. They are part of our being human. We can blame ourselves and our style of life for part of it. We are free beings. We can change our habits of living. One of the problems is that we have to do it together. We know how difficult this is with the many international meetings to save the earth’s atmosphere being ineffective. The rest is natural to an imperfect, evolving universe. Even without our intervention the earth may become a dry desert after millions of years or it may be destroyed by a star or a planet crashing into it. We do not know. As I said earlier, God could have created a different kind of universe and different earth. God could have created us like robots in it without initiative and freedom. Whether we would have enjoyed living in a world like that is a question to reflect on. Anyway, as things are, we can only accept the earth as it is, learn to respect it, adjust our lives to be in harmony with it and enrich our own lives with creativity and freedom. This becomes a challenge if we become aware that we are not alone here, but are part of a community.

The Phenomena of Suffering: From the Humans
Nature, or the earth and the universe, are not the only sources of our sufferings. Humans too can cause each other suffering. Humans are said to have their origin somewhere in Africa. They later spread over the earth. They settled down as groups in various geographical areas. Each group developed its own language and culture. They made use of the resources of nature for their needs. As different groups spread around the earth clashes between groups started. The reasons for such clashes would have been competition for control or possession of the earth’s resources, differences in language, culture and religion that made one group see the other as different and threatening rather than friendly, and a love for power and domination that sought to dominate and exploit the others and their labour for one’s own benefit. Similar reasons of egoism, desire and quest for power led also to the individual or smaller group clashes within the same group. Sometimes it may simply be the desire of a hero for adventure. Great semi-historical epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana, Illiad and Odyssey illustrate such conflicts. All human emotions like self-love, envy, anger, jealousy, love for power, and cunning found expression in those conflicts. Violence led to violence and became a spiral with increasing intensity. Historical memory with the spirit of revenge continued those conflicts over centuries. When some people thought that they had been specially chosen by God, religion too became a cause of violence. Violent conflicts lead to a lot of suffering. Many people get killed. Families are broken, houses and fields are destroyed, groups of people become migrants and refugees. Similar causes also lead to conflicts between individuals. Conflicts like these, especially between individuals, cause, not only physical violence but also mental agony: hatred, fear, disappointment, stress, anger, a spirit of vengeance, a sense of defeat and loss, distrust and distress. There have been occasional peacemakers like Francis of Assisi or Mahatma Gandhi. But their efforts hardly made a ripple in the stream of history though they did become signs of hope. Who is responsible for all these sufferings? The humans and their freedom. They can blame only themselves, not God.

Conflicts and struggles also bring out the best in humans: the strength of character, courage, trust in oneself, imagination and creativity. People also go out of their way to help others who are suffering. Conflict is not the only reality that characterizes the human community. There is also compassion and mutual concern. The community builds itself up. This involves mutual love and service, structures of sharing and self-help. These qualities offset, and sometimes make up partially for the sufferings and make them meaningful. This is particularly so when suffering is the consequence of self-gift for a cause. Some people can choose to suffer on behalf of others.

I think that the kinds of sufferings I have listed above cover more or less all that the humans experience in the course of their lives. As we have seen, they are of two kinds. Some of them are natural to the cosmos and to the humans. This is the kind of imperfect, evolving universe, including humanity and other living beings, that God has made. Some people may not like to think about God. Anyway, the world is there. Natural catastrophes and human illnesses and death are part of it. We too are part of it. We have to live through it. Modern scientists would say that we cannot do much to change it. There are however people who believe in miracles who think that God can intervene to change the course of nature temporarily. I have heard stories of miraculous healings from persons who experienced them and who have tested them medically. These are exceptions, in any case, and we need not go into that issue here.

There are other kinds of sufferings in which humans play a role through their freedom. This concerns the way in which they treat nature for their own presumed benefit and in the way that they treat each other. These sufferings become a moral issue, because they are the result of evil inclinations, to which individuals and groups freely choose to give expression. The morality may be thin when we are dealing with ecological issues, for example, because the people are also conditioned by culture. It is thick when it concerns the relations between human individuals and groups. Sufferings caused by humans, however, can be also reduced or even abolished by human free decision. The humans can collectively decide to avoid ecological destruction and to improve natural processes. Similarly, the humans can, individually and collectively, decide to avoid conflict and violence and love and serve each other more. Here too God can help the humans ‘miraculously’, enabling them to change their hearts.

One of the problems with philosophers and theologians is that this distinction between natural and moral is not often made. By talking about the ‘problem of evil’ all suffering is considered evil as opposed to good and is thus given a moral tone. This is not particularly helpful, as we shall see later. At the moment let us focus on how some of the religions face this issue of suffering.

Buddhism
The Buddha started with an affirmation that life is full of suffering. He said that the cause of suffering is desire. To get rid of suffering one must get rid of desire and desire can be got rid of by following the eightfold path. Buddha does not bring God into the picture. Buddha accepts the fact of suffering as a given. But the suffering is not explained in terms of exterior causes but of interior dispositions. Suffering is unfulfilled desire. So one seeks not to escape suffering, but become free of the desire for the object that one does not have. Then one is at peace. One is not disturbed by pleasure or pain. They are accepted as facts of life. There is no talk of good and evil. One simply accepts the non-fulfillment of one’s desire. One of the stories told about the Buddha is illustrative. A woman comes to the Buddha with a dead child asking that the child should be made alive again. Buddha asks her to go into the village and bring some rice from any house where no one has died. The woman makes the round and comes back empty handed. In the process she realizes that death is inevitable for the humans and she accepts that her child is no more and cannot brought back to life. She goes in peace. Her desire to get her son back alive is not fulfilled. But realizing that death is inevitable for all she abandons her desire. Once she accepts the death of her son as inevitable the suffering disappears. So the lesson of the Buddha is that one should accept life as it comes, detached from any desire. Life is passing and is made up of a succession of mutually dependent events. We should let it pass without holding on to anything at any moment. We have to be like an observer who keeps watching an event taking place before his/her eyes without getting involved. Suffering is not denied but accepted and transcended. What is a limitation here, not evil in itself , is desire. It is said that during the process of his self-realization the Buddha was tempted by an evil spirit – Mara – who tried to provoke his desire. But he did not yield. The evil spirit was simply ignored.

Hinduism
Hinduism takes suffering seriously. But it supposes that suffering is a punishment for sin. If one has not sinned in the present life, one must have done so in a past life. This is the theory of karma, which means that every action, good or bad, will produce its appropriate fruit as pleasure or pain even if the effect is delayed till the next life. The need for the rebirth is indicated by the fact that one has to work out one’s karma. This is samsara – the cycle of births. The Bhagavad Gita suggest two ways of getting rid of the samsara cycle. The first way is somewhat like the Buddhist way. You do what you have to do according to your karma but you stay detached from that action and its fruit. Then it is not credited to your account, so to speak. So the cycle is broken. The other way is that you surrender to God in loving devotion and God frees you from the cycle of births. The great Indian epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata are an intricate network of stories in which the karmas of the different actors work themselves out in mutual interaction. God oversees the operation of karma, but God can also free you from it if you have loving devotion to him. Suffering is not denied. But a way of escape in provided. Desireless action and devotion do not come naturally. It involves self-discipline. Part of this self-discipline is to get rid of the evil tendencies in you. So the context is one of struggle between good and evil in every person. But a victory with or without the help of God is possible. The real evil is not an spirit, but the evil tendencies in you. The evil spirit is a dispensable instrument. Shaivism, for instance, is very clear that the real evil in you is your own egoism. The spirits can tempt you. But you are the master.

Christianity
The Christian tradition is more complicated. Suffering is recognized as punishment for sin. The real evil is not suffering, but sin. But God created everything good, according to the Bible. (Cf. Gen 1:31) So where does evil come from? It is outsourced to an evil spirit, the serpent. Tempted by the serpent, Adam and Eve disobey God. Swift judgment and punishment follow. They are expelled from the garden of Eden. Suffering and hard work and finally death come as a consequence. (Gen 3:16-19) This sense that suffering is a punishment for sin continues in the Bible. But given the strict monotheism of the Jewish tradition, the evil spirit is subordinated to God. The dualism of two equal principles, good and evil, which the Zoroastrians (and later Manicheans), acknowledged is denied. So we see Satan in the court of God in the story of Job, who ‘tortures’ Job only with the permission of God. (cf. Job 1:12; 2:5) But Job realizes that God is the true author of his sufferings and consoles himself saying, “Shall we receive the good from the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:10) But Job makes it very clear to his wife and to his friends that he has not done any wrong to deserve the suffering and he challenges God to prove him wrong. God does not directly respond to his challenge, but side steps it claiming his power to do what he pleases, being the Creator. (cf. Job 38-39) So the story of Job makes it clear that suffering need not be a punishment for sin, but only a test. But this idea linking sin and suffering will not be abandoned in the Bible.
When the disciples see a blind man they ask Jesus: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn 9:2) Jesus denies their implication linking suffering to sin: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” (Jn 9:3) So suffering need not be a punishment for sin, but may have another purpose in God’s plan. When Jesus suffers and dies on the cross he does not attribute his suffering to any evil spirit nor to his own sins but to the Jews. He prays for them to be forgiven, while hanging on the cross. (cf. Lk 23:34) But trying to understand the meaning of the suffering and death of Jesus, the Apostles fall back on the sacrificial system of their own Jewish tradition and interpret the event as Jesus suffering for our sins. Jesus’ suffering and death was a total self-gift (cf. Jn 15:13; also Phil 2:6-8) But the Christian tradition has not abandoned this idea of suffering, even Christ’s suffering, as a punishment for sin. Even here, the real evil is not suffering, but sin.

The sufferings of Christ show us that they can be accepted and even welcomed for a good cause. Caught in a situation of conflict, suffering may be inevitable. But the conflict can be ended and even won by not retaliating. This is the strategy of non-violence. Christ manifests his love for us by standing up to the Jewish leaders in defense of the values he advocated: justice for the poor, sincerity and transparency in following God’s law of love, sharing and service and a total commitment to the love for God, shown precisely in the love of the neighbor. Jesus dies as a martyr for this cause. By raising him up, God sanctions his cause of universal, self-giving love. The sufferings of Christ will be meaningless without the resurrection, the new life that God gives and Jesus receives and shares with every one – the whole universe in fact. (cf. Rom 8; Eph 1:3-10; Col 1:15-20) The death and resurrection of Christ offers us a new insight into the meaning of suffering.

God’s Play
Suffering is often experienced as meaningless at the historical, phenomenological level. The suffering of the innocent is a case in point. But we believe that such suffering or even death is not the last word. Accepted, not merely passively and stoically or in the Buddhist manner, but as a surrender to the Lord, it leads to fuller life after death, not as a sort of reward, but as a generous expression of God’s responding love which is as immeasurable as God’s own self. Religions which believe in God accept that God is the lord and master – as did Job. We do not fully understand the kind of world that God has created and why. But we can understand and appreciate the values of creativity and freedom that are embodied in it. Freedom involves the possibility of mistakes and even misuse. God takes the risk. But God has the final word. And that final word is that “God will be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28) and that is what finally matters.

The Indian (Hindu) tradition speaks about God’s play. Every play has rules. But we cannot predict how the play proceeds, since the players are free and creative. People may be hurt in the process. Accidents happen. What is really important is not who wins and who loses, but the joy of playing itself. Playing is its own reward and pain may be a part of it. God makes sure that all have a party after the game – the winners as well as the losers. The joy of playing and the party and togetherness after that is the important thing. All the rest is passing and ‘part of the game’. For a person who loses it may be painful at the moment. That is because, s/he does not see the game, but only him/herself and his/her self interest. If the players forget their selves and simply play the game, they may appreciate the game and their own role in it, even when they lose. The game would not have been possible without them.

Suffering is not Evil
We should not mix up suffering and evil. Suffering is part of life in the world as we know it. Suffering is not evil. Some suffering may be the consequence of evil. What is evil is not the suffering but the evil will that be caused it. The possibility of being evil is part of being free. Do we need an evil spirit to promote evil in the world? I do not think so. I am not saying that there are no evil spirits in the world. I have heard some biblical scholars say so. I do not know. But I think that they are not necessary to explain the sufferings in the world. They need not be brought in to excuse God from being the author of suffering and to excuse the humans who are considered incapable of doing great harm. If suffering as such is not evil, a good God can be responsible for it. Sometimes people say that the evil is so great that it is beyond the capacity of an ordinary human. We do not realize the force of ideologies and the power of evil structures that almost take on a life of their own – a collective evil that is more powerful than all the individuals put together. If there are evil people in the world, God is certainly responsible for having created them and given them the freedom to become evil. But God also keeps calling them constantly to repent. And God can eventually bring good out of evil. Jesus is an illustration of this. He opposes evil by the power of love. This opposition is not a once for all event on Calvary. His death on Calvary is a symbolic action. It is an ongoing process, picked up by many martyrs and others, for whom the cross becomes a symbol. The resurrection is real and at the same time a symbol and the first fruits of an ongoing process of transformation. We may not be able to see this if we only look at individual cases. Respecting the solidarity of humanity we need a global, holistic outlook and vision. Perhaps this vision itself is eschatological. In the meantime we have faith, inspired by the event of the resurrection of Jesus. This faith can make us bear suffering, not merely with passive resignation, but with active acceptance, if not joy, precisely because we have faith and hope in the Lord. The faith and the hope can be inspired by the infinite love and mercy of God in which Christianity and the Bhakti traditions of Hinduism believe.

People accustomed to think of salvation as the expiation of the sins of humanity by Jesus who takes on himself the punishment – sufferings – due to them may have some difficulty with this point of view. The Greek Fathers spoke of salvation rather as a divinization of the humans. The Word became human in order to make the humans divine. Jesus passes through death to life. By his death Jesus identifies himself totally with humanity. It is an act of total surrender and self-gift. God raises him and Jesus shares his new life with all. The new life is an unmerited gift of God from God’s abundant and merciful love. Human suffering too, when self-chosen or willingly accepted, can be a manifestation of love to which others and Godself will respond. Such suffering love can provoke conversion or change of heart in the other. Did not the centurion and those with him say: “Truly this man was God’s Son”? (Mt 27:54)

An Indian scholar with a heavily handicapped child struggles with the problem of suffering. After exploring the answers provided by Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, he turns to a passive acceptance with a feeling of powerlessness. I think that only hope in God who guarantees the future can help to develop a spirit of active acceptance and expectation, if not joy. The sufferings of the child need not be meaningless, either for itself or for us, because this life is not the last word.

Conclusion
I can conclude with a few affirmations. Sufferings are real. They are not non-being or maya. They are inevitable in an imperfect, evolving world, in which there are also free human beings. Much of the suffering is natural and some of it is human made. Suffering is not evil, but the human will that causes unjustified suffering is evil. I think that it is not necessary to evoke evil spirits to protect God’s goodness, on the one hand, and the inability of the humans to cause grave harm, on the other. The weakness of an individual is made up by the strength of a group. Group psychology vouches for it. The idea of suffering as a punishment for sin in this or in a past life or as a source of merit for the future can and should be abandoned. This is a very human view. Suffering has meaning only in the light of a life after death and God’s own great love and generosity. God will make all things new and bring everything to fulfillment.

1. See Arun Shourie, Does He Know a Mother’s Heart? How Suffering Refutes Religions. (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2011)

Michael Amaladoss, S.J