Hellfire and brimstone have widely been discarded from the preacher’s toolbox, and rightly so. The image of a short-tempered, easily upset and punishing God of a not-so-distant past has been replaced with one much closer to the Gospels’ merciful Father, taking great care of us, his people. We’ve got used to such a cosy, heart-warming vision, so much so that the words opening today’s first reading must come as a shock; indeed, they did so for me: “The Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering.” I found the word pleased in this context so strange that I had to check if the English translation had been a bit too frivolous in this case. Not really. The new translation coming into force in about a month is even more disturbing: “It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.” Some people dismiss the idea of a merciful God of Christianity as irreconcilable with the grim reality of suffering and pain present in the world. But to say that “the Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering” makes any positive argument for the Christian vision of God impossible. Or does it?
Traditionally, let’s start by painting the background. In the ancient Semitic mindset, God was the primal cause of everything. For example, in the story of the Exodus – the Israelites escaping the slavery of Egypt – Pharaoh’s hard stance against it was presented in a mind-boggling way as by God saying: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them so that I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army.” (Exodus 14:4) For us, used to individual freedoms, it might look like a double whammy: God caused Pharaoh’s stubbornness and then punished him for it and in the process let God show off his greatness. We can find many similar instances in the Bible, including the New Testament: “The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:20-21) Only when the biblical Semitic mindset collided with the Greek philosophical one in the Christian communities of the first few centuries did a more structured, logical (in a philosophical sense) way of thinking emerge, and we call it theology. To put it simplistically, it allows us to translate the storytelling form of the Bible into science-adjacent philosophical terms. Catholic theology sees God’s will in two distinctively different but complementary ways.
Let’s go back to the contentious opening line: “The Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering.” Today’s first reading is only a short excerpt from a chapter-long passage known as the Fourth Song of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh (we read it in full at Good Friday’s Liturgy). In its context, God isn’t pleased with the suffering, like some sadistic torturer, but with its outcome, hinted at in the closing line of today’s first reading: “By his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself.” In other words, the brutal actions inflicted on the first reading’s character by his opponents (the permissive will of God) repurposed by him led to a redemptive outcome that pleased God, “who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4)
One of the Christian faith’s main strengths has been its ability to repurpose the inevitable existential suffering (in the broadest sense) into an instrument of growth in various human qualities, such as resilience, strength, compassion, and so on. Over the last few decades, most modern Western societies have been on the journey of eschewing Christianity with its allegedly restrictive moral code and allegedly unhealthy fascination with pain and death, as illustrated by the crucifix. One of the practical consequences of rejecting suffering as absolutely evil was the development of the so-called stress-free parenting, widely adopted as the mainstream approach to upbringing. A couple of generations later, “young people are now more likely to experience a common mental disorder (CMD) than any other age group – a complete reversal compared to two decades ago when they were least likely to.” Besides many individual reasons and causes that must not be diminished, we must ask how they could have developed coping mechanisms, resilience, and problem-solving skills in a cotton-wool, bubble-wrap, stress-free environment. Like swimming, these things cannot be learned theoretically.
Whether we like it or not, suffering in many forms is an inevitable part of everyone’s everyday life. It’s just a fact. Of course, we should do our utmost to avoid causing anyone unnecessary harm; we must try to alleviate suffering whenever it’s possible. But we must also accept its presence as an opportunity to show charitable love to those in need or add meaning to our troubles. Suffering remains a challenging mystery. But, as Christians, we believe “that all things work together for good for those who love God.” (Romans 8:28)
