Suffering is wholly awful and I’m not fundamentally open to wishing it upon people so that they might learn and grow from that experience. People who embrace such a belief are not fully appreciating the way suffering tears us apart. Job had precisely such disdain for the “comforters” who came to him offering pious but vapid bromides meant to easily assuage in some neat and foolish way his bone-crushing suffering.

I think the whole purpose of the book of Job is to warn us against facile religious explanations for life’s deepest mysteries, especially human suffering in a world created by a benevolent and omnipotent God.

Yes, human free will solves the theological problem, but it does not wipe away our tears. The free will defense cannot be used like a fire extinguisher pointed at a fire. Suffering is a mystery, not a problem, and so it demands a response, not an answer.

Because I’m not often called upon to bring comfort, I’ve become deeply suspicious of easy explanations of the inexplicable and one-sentence comforts when all words fail. One of my favorite anonymous stories is that of a sufferer who came to a wise teacher and said, “My spirit is broken because of the death of one I loved deeply. How can I heal my soul?” The teacher responded, “Go to the circus and there you will see the great clown Carlini. He will bring a smile to your face and joy to your soul.” The sufferer said to the wise teacher, “You don’t understand, I am Carlini.”

We are all Carlinis when our practiced beliefs are crushed by life’s inevitable losses. This is the pit. This is hell on earth. This is the place the psalmist knew when he wrote, “Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord.” (Psalm 130:1).

How we respond to suffering when we are Carlinis shapes the rest of our lives. Utter despair is an option, and a deepened faith is an option. We must choose after we suffer (not before) what meaning we’ll let suffering have in our life. Then the challenge is to have the courage to stick to the meaning we’ve given to suffering.

Rabbi
Marc Gellman
God Squad