Joe Wilkins

Copyright © 2014

Why do good people suffer? This is a universal question over which great philosophers and religious leaders have pondered since humankind developed consciousness. Past societies have attempted to explain suffering primarily through their religious beliefs by searching for explanations as to why their God (or Gods) has imposed this earthly burden on them. A primary reason they have developed is that if you do bad things then God will punish you. This explanation appeals to most people’s sense of justice.

The problem arises when we try to explain the suffering endured by good people—especially when there seems to be no good reason why they should be so punished. Everyone knows of some poor soul who has lived an exemplary life, doing the best possible, when unexpectedly some terrible calamity hits. Conversely, history is full of some nasty people who seem to coast through life with few problems and minimal suffering—and we wonder where the justice in all this is.

Over my career I have worked with some of the most unfortunate, suffering people in our society: the mentally ill, addicts, alcoholics, paralyzed people, the blind, the deaf, birth defective adults, disease infected folks, etc. Moreover, most of these people did nothing to deserve these fates. The suffering they endured seemed to have fallen on them in an arbitrary fashion, leading others to ponder that there, but for the grace of God, goes me!

People who believe in God, or a higher power, typically have difficulty understanding why their God would allow such things to happen. Those who have a deep, intimate relationship with God seem best able to compensate, but even some of them struggle at times. The arbitrariness of the suffering is most difficult to endure, and it implies that God is withdrawn from the human condition on Earth, and allows the suffering to occur randomly, according to his will. Most people handle it by simply not thinking about it, or accepting such bromides as “It’s God’s will and we cannot possibly hope to understand; we must accept his will.”

This satisfies many people at a conscious level, but deep in their inner feelings, they think it is an incomplete answer. One woman, who lost her beloved husband at a young age to a heart attack, leaving her alone to raise three young children, became severely depressed and overcome with her burdens. She began drinking to relieve her misery, became an alcoholic, and dropped deeper into her suffering. After many treatment experiences, she finally achieved lasting sobriety, and went to a preacher and asked why she was being punished so. The minister told her to have faith in God, that God had a plan for her, and things would get better. Then, years later, when things had not gotten better, she decided in her naive way, that her minister had not known his Bible sufficiently. Thinking the answer to suffering had to be in the Bible somewhere, she began studying it thoroughly, looking for the answer that would relieve her pain. She loved God, so she needed to get an answer to keep her faith. And since the Old Testament’s Book of Job specifically deals with the issue of suffering, she concentrated most of her efforts there. Later, she came back to me for more counseling.

 

“But it was an awful journey,” she said. “When I finished with my study, I felt worse than when I started.”

“Why was that?” I asked. Not being a Bible scholar, I very interested to find out where her studies had led her.

“Well, Job was a very good man—a perfect man in the eyes of God. He was the best man on Earth. God was especially pleased with Job because he did all that God expected of him. So, for his reward, God blessed him with a wonderful life– kind of heaven on Earth. That’s what I had before my husband died.

“So Job had it made!” I added.

Her eyes narrowed at me, critically. I didn’t know whether she was angry at me or God.

“Not for long. Soon God caused Job to endure the most horrible suffering you could imagine. Compared to him my life’s been a stroll in the park. Want to know why?”

“He was punishing Job for his sins?” I answered blindly.

“No… God had a bet with the Devil. Now fancy that! God and the devil were engaged in a power struggle as to who would reign supreme over us poor souls down here on Earth. God was claiming how wonderful a man Job was, as evidenced by the fact that he went to great lengths to please God. And in return, God blessed Job with a rich, worldly life.” She paused a while, then continued, “Then the devil pipes up, saying all this didn’t prove anything, because Job, of course, would keep on pleasing God as long as he was being rewarded. But just go ahead and throw some pain and suffering on him, and see how quick he would swing over to the Devil’s point of view.”

None of this was totally new to me, because I had studied the Book of Job in a literature course, when it was presented as a great work of art, but the suffering aspects of it were not emphasized. “So God agrees to make Job suffer to prove his point to the Devil, but Job remained true to God through all his suffering. If you’ll pardon the expression, that’s a hell of a note!”

“Absolutely!” she countered. “That God would do something like that—make Job suffer so, just to prove a point to an evil being. It made me wonder about God.”

“Well…” I started.

She butted in quickly, “Now don’t you go defending him. The way I see it, if you take the Bible literally, like some folks do—and I used to—then God’s playing games with us. But I don’t like the idea of a God who’s so arbitrary and possessive, so I decided to start taking the Bible with a large grain of salt. It’s a good book, but it’s not the only book! So I quit looking for the answer to my suffering in the Bible or from preachers. I’ll find my answer somewhere, somehow, some day…”

This session was very disturbing to me, being a dedicated Christian.  Never having had to endure the kind of suffering she had, I had always endured my suffering stoically—which suited my personality—and eventually things would get better.

I never saw this client again, but she was the one who started me thinking about suffering in depth.

Certainly, suffering is a central theme in the Jewish and Christian religions, as well as all the other major religions. However, I have not experienced many clients who got complete psychological relief through their religious beliefs. It always seemed that they needed some rational foundation that could support their beliefs. Trying to merge these two factors into some cohesive system that was easily understandable became a major interest to me as I pursued my counseling career.

An exception to this client were those who embraced their religion so thoroughly that reasonable alternatives were unavailable to them. Many times they were psychologically so obsessed with their religious beliefs and practices that it consumed their thinking and feeling processes so completely that they did not seem to have time to think about their suffering. I used to classify this process as the psychological defense mechanism of denial, but I have since concluded it is more complicated than that. In effect, they “buried” the suffering so deeply within themselves, and lived on the “highs” they got from their religious zeal. However, often this religious “insulation” would wear thin, and some would drop back into depression, addictive behavior, or other mental difficulties.

Soon I began to think that I needed to offer something more to my clients—at least to give them a sense of hope. Some of my colleagues criticized me for taking too much responsibility for my clients’ feelings. In a sense they were right, but being young and determined, I continued searching for the answer.

Then, one day, while discussing this problem of suffering with a colleague, she suggested that I read Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning. She said that Frankl was a survivor of a holocaust concentration camp, and if anyone knew anything about suffering it was him.

Encouraged, I obtained his book and read it. I quickly realized this was one of the most important books of the twentieth century. In my view, Frankl has updated all that was previously known about suffering, and his philosophy most nearly reflects modern man’s struggle with it. And what I liked best about it was that it was a view from the bottom up, in that he had endured and been immersed in unimaginable suffering, the likes of which the rest of mankind were completely unaware, that is the hell-on-earth suffering that occurred in the Nazi concentration camps. To reinforce this, an older counseling colleague of mine, was a World War II army veteran, and he was in one of the units that first opened and entered one of the concentration camps. He said it was a defining moment of his life—worse than the combat in which he had been engaged. It was something that would haunt him forever. He was a strong advocate of Frankl’s views and encouraged me in my efforts.

Further reinforcing my efforts was the fact that Frankl was a well educated physician and psychiatrist, so it was obvious he had the ability to put the suffering question into terms that were relevant to other professionals seeking answers.

Frankl says that suffering is inevitable, that people are going to suffer in varying degrees throughout their lives. The suffering comes from God (for those who believe in God), in that He has “programmed” it into the natural laws that govern the Universe which He created. This is much like the philosophies of John Locke and Isaac Newton, in that they imagined that the Universe was like a clock, which God “wound up,” is letting it run according to certain natural laws, and He is not interfering with its operation. If one does not believe in God, that the Universe came into existence without supernatural help, then just believing in the order of the natural laws themselves is all one can do.

In any event, these natural laws govern our lives, but they sometimes “catch” innocent, good people into suffering that does not make sense. For example, if little Johnny slips and falls from the top of a tall tree, the natural law of gravity dictates that he will fall to earth, and flesh and bone will be damaged. Johnny, being a good little boy, doesn’t “deserve” this, but he will suffer nonetheless. In this sense, the law of gravity is very democratic, and applies to good and bad people alike.

All this does not explain why God has created a Universe where such suffering can exist, when an all-powerful God could have just as easily created a Universe without pain and suffering. A complete answer to this paradox is unknowable to us at this time, thus we are forced to accept God’s creation as we find it—warts and all. As one client remarked to me, “When I die and go to Heaven, I’m going to button-hole God on a lot of loose threads He left hanging all over the place. I want some straight answers, and I ain’t letting Him off easy, either!”

Thus, if suffering is inevitable, two questions arise: What’s the meaning of suffering? And, What can we do about it?

Frankl say we must endure our suffering—we have no other choice, anyway. However, he points out that the attitude we hold as we face our suffering, and struggle with it, is the critical issue for all of us. If we face the downfalls of our lives with a whiney, “why me” attitude, then the suffering will weaken us, perhaps eventually consuming us. This will further promote negative thought patterns, leading to depression and despair, making one less able to cope with later, unfortunate incidents, deepening our depressive tendencies in an ever-increasing downward spiral.

But if we stand up to our suffering with as much pride and dignity as we can muster, accepting and struggling with it as best we can, we will have the potential to transcend it and become stronger. We can then maintain a survivor’s mode in our inner minds. In this sense suffering then becomes a teacher, and to a lesser degree, a friend, by making us stronger and more capable of coping. People who have been through suffering, and survived by using their inner psychological resources, will know that it will be easier to endure such suffering in the future.

Frankl tells about his fellow Jews in the concentration camps, being herded into the gas chambers to die. They knew what lay ahead, and there was nothing they could do about it. This was the end, the cruelest coup de grace of life! Their lives would soon be over in the most demeaning manner possible: killed by evil people who had lost all concept of what it meant to be human.

Then, Frankl noticed a strange phenomenon. Here were these poor souls facing premature, cruel deaths, with all dignity stripped from them. All their choices were gone and there was nothing they could do about it. Then, miracously, he noticed he was wrong: there was one bit of dignity left, something that no one could take from them.

God had left one choice open to all humans, one that even God would not interfere with: the freedon to choose one’s own attitude toward one’s own death. As each person marched into the gas chambers, they held their heads high, indicating they were in control of their attitude–and they were going to die with dignity and with the attitude of their choosing. This happened almost without exception as he watched thousands die.

In my counseling career I have watched clients face certain death in nursing homes and other situations, and they too, without exception, chose to maintain a positive attitude toward their own deaths. Some were religious and some not. Even the most undesirable of people, murderers in their final hours before their executions, most often choose to die with calmness and dignity, according to reports.

Where does this leave us? Sure, most people die with dignity, we might say, but what other choice do they have? They are going to die anyway, so they might as well go out dignified. They could make their exits kicking, cursing, and screaming, but what is the point of that sort of behavior at a time like that?

My contention is that Frankl has established that we have only one absolute freedom regarding suffering: to choose our attitude about it. Further we possess this freedom our entire lives, and the scorecard of our existence hinges on the summation of which attitudes we most consistently choose.

This translates down to the following scenario: Use our intelligence to avoid all the suffering we can, but when it eventually hits us, do not whine about our misfortune. Endure and overcome it as best we can, and try to learn something from it. If we are able to learn lessons from the suffering, when we emerge from the darkness, we will be stronger than before, because we will be better able to endure and avoid it when it faces us again. This will then produce feelings of strength within, elevating self-esteem. In effect, we are then more responsible to ourselves in a challenging world, building a suit of psychic armor around us.

So strongly do I believe in this process that I often did not overly protect my children from many daily sufferings that confronted them. While my wife and I did not let circumstances overwhelm them with severe suffering, if it was something we thought they could face and struggle through without much parental intervention, we would supervise their efforts, praise their efforts, and help them learn something in the process.

Make no mistake, children want to avoid all the suffering they can, often trying to get Mom and Dad to do it for them, or to bail them out of their misery. Good parents guide them through it, encouraging the children do those things that they can reasonably do for themselves, while poor parents either ignore their children’s’ needs, or rush in and rescue them all the time. This usually results in children who enter adulthood not knowing how to cope with the suffering that will eventually confront them. And these ill-prepared adults are very prone to seek quick fixes through alcohol, drugs, and other forms of escapism that have developed to escape pain and suffering in our quick-fix societies.

Let us look at a practical example of how all this prevails in our everyday lives. First, I will give you a visual image as to how this works, and then show a specific example how a client used it to work himself out of his anguish and suffering. And every client of mine, who re-oriented themselves in the following manner, reported that it was helpful. Consider the following graphic:

 

POSITION A , WHERE AN INDIVIDUAL IS IN PAIN AND SUFFERING AND DESPERATELY WANTS RELIEF

(Let’s use an example where the person is very overweight, to the extent it is affecting health, self image, socialization, and job options. The individual must face the following:)

FACTORS THAT HAVE TO BE ADDRESSED AND ACTED UPON TO LOSE THE WEIGHT AND TO GET IN GOOD PHYSICAL CONDITION

(This can be viewed as a “swamp” that must be crossed to get to the “other side” where the desired goals lie. In this case the factors that must be addressed are: 1) engage in a proven weight-loss program 2) give up old habits of eating 3) increase exercise levels 4) give up the psychological reinforcers that support obesity

POSITION B, THE PLACE WHERE THE PERSON WANTS TO BE: THE GOAL

(To get here the person has to “cross” or wade through the “swamp.” The goal demands that the factors above be addressed and accomplished. To achieve them will be difficult and painful, meaning lifestyle changes, new thinking, physical effort, etc. They will require much work.

As we can see, the “swamp” is an obstacle course between the desire and the goal. The moment a person sets a goal to accomplish a wish or desire, there are certain obstacles to be handled to accomplish the goal. Obstacles in the “swamp” can be emotional, educational, physical, social—anything. But they all require taking risks, and work to overcome them to accomplish the goals. The person has to wade into the swamp, deal with the obstacles, eventually coming out on the other side where the goal is located. Obstacles always require work, and humans are quite clever in devising ways to avoid work. In the above example, many people will try to use the fad-diet of the moment to circumvent the obstacle course to lose weight without much effort. I call this making an “end run” rather than “bursting through” the center of the line.

Suffering people often make non-productive, feeble attempts to stop their suffering. Their attempts may be constructive or not, but eventually lead them to a crossroads where they will be faced with a choice between 1) avoidance, 2) doing nothing, or 3) struggling. If they choose to struggle, then the suffering becomes the fuel for their engine, impelling them to do something constructive. If they choose to do nothing they remain in a chronic state of suffering—sometimes for their entire lives. Many try to avoid what the suffering demands of them by trying to achieve the goal without going through the obstacle course. Examples of this are the alcoholic who tries to stay sober through will power alone and not attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, or getting a college degree by paying money to a diploma-mill college, or getting through a course of study by cheating rather than studying and burning the midnight oil.

But if the person accepts the challenge of the suffering, they automatically do what they must to get through the obstacle course. And if they get through the obstacle course a psychological “miracle” usually occurs, which is an increase in psychological and spiritual strength. Persons who have faced difficulty, and dealt with it in the manner I am proposing, will find that the struggle has strengthened them, because they now know they are able to handle such adversity. Confidence in this and similar matters increases physical and mental attributes tremendously. And it is easy to see that those people who make an everyday practice of this type of behavior are usually confident and accomplished persons. Conversely, those who constantly avoid the demands of the obstacles, become weak, unhappy people, and rarely accomplish their goals.

Next, it is clear that the particular kind of suffering dictates the type of obstacle course that must be crossed. I once had a middle-aged client who had never learned to read, and he had spent his entire life doing nothing about it. He had developed several methods to compensate, usually relying on other people to help him when needed. He had avoided learning earlier because he was fearful people would then know he could not read, and would think less of him. I set him up in an evening reading class, which to him was the fearful obstacle course, but he ultimately decided not to attend, and remained in his state of suffering. I saw him occasionally at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where he nervously tried to avoid me. The look in his eyes told all: he knew he should confront the suffering (fear of going to school) and learn to read, but he did not do it because the anticipated fear of school was a greater state of suffering than was his chronic state of despair of not being able to read. So he stayed mired in his misery. Most people who remain in a chronic state of suffering are emotional cowards, as was this client.

In summary, it is clear that we humans are condemned to suffer as we go through life. Some of the suffering is the consequence of our own behavior, and some is not. However our lives are judged by how we handle the suffering and our attitudes toward it. Going a bit further, Frankl said that one’s mission in life is to do good deeds; experience the positive values of art, beauty, and love; and to be responsible to our suffering. Suffering descends upon us when we do not do good deeds and cannot experience the positive values of life.

We must be responsible to our suffering and get the meaning back into our lives.

 

POSTSCRIPT: Years ago Viktor Frankl came to Atlanta, Georgia and gave a lecture to the public on his concepts about suffering and other therapeutic matters. I attended that lecture and recorded his words on tape. My secretary transcribed them, and I shall put them on this web site in the future for interested readers.