Summary

The article discusses the philosophical and practical approaches to dealing with suffering, emphasizing the importance of finding personal meaning, the role of community, and the power of service to others.

Abstract

The article "How You Can Deal With Suffering" delves into the complex nature of human suffering and the existential questions it raises, particularly about the existence and role of God in times of hardship. It suggests that giving suffering a positive meaning can help in overcoming it, and highlights the resilience of individuals like Tania Rak, who face personal tragedies such as the war in Ukraine. The author reflects on the struggle with faith during suffering and proposes that turning to God can provide a guiding framework for enduring hardship. Community and service are presented as key antidotes to suffering, with the author referencing Viktor Frankl's experience of finding purpose through helping others, even in a concentration camp. The article encourages readers to engage with life's challenges actively and to find solace in being of service to others as a means of transcending suffering.

Opinions

The author believes that any answer to the question of suffering, derived from imagination, can be as valid as any other, as it provides a sense of purpose.
The article expresses skepticism about God's role in suffering, questioning the idea that God meters out suffering in a way that we can bear.
It is suggested that the act of turning to God during suffering is a mutual relationship of active engagement and free choice, rather than a one-sided divine decree.
The author posits that community, both faith-based and recovery-oriented, plays a significant role in either exacerbating or alleviating suffering.
Service to others is highlighted as a powerful means of overcoming one's own suffering, drawing on Viktor Frankl's experience and teachings.
The article implies that life's meaning is found not in contemplation but in action and conduct, particularly in the face of life's challenges.

How You Can Deal With Suffering

Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door with a thousand million questions about hate and death and war? Moody Blues

Sometimes my 13-year-old son will ask questions that seem to have no apparent answer, or I don’t know the answer.

So, I turn the question back to him and tell him any answer he comes up with will be as good an answer as any.

This strategy of seeking answers through imagination is what gives life to creative inventions.

This same method can be used with suffering, whether physical or emotional. Whatever positive meaning you can give to suffering, even if it feels like a made-up answer, can provide suffering a purpose to allow a transformation that can transcend the suffering

When suffering seems to be actively pursuing us, such as the case with war, and specifically the Ukraine invasion, I struggle with God, especially when it seems the resolution of suffering is beyond the reach of His redemptive power.

Sometimes, I throw my hands up in despair and renounce God’s existence. Amid unmitigated suffering, either my own or others, I am provoked to question the purpose of existence.

Yet, despite despair, there are those who demonstrate great resilience and personal strength and serve as an inspiration to others to keep up the good fight in overcoming suffering.

Here is Tania Rak’s perspective on how the war with Ukraine has caused her personal suffering and how she is striving to overcome it.

My Family Is in Mariupol. I Don’t Know if I’ll Hear From Them Again

The most terrifying feeling in the world is listing your mother as a missing person in Ukraine

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It is easy and not easy to give up a belief in God.

It is easy to not believe in God during life, but not so easy after death. It’s the unknown eternity that prompts me to wrestle with the existence of God in the here and now, even with all of the suffering.

What is this all about?

The capricious energy of random experiences that creates a hardship for people makes me queasy about God’s intentions.

Maybe, God will rename me “Israel” like He did Jacob in his wrestling with an angel.

“Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Genesis 32:28

Finding a Diagram for living

My diagram for living has been distilled to the essence of turning to God to guide me through suffering. It is the diagram I comfortably make peace with.

An agreement with the concept that God allows suffering or somehow meters it out through the fine art and science of not “giving us more than we can bear” is a cruel, malevolent description of God’s role.

God experiences our sincerity in turning to Him by giving us the Free Choice of turning to Him. It is a mutual relationship of active engagement with each other.

Community is the antidote and the curse for suffering

Getting in with the “right crowd” can make or break a person’s life. The faith community uses evangelization to persuade people to turn to God. Its very definition is to make someone see the light.

As another example, the recovery community of helping people overcome addiction uses “attraction, rather than promotion.

What is the path to leading someone out of the darkness of their suffering and into the attracting light? If you can see experiences through a spiritual lens, it may be easier to transcend human suffering. It’s finding a purpose for the suffering or putting it in a context of a bigger picture.

Service is the antidote to suffering

Viktor Frankl wrote about his time as a prisoner during the Holocaust. By a miracle, he survived the experience and went on to write a book, Man’s Search for Meaning, that has inspired millions in their suffering. He coped with his experience by finding a way to be of service to others in the concentration camp with him.

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us,” states Frankl in his book. “We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

The creative service you and I offer others is the best response to the questions that seem to have no answers and turn tragedy into transformation.