Heretical Theory of Everything

Catherine Young

It is often said that we do not understand the meaning of suffering, and that this therefore cannot be explained. This is bizarre for a faith predicated upon the death of Christ and the blood of countless saints through the ages. There is much we cannot understand, but there is something we can. The meaning of suffering and of joy are similar, but we rarely consider the meaning of human joy, or allow it to trouble our faith. It is pain which causes us trouble.  In my experience, both joy and suffering connect us to one another and to God.  We only find this out when we lose those connections and find ourselves alone in all time, and all space.  This is not a pleasant experience; it is the very worst kind of hell.

The denial of suffering as a fundamental part of our Christian experience is a denial of our shared humanity, and through Christ, our partaking in the life of God.

When we lose someone we have loved greatly the pain is unbearable. Our hearts are torn into pieces and part of us dies too. Death stares impassively at us and defeats every meaning and every purpose, and we feel powerless in its shadow. For a Christian, the shadow of death is the shadow of the cross, and standing before it in our grief breaks our hearts into a thousand pieces which can never mend.

But which of us would choose, instead of this pain, never to have known and loved the one who is gone before us? Certainly we would choose to bear any pain they suffered in our own selves rather than allow them to suffer it, but never to have known them, never to have laughed and cried with them, never to have touched them; could we ever make this choice?

This is a very difficult question. But it is one which, finding the answer in our own time, speaks with the still small voice of God himself. It tells us that our love is stronger than death, because in spite of everything, we choose love and we choose life, even at the cost of death, the ultimate test of our faith. Our hearts break as we realise this, but that is far preferable to having a heart which cannot be broken, because it cannot love.  In time this becomes a true consolation, when we find that everything we loved remains with us. As with Christ, when the physical body enters eternity, he sends his Spirit to console. So with us, when we lose the physical presence of our loved ones, we find their spirit in our hearts, and their words in our thoughts.

At this point the impenetrable wall of death dissolves into a shadow, and we can begin to embrace death for ourselves not as a fearsome stranger, but as a beautiful angel, to one day take us tenderly in his arms and carry us home.

Whether it is death, ill health or other pain, learning to embrace our own and other people’s suffering is what connects us to one another physically, emotionally and spiritually. Until we have suffered ourselves we do not know what it is to be human; in a sense it is by experiencing my pain that I learn that I am mortal; I inhabit what it is to feel pain, and so in a sense I become mortal. And these first intense experiences of pain carry great dangers if we are left to cope on our own; if nobody reaches out to us to show us what empathy is. We can be overwhelmed, and never grow beyond the awareness of our own suffering. We can become eternally focussed on ‘me’; the centre of my own universe.

"My pain is so great, none other can compare with it. My suffering is greater than yours, and greater than you can ever understand.  I am the only one who matters."  This is the eternal cry of the narcissist.

Strangely enough, this is an attitude many Christians ascribe to God in Christ, as if his message to us is; “My suffering on the cross is greater than yours can ever be, so ignore yours, focus on mine and all will be well for me.” This is the attitude which says that Christ’s death was the worst ever conceived for any human being, and unparalleled in history. This is nonsense; the crucifixion was a model of restraint and humanity in comparison with the gruesome examples to be found in any collection of saints’ lives and deaths. And many who struggle with chronic illness will know that dying for Christ is a hell of a lot easier than staying alive for him.

This is the attitude which concludes that eternity is to be spent worshipping God; creating the Deity in the image of narcissistic humanity, which can conceive nothing greater than being admired eternally by an adoring audience.  I doubt if this kind of empty adulation would interest God very much at all; he pours out himself into his creation, and delights in what he has made.  Like every parent, his focus is on his children, not on himself.

We do not find a narcissistic Christ in the gospels. Christ on the cross looks down, and when he sees his mother standing with John, his own pain becomes of no account whatever in comparison with what he feels for her, and for his friend. Christ does not say, “Why are you weeping, I am the one being crucified?” He suffers on their behalf, as they suffer on his.

He commits his mother to John, and John to his mother, because he knows of no greater gift he can leave either of them. This is Christ’s last will and testament; mother love my friend, and friend love my mother. Nothing about money, or property, and all about relationship, and mutual love.

John too experiences this shared feeling. He knows that Christ would rather be crucified a hundred times than have his mother stay to witness his death, and so he leads Our Lady away from the cross. Just as we must sometimes leave the cross, and even leave the presence of Christ for the sake of other people, even when we would rather stay and weep for ourselves. But we take his love with us, just as John did.

Pain tells me: I am suffering. Love tells me: I am not alone. Pain and love together connect me with my brothers and sisters who also know what pain and love are. My own pain has no meaning whatever until I can use it to understand in my own self that which others feel. And when I am then able to reach to them, and walk beside them through the Valley of the Shadow, we both walk with God. This is how two or three gathered in Christ’s name mean that he too is present.

There is more than my suffering; more than my pain. When we are enabled, by the grace of God, to feel another’s pain as we would have felt our own, and as God himself is able to feel it, through Christ, then we learn what it is to be divine. Experiencing your pain connects my soul with yours, and both with the Creator. Pain can then be seen as it really is; a terrible and wonderful gift from God, to protect us from the hideous fantasy of our own omnipotence. Losing this fantasy, we are then free to find the God given blessing of resting in another’s arms, and finding strength outside ourselves. Just as Christ found strength in knowing he could rely on John to protect and care for his mother.

If we can never allow ourselves to ask for help, and to be vulnerable to pain and suffering, then we deny our humanity, and our mortality. Paradoxically, it is by embracing our humanity in one another that we find eternal life. And if our fear of rejection is stronger than our love for other people, then we lock ourselves into a prison nothing short of hell, and create an eternity of hell for ourselves.

Which is not to say that I welcome pain any more than anyone else; I don’t. But I have learned to welcome being able to understand what pain is, and how it feels. And I have also learned that without this understanding, God could not reach us in our humanity, however much he loved us. It was by taking on our humanity, and suffering as we suffer, and by dying as we do, that God connected his soul with ours for all eternity. He experienced our pain as we experience it, and found his connection. In turn, if we look to the cross and experience something of his pain, or his mother’s or his friend’s, then we connect with him, and with God.

And not only in this way. The miracle is that because Christ is now man, we can find Christ in anyone on earth. We do not need to find compassion at the foot of the cross. We can find it at any place on earth where our soul is enabled to meet with another soul, either in joy or in pain.  It is in such connections that we find eternity, and that God finds us as his children, and co heirs to his kingdom, which is a kingdom of love, mercy and compassion.

Love is not just an emotion; emotion is the least part of love.  Love is about relationship; the endless giving of ourselves to others, who in turn give of themselves to us.  Wherever this sacrificial, giving love is, there is God. Wherever compassion is, there is the Holy Spirit. And wherever humanity is, there is Christ. Three in one, coeternal and indivisible.