The older I get, the more suffering and
pain I’ve experienced; and the more of both I stand witness to. From my wife’s
(and many, many of our friends and coworkers) battle against breast cancer; to
my dad’s (and the parents of many of our friends and coworkers) process as he
fades away as this complex disease breaks the connections between more and more
memories, I have become not only frustrated with suffering, pain, and having to
watch both, I have been witness to the suffering and pain among the students I
serve as a school counselor. I have become angry and sometimes paralyzed. This
is my attempt to lift myself from the occasional stifling grief that darkens my
days…
My favorite
author, CS Lewis both understands suffering – his mother died of cancer when he
was 10 – the same year his grandfather and uncle also died; he fell gravely ill
two years later with a respiratory infection; eight years later, he was wounded
in WWI; his father, the woman to whom he was married only a short time before
she died of cancer – and has struggled through to revelations about God that
uniquely qualify him to make some statements on the subject.
In his fourth book,
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, he points out, “‘The problem of reconciling human
suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as
we attach a trivial meaning to the word ‘love’, and look on things as if man
were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake
of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. ‘Thou hast created all things, and
for thy pleasure they are and were created.’ We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest ‘well pleased’.”
I don’t want to give anyone the idea that I think my suffering greater, worse, more noble, or more ennobling than anyone else’s suffering.
All I intend to do
in these essays is share things that have helped me either feel better, make
sense of, or given me pause to think and consider my suffering in the light of
the suffering and pain experienced by those outside of the wealth and privilege
I live in.
Lewis has brought
me both profound joy; and forced me to think profound thoughts. I have, I think
passed on a bit of that joy to my own kids, and when I introduce my grandchildren
to the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (my own introduction to Lewis via my great-aunt,
Leola Danielson), I’ll be passing the legacy of Lewis’ joy and profundity to
another generation still.
The reason I
picked this?
I find it
powerfully comforting in light of my dad’s Alzheimer’s decline and my wife’s
fight against breast cancer – as well as the pain I see every day in the lives
of the students in the high school I serve in as a counselor – to realize that
my JOB is not to love God. It’s to BE loved by God:
“We were made not
primarily that we may love God but that God may love us, that we may become
objects in which the divine love may rest ‘well pleased’.”
God doesn’t
require me to work hard to “love him”. There were times in my wife’s suffering
that I couldn’t POSSIBLY love God enough. There are times now as I watch my
father fade away, that I can’t POSSIBLY love God.
I don’t have to do anything to simply be an object “in which the divine love
may rest ‘well pleased’.”
Resources: http://www.cslewis.org/resource/chronocsl/;
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN (1940, The Centenary Press)
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