Suffering

I found this Blog entry when I got back to reading my blogs after the holidays, and the news of the destruction wrought by the tsunami around the Indian Ocean. In particular, I was struck by Kathryn’s comment:

I’m having enough problems of my own along the lines of “how does a loving God allow this?” without having to come up with coherent answers for other people.

I’m sure many of us are feeling this emotion at the moment, but I can’t help being struck again by the results of a survey of worldwide religious attitudes I read last year (can’t remember where, sadly – possibly The Guardian newspaper). This was a huge survey, canvassing attitudes about religion from people of many faiths and none from many countries around the world. The interesting part for me now was a question along the lines “Does the suffering in the world make it harder to believe in God?” For Westerners and those from rich countries in general, the answer was overwhelmingly “Yes”. But for those in poor countries and the suffering in general, the answer was an overwhelming “No”. That is, for those who are actually suffering, a belief in God is a natural comfort. It is only the comfortable who find the idea of suffering harmful to a belief in God.
Why should this be? Is it perhaps because we rich think that our comfort is some sort of divine right, and that any chink knocked in our armour by the suffering of others makes it more difficult to believe in a nice, clean God who keeps us happy and well fed? And that, for the suffering, their belief in God is a source of strength and comfort in the midst of their pain, because they know that this world is not comfortable by nature but rather filled with pain? And should one answer to such suffering not be for we rich to examine our own comfortable beliefs and allow the reality of pain in the world to wash away our easy assumptions of superiority and entitlement to an easy life?

pax et bonum

Article posted at 10:52am on 05 January 2005
Category: Faith, Musing