By the Way: The answer to fear and suffering

By Medicine Hat News on March 3, 2018.

I’ve been thinking about suffering, it being Lent and all when we have the opportunity to accompany Jesus on His road towards the cross. Often this includes sharing in “suffering” in some form — voluntarily through fasting for instance. Or, choosing to accept non-voluntary forms of “suffering”(like an illness) as a way to share in suffering’s redemptive quality. I have noticed that there is a fair degree of resistance around the topic of suffering, and believe that, partly, this stems from an anxiety about the nature of the universe and our role, status, fate within it. While there is a need for a truer understanding of suffering, this anxiety is answered finally by an awareness of being loved.

What I’m talking about is the sort of behaviour that one can observe with a child getting an injection. The child may well be anxious about the procedure, but the parent, who is aware of the benefits of the procedure, is not anxious at all — knowing how the temporary pain and discomfort is more than justified by the good outcome. In my modest experience in this example, telling the child about the benefits of the injection does little to allay their fears. A child, however, who can trust and share in their parent’s confidence, will be able to face the procedure with less anxiety.

As the existentialist philosophers reminded us, life’s anxiety is ultimately an anxiety about death — suffering makes us anxious because it is a reminder of our limits, our finitude, of the fact that we are not really in control! I say existential philosophy reminded us of this since this recognition about our anxiety is an ancient and religious diagnosis. And the answer — love — is also ancient. Probably best demonstrated and chronicled by Julian of Norwich in her “revelation” that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” This conviction, coming from a deepening experience of the Love of Christ, was her answer to the question of suffering — Christ’s, her own, other’s, the world’s. The beginnings of this insight go back, however, at least to that great Apostle of Love, St. John, who observes that fear (anxiety about our final end) is tied to an expectation of or focus on punishment — so the anxiety is both justified and caused by how we view the ultimate nature of the universe. The answer to this fear? To know and experience the love of God, who is Love, since complete love casts out fear.

Rev. Oz Lorentzen is from St. Barnabas Anglican Church.

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