January 05, 2005

Happiness or Love?

Somewhere in the writings of C.S. Lewis, I want to say that it is in "The Problem of Pain", he states that pain is God's megaphone to rouse a weary world (or words to that extent - it has been nearly 20 years since I have read the book). The idea is that God does not so much wish for us to be happy as to love. There is a profound difference between the two. Dostoevsky, in "The Brothers Karamazov" says that "hell is the inability to love," riffing off of 1 John 4.7ff. There is some sense in that. If I am only concerned with my happiness then I am a shallow and ego-centric person. My happiness justifies greed and excess. My happiness makes me focus on my appetites rather than my health. Love drives me to regard my neighbor.

But love comes at a price: when one loves, one values something or someone more highly than anything else. Put simply, love is the cause of much of our pain. This is the type of pain that is redemptive. Not all pain is redemptive, however. I do believe that all pain can become a grounds of reconciliation and redemption, however. The recent tsunami has inflicted pain beyond my ability to understand or comprehend. The numbers are staggering, into the well over 100 thousand lost with more that will suffer disease and privation, to say nothing of survivors that have lost all that they had. A natural disaster is morally neutral. There is no intent to cause harm involved in the event. Morality becomes an issue in the response to the disaster. A moral nation would damn politics and bring aid and comfort immediately This becomes an act of redemption, not only for the victims of the disaster but for the all too wiling victims of the satisfaction of lust and gluttony. The disaster creates an occasion for people to become linked, to recognize a common humanity and to work to alleviate suffering.

What concerns me is the pain that is not redemptive. That is the pain that is inflicted on others because they are vulnerable to hurt. There is something sadistic about this need to cause pain. The suffering victim may have the opportunity for redemption, but what of the person whose pleasure is found in the pain of others? Certainly, all of us are at one time or another guilty of this sin (for lack of a better word); killing a small animal for no other reason than to watch it die, ridiculing a weaker classmate, committing sexual infidelities, and so on.

More Later...

I have never believed in pain for its own sake is good or redemptive. That makes God into a cosmic sadist. The recent events in the Indian Ocean would, however, give one pause to wonder about the goodness of God. Avoiding the pietistic dribble that so often follows such events by people far removed from the suffering, I have to wonder about the nature of suffering on a macro-scale. Natural events are only disasters because people live in areas effected by the instabilities of the earth. I do not blame God for this. The earth is in process and this process happens on a planetary scale. Sadly, just as we benefit from planetary events others will cause us pain.

A disaster occurs: the question is not why God did this or permitted it to happen. We have no window into the mind of the divine. The question is what we shall do to avoid it harming people in the future and how we will help in the present. "Why?," in any existential sense, is a moot question. The only redemption of this pain occurs in the action of people to alleviate the suffering. We are moved. We realize our connection to one another. We act. Hopefully, this creates a connection that goes beyond the immediacy of the disaster and sents a trajectory of love and concern.

On a micro scale, pain is what happens in dyads and family units. I love my lover. My heart aches. I realize that I was connected to a person that I loved and hope to find a way to love again. That is the redemption in the microcosm. Asking why never assists in moving beyond the moment. And it is only in the healing that redemption is possible.

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Onto other issues... here is something fun. I am Watership Down.



You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


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