(before anyone attacks me for the use of that song in conjunction with this post: it just came up on my itunes, which is on suffle. minor serendipity, or something.)
the two-week hiatus is the direct result of my efforts to respond to each of the comments left on the last post (thank you all so much! they'll be showing up shortly) combined with my inability to complete anything in a reasonable amount of time. it's not procrastination, it's my perfectionist demon, so to speak.
one of the greatest, most challenging and longest-standing theological questions of all time is, "why do bad things happen to good people?" (an offshoot of this Big Question is why so often they happen in or around the month of february, but that could just be personal/etown-related.)
and yes, "bad" and "good" are relative, but that's not what this is about.
i have no intention of trying to answer the question, seeing as i lack not only the qualification but the perspective at this moment in time to do so.
this question is one of the most frequently cited by people experiencing a crisis of faith. and that makes sense: if we're just living our lives and nothing's particularly wrong; going to religious services mechanically; comfortable at worship to the extent that we're not really thinking about the words we say; or even if we're attentive and wholehearted in some form of worship, but either weren't prepared for tragedy or have been hit by a bunch all at once.
but to think about "bad things" or pain in terms of religion is to recount the history of virtually every major religion, from crucifixion to exile to persecution to the pursuit of the destruction of suffering itself to asceticism. and while, throughout the myriad "bad things" littering various and sundry scriptures and histories, many explanations have been offered, all leave something to be desired in terms of clarity, thoroughness, or theological consistency.
the greatest comfort i have when i find myself asking that question is that we don't know how everything works. i'm not comfortable with the "God has a plan" response; i find it vaguely insulting (oh, well, congratulations to Him then; how does that help me?), and implies that white-haired old man God is sitting up at a work desk on a cloud somewhere inside the pearly gates of heaven sketching out blueprints. it might be the case; what do i know? regardless, at a moment of tragedy, it's not what i want to hear.
it might just be semantics (again, what do i know?), but the thought that i don't know why things happen is much more comforting to me than any of the various, inherently flawed reasons other people can give. it leaves open the realm of possibility. i don't mean to imply that i'm the "ignorance is bliss" type -- just that in traumatic moments, sometimes it's good to be a little bit blind.
someone's going to punch me in the face for this, i'm sure of it, but i have to mention the bit from donnie darko* about why we have no memory of our infancy: "did you stop and think that maybe infants need darkness? that darkness is part of their natural development?"
*in an effort to save myself and have a hipster bitch moment all at once, i'll take this opportunity to swear to you all that i saw that movie the week it was released, before i had heard anything about it whatsoever. mark and i went into heads together and dee recommended it when we were having trouble finding something promising. i'm going to miss that store.
one of the most difficult things for me to understand when i started studying hebrew biblical literature was that the passages i was translating didn't seem to have morals the way i originally thought they did. most of the stories didn't seem to be there for the purpose of explaining or suggesting anything; they were just statements, as of facts. i could choose to draw a theological conclusion from them or not; they were just there; they just were, or rather, are.
why we experience pain (as opposed to how) is an impossible question. we didn't design ourselves or manipulate our own evolution, so we don't know.
i think when we ask, "why do bad things happen to good people?" we're asking the only question we can, though i think it also misidentifies the purpose of faith. i don't think faith or religion or whatever else is some kind of magic shield against suffering. i think that, among other things, it allows us to admit that there are some things over which we have no control, and about which we have no understanding.
i know that isn't a decent conclusion, but i also know that the moments in my life that i would classify as "religious experiences" have overwhelmingly been in light of tragedy, suffering or general sadness. we learn about ourselves in moments of extreme distress. this is a cheesy thing to say, which i'm okay with, at least in moderation. but my real point is that it's possible the question, the simple asking of it, is the important part. maybe we're supposed to come up with the response, "i don't know," stop trying to fix and control and respond, and just let it hurt for a while.
The Mud of Us
5 weeks ago
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