On Facebook I recently shared a quote from Pope Leo, taken from a recent exhortation he gave at a prayer vigil in Barcelona. The quote included a warning not to “spiritualise” our pain, superficially attributing it to “God’s will”.
The pope said straight out that, “God does not want suffering.” But some of my friends responded that the pope was copping out. What happened to carrying our cross and offering it up? And if God doesn’t want suffering, why does he allow so much of it?
I can’t solve the problem of pain for you in 750 words, and I won’t try. But I’m going to ask: What does the way in which we talk about God and suffering reveal about our relationship with him?
I know that suffering can make us think very poorly of God. This is because deep down, many good Catholics can be a mess of anxiety. Many of us still have a transactional idea of religion and faith. I do this or say this or pray this, and God protects me.
So when things go haywire, it’s normal for a controlling, fearful Catholic to frantically examine themselves and their conduct. And there’s no doubt that a lot of our suffering is caused by poor choices. We choose to eat too much, marry the wrong person, waste our money, tell lies, ignore problems, and so on.
What about the suffering that happens to innocent people? This is when we can start looking for “God’s will” and trying to make sense of it all. But it can lead some good Catholics to “spiritualise” their pain to an unhealthy extent. They will reject relief or healing because their suffering becomes their identity.
Sometimes their suffering also becomes a useful weapon in an unhappy marriage, family, or church situation. This kind of attitude to suffering distorts our ideas of God. That’s when we start to describe him to other people as if he willed this suffering for us.
It’s like he’s always watching for a flicker of bad behaviour so he can whack us again. Our job is to submit, offer it up with gritted teeth, and hope that we don’t step out of line again.
When we talk about God in these white-knuckle terms, we teach our spouses, children, and friends that this is what we think God is really like.
All that stuff about love and mercy is just a façade. Really, it’s all about suffering and punishment. Ugh. This is such a long way from what Jesus tells us about our heavenly Father, and what the saints have cherished for us for millennia.
God is so much nicer than people think. He is much kinder, more trustworthy, decent, and generous than people give him credit for – even some of his nearest and dearest in the church.
We do him such an injustice when we talk about him like a hanging judge, a hair-splitting parking inspector, or a wet blanket. If you start instead from the position that God does not want suffering, you come up with a very different idea of him.
You start to realise how much he protects you from suffering, even when you’ve done really stupid things. You also realise how much he loves your free will and respects your choices.
God may have allowed things to happen to you which were awful. He has given you a choice about what to do with that. He went through an agonising and unjust death himself to make it possible for you to turn your suffering into gold.
He is waiting on standby with many physical and spiritual ways of healing and repair that he’d love you to use, with his help and encouragement. Some of these will hurt. Some will require you to make sacrifices so that you can heal.
And some of your wounds may not heal at all, because they’re going to be the door into eternal life for you. These are all the actions of a loving, warm, affectionate, caring Father. They are personal gifts to you from a gentle and wise Father who is completely trustworthy.
He never wanted you to suffer like this. It was not part of his plan for you. But here we are. Please try to think well of God, even when you’re suffering. Cut him some slack, and allow him to help you make your suffering into something good.
If you can suffer and still think well of God – and tell others that you think well of him – then I think you’re probably doing it right.
