A helpful and ever-timely distinction from pages 84-85 of On Being a Theologian of the Cross:
“Contemporary theologians talk much about the problem of evil. Some think it is the most difficult problem for theology today and one of the most persistent causes of unbelief. … Since suffering is itself classified as evil, it is of course simply lumped together with disaster, crime, misfortune of every sort, abuse, holocaust, and all manner of notorious wrong as one and the same problem. So it is almost universally the case that theologians and philosophers include suffering without further qualification among those things they call evil. … Evil does cause suffering — but not always. Indeed, the usual complaint is that the evil don’t seem to suffer. However, the causes of suffering may not always be evil — perhaps not even most of the time. Love can cause suffering. Beauty can be the occasion for suffering. Children with their demands and impetuous cries can cause suffering. Just the toil and trouble of daily life can cause suffering, and so on. Yet these are surely not to be termed evil. The problem of suffering should not just be rolled up with the problem of evil…”
“Identification of suffering with evil has the further result that God must be absolved from all blame. Thus, the theologian of glory adds to the perfidy of false speech by trying to assure us that God, of course, has nothing to do with suffering and evil. God is “good,” the rewarder of all our “good” works, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of merit. …Meanwhile, suffering goes on unabated. If God has nothing to do with suffering, what is he involved with? Whoever does not know God hidden in suffering, Luther asserts in his proof, does not know God at all.”
And speaking of God hidden in suffering, today’s bonus track would have to be JAZ’s new mix, “For the Heads and the Heart”, which was selected as Dream Chimney’s current mix of the week:
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6 responses to “The Danger of Rolling Suffering Into Evil (According to Gerhard Forde)”
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One of my favorite theological quotes of all-time! Thanks for the back-handed mix plug. 😉
That evil and suffering are called a “problem” shows just how much of our language we’ve lost to the modern mind. Theodicy is a mystery to be engaged with in doxology and existentially as where problems demand to be “solved.” The mystery and the problem ask the same question and the former arrives at truths that couldn’t be approached directly, as where the latter gives us, at best, naive philosophical speculation. The book of Job has everything to say to our EXISTENCE and nothing at all to say to our demands of postured rationality.
I suppose we could call suffering an ‘evil’ if we mean, by that, a defect. We were not supposed to be worn down by labor, children etc.. However, how many modern theologians will reckon that such things occur because, on account of sin’s reign over men, the Lord laid a curse down over the creation! In this world, to love is to hurt, such is the movement of God into His own curse, the ban on sin.
All true suffering is caused by alienation from God, and alienation has its first cause in our collective disobedience, if we are to believe the spiritual message of the first 3 chapters of Genesis. The rest of the Bible is about God entering into that alienation, ultimately even to the point of internalizing it in the alienation of the Father from the Son on the Cross. Only the “first fruits” of the reconciliation of that alienation is born in the resurrection. The alienation, or for the “reconciled” believer, the effects of it, are still crushingly with us, and most painfully in the fact that Love, in this warped world, causes more real pain, suffering and loss than “sin” ever could.
I love this so much, David! Thank you! Just last week, an official United Methodist article, attempting to say something meaningful about hurricanes, said that God isn’t the author of evil. I agree! But in almost the next sentence—with a little hocus-pocus and sleight of hand—the author said that “suffering does not come from God.”
Wait… what does suffering necessarily have to do with evil? Most of life is suffering to some extent—or at least my life is. (What am I doing wrong?) To conflate evil and suffering, and say that God has nothing to do with them, is to assume that suffering represents an interruption to the life that God wants for us. Therefore, as Forde implies, God must be displeased with me because I’m not living “according to his plan”!
Do I live most of my life feeling as if God is disappointed with me?