In the first part of this blog
series, I talked about how intellectual or rational responses to the problem of
pain, even if they’re good responses, are ultimately unsatisfying because we
are more than just intellectual creatures. That’s not to imply that there is a
satisfying alternative. But what other resources should our faith give us to
push through suffering?
As I
write, I’m fixated on the song, Silence, by Matisyahu. To
feel the full gravity, you really have to listen to it, but I’ll provide some
pertinent lines for the time-challenged.
True
to the Hebrew tradition of candid, unedited prayer, the singer lifts up words
that are at once indicting of himself and of God. Authenticity before the Holy
One is valued over religious propriety. Closed, intellectual answers to the
problem of suffering are neither offered, nor are they pursued.
If it should turn out that he was really just
praying at the ceiling, this effort to “shine a warmth into eternity” is doomed
to fail in a world where “all is vanity” (Eccl. 1:2) and a universe where the
cold, chaotic laws of thermodynamics are unrelenting. He risks the prayer
anyways. It’s on God to prove that it was not in vain.
This
is not a rational way of dealing with pain. But what cancer patient or grieving
mother could give two damns about what’s rational?
To
stubbornly “shine warmth” into a universe that tends toward cold is not a
levelheaded action prompted by a calm assessment of possible outcomes. It is an
act of defiance against chaos. It’s a mortal cry that if there does not exist a
bridge between a future where “we’ll dance like flames” and a present where
“I’m just a candle trying to stay lit in this windy night,” then I will insist
on building such a bridge. I will begin to build even if my own love is the only
cabling and my faith the only anchorage. I will leave it up to God whether hope
should prove a worthy deck to get us across.
He
is pitting love against entropy to see who wins. I don’t have to offer a
defense for you, God. If you are God, prove it. “[I] bring my heart to an invisible king with
a hope one day you might answer me, so I pray, ‘Don’t you abandon me.’”
The
song offers no explanation for the “problem of pain,” because, in fact, the
song is not about suffering. The song
is his suffering. It is his suffering not talked about at a distance
but completely felt with music as the medium that allows him to access it
fully.
Explanations,
on the other hand, are like opiates for the soul. We dab the topical
anesthetic, Explainitall, onto our hearts and escape into our heads in hopes
that the pain will have gone away by the time our chest comes to. But it’s a
deceptive solution. We’re numbed to the pain, but its root cause hasn’t been dealt
with at all.
The
art method is very much opposite that of philosophy. An artist assumes that if
pain is going to happen, then we can’t get out of it but only through it.
This
is hard to understand in our therapeutic culture where rosy praise songs and happy-ending
apologetics are written by Christians who seem to want to act as veritable
publicists for God, and we might be confused by the biblical faithful who are
typically the ones lamenting the loudest; but avoidance of pain is a sign of
unfaith. Faith is what gives us the courage to drink that foul cup without a
chaser.
Nevertheless,
an honest artist is hard pressed to lay all responsibility for suffering in the
lap of God and leave it at that. Can one ever honestly level such a charge at
God without simultaneously indicting oneself?
“Your silence kills me…”
Matisyahu says. True enough. But
he knows himself well enough to know,
“…I wouldn't have it any other
way.”
Do I
actually want to know what God thinks about things? Do I actually want God to
offer an evaluation of my own silence toward the poor and oppressed? toward my
own apathy in the face of injustice? toward my own negligence of the orphan and
the stranger? Do I actually want to allow God that level of intrusiveness upon
my own aims and motives?
No.
If I’m truly honest with myself, all things being equal, I wouldn’t have it any
other way.
There
is, of course, a heavy price to pay for this silence. Not just for us. For God.
What does a parent do, when she can’t bear the sight of her child’s suffering
nor can she coerce the child’s affairs enough to avoid it? That parent dies.
More
on that in Part III of this blog.