Human suffering is very great.
Much of it seems senseless. Much of it is so evil that I cannot comprehend it.
Vile violence against women and girls, perhaps more than anything else, pierces
my heart like a knife.
What anchors my faith in Christ
in the face of senseless suffering and brutal inhumanity? In The Beauty
of God chapter 8, I have explored some of the reasons for God
permitting pain and evil to afflict His good creation. Scattered throughout
other chapters I have provided some analysis of various alternatives to the
biblical worldview. In this post I want to bring the major alternatives to
biblical revelation together. When my heart is burdened by suffering in the
world, I run through them in my mind, and I see afresh how impossible they are.
There are really only four
major worldviews (aside from Christianity) that are viable candidates for
adoption by all people. My purpose is to show that they are all fundamentally
flawed in their approach to human suffering. I am well aware that people are
often either better or worse than their theoretical convictions. I am not
criticizing the adherents of these views. I am critiquing their understanding
of the ultimate foundation of life.
In subsequent postings, I hope
to give an analysis of the Bible’s teaching on suffering and why it succeeds
where the others fail. Whenever I think through the options available, I
realize afresh that there really is no other place to turn except the Triune
God of the Bible.
There is no hope in
Hinduism. The doctrine of Karma insists that your lot in this life is your
well-merited fate because of sins committed in a prior existence. Hindus (by
the grace of the true God) are often better than their religion. Tens of
thousands protested the gang rape of a young woman on a private bus in New
Delhi in 2012, but their doctrine should have taught them to say, “No doubt,
she deserved it.”
Furthermore, the suffering of
the body does not really touch the soul. In the Indian holy book, the Bhagavad-Gita, the god Krishna
encourages Arjuna not to feel guilty about killing his wicked cousins in battle
because death is only an illusion: “As a person puts on new garments, giving up
old ones, similarly the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and
useless ones. The soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he
be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.... It is
said that the soul is invisible, inconceivable, immutable and unchangeable.
Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body” (2.22-25). Therefore,
logically, the rape of this young woman did her no harm. If we believe Krishna,
we should say that we are outraged at her rape because we cannot see past the
outer shell of the body.
The more refined forms of
philosophical Hinduism may say that the Atman (the self) is Brahman (ultimate
reality) “within” and Brahman is the Atman “without.” The individuality of the
self is an illusion. The self and Brahman are one. The goal of life is to
escape reincarnation by acquiring good Karma. Then the tiny drop of individual
consciousness will be dissolved in the great ocean of impersonal, universal
Brahman. This sounds very noble until one realizes that pain and pleasure or
God and the devil are therefore only names for our misperceptions of the
all-encompassing, impersonal Being. The horror of rape and the pleasure of a
good dinner with friends are equally illusory.
There is no blessedness in
Buddhism. The Buddha traced suffering to desire. If one can quench
self-centered desire, he will no longer suffer. This is the enlightenment that
Buddha achieved. Setting aside later developments that virtually deified Buddha
and other enlightened beings, we are left with a set of psychological
techniques for achieving a state in which one is not bothered by the
vicissitudes of life. After enlightenment, the flame of an individual life will
no longer have to pass through the weary round of suffering, death, rebirth, and
suffering. Instead, it will enter Nirvana. Nirvana is not a place. It is the
impersonal, ultimate reality. Buddha would not describe Nirvana, except to say
that it is bliss. The problem, however, is that bliss is a personal trait which
is inconsistent with the impersonality of Nirvana. Bliss and the extinction of
desire (the blowing out of the flame of life) are fundamentally incompatible.
Of course, some eastern
philosophers claim not to be bothered by logical contradictions. In their view
A and Non-A may be equally ultimate, but this is only a mind game. They do not
and cannot live as if the real world is ultimately contradictory. No Buddhist
or Hindu philosopher will act as if being run over by a car is the same as
escaping such a fate.
In the end, Buddhism, which
began with Buddha’s distress over suffering, offers only an anesthetic.
There is no inspiration in
Islam. Islam
claims to be based on revelations given to Muhammad (d. AD 632) by the
archangel Jibril. Its references to biblical characters and events are clearly
only a mishmash of stories picked up by Muhammad from contact with Jews and
Christians and various cults in his travels as a trader. The Qur’an says that Muhammad
never read or wrote a book. His followers wrote down his sayings on any material
that was handy. After his death, his sayings were collected to form the Quran.
The Qur’an encourages Christians to read the Injil (the gospel) because then
they will see that Muhammad is a true prophet. However, the Injil, as it exists
in manuscripts from the second century onward, clearly contradicts the
fundamental teachings of Islam. For example, the Qur’an specifically denies
that Jesus is the Son of God and that He was crucified on the cross. Islam is
simply the most successful Christian cult, and like all the major cults, it
denies the deity of Christ.
The doctrines of Islam offer no
comfort for those who suffer. Everything that happens is according to the will
of Allah, and submission to His inscrutable will is the essence of Islam. Allah
is utterly transcendent. He has never revealed himself. All we can know is his
will. We cannot know him or have a personal and intimate relationship with him
(though some later developments may have softened this conception). The Muslim
answer to suffering is simply, “Allah has willed it.” We can neither question
his decree, nor understand its purpose. Has a woman been gang raped? We must
punish the evil-doers, of course, but she must submit to the inscrutable will
of God without any comfort from the presence of God.
There is no meaning in
materialism. As Friedrich Nietzsche clearly realized, the death of God
entails the death of ultimate meaning and morality. Man without God must move
on beyond good and evil. For the consistent materialist, suffering is simply a fact,
a meaningless datum. Of course, materialists (by the grace of the God they
deny) do become outraged at injustice. In their hearts, they know that the gang
rape of a woman is different from a pack of dogs climbing one after the other
on top of a bitch in heat. In their proper moral outrage, materialists
improperly rage against God, who alone can give meaning to their sense of
morality.
Summary.
Ø Hinduism. Learn to
regard suffering as an illusion.
Ø Buddhism. Train
yourself to ignore your suffering. Extinguish your individual, self-centered
desire.
Ø Islam. Submit to
suffering. It is the inscrutable will of a remote Allah.
Ø Materialism.
Suffering is a fact of evolution. No suffering is truly evil because good and
evil are value judgments made by individuals or by their particular
communities.
These are all of the viable
alternatives to Christianity that there are in the world. My heart can rest in
none of them because I know that good and evil are neither illusions of the
mortal mind nor inventions of self-replicating mud. I know that generosity and
kindness reflect ultimate Goodness and that cruelty is an aberration. I know
that a rose is more beautiful than a pile of horse manure. I know that we were
designed for love and for beauty and for the fulfillment of every holy desire.
The extinction of desire (Buddhism), the dissolution of individuality in the
great ocean of being (Hinduism), and the unreachable transcendence of Allah—all
of these deny the fundamental fact of our humanity: we were made for relationship.
