David M. Hatt
Believing that God loves him is the birthright of every individual born into the world. And it is easy to believe just when things are going well. But what are we to do when the pain starts? God loves us, we are told. But suffering seems to be part and parcel of even the most blessed of lives. How can we reconcile this apparent contradiction? We do not make the ones we love suffer. How much more so can God do that to us? We suffer sometimes grievously, and God does nothing to stop the pain. Can we really believe that He loves us?
Perhaps some semblance of an answer lives in the way we regard suffering. We see it as a problem, an anomaly, something that needs to be ended. We have secularized pain. We see it along the lines of the medical model, that it is a condition that needs to be cured.
But maybe suffering is holy. Maybe it comes from God himself for reasons we cannot fathom. Maybe every pain bears a kinship to the suffering a woman feels giving birth. All our pains might be growing pains. Or birthing pains.
Furthermore, there may be benefits to suffering, even suffering which is prolonged and intractable. Nothing shapes the sinews of the soul like prolonged pain. Heroism becomes a necessary condition for survival. There is no holy man who hasn't known suffering. Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi - all paid their dues to the Moloch of pain.
Suffering gives us an opportunity for heroic virtue. Faith and courage are never more in evidence than when a holy man is in the throes of pronounced unceasing pain. And God loves virtue above all else.
Pain is holy and thus full of opportunity, most notably the opportunity for heroism and glory. And, ultimately, heroes are rewarded.
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David M. Hatt: Into the Mind of a Schizophrenic
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