Does God give you more suffering than you can bear?

Suffering, as we know, can be physical, psychic, mental, emotional. There are many forms of suffering and it is inescapable. Everyone suffers; it is part of the human condition. Even Jesus was "destined to suffer grievously" (Luke 9:22), and so are we. It is an age-old problem. For 3,000 years people have been writing about it. One third of the 150 psalms are of lament and petition. Late first-century Roman historian Tacitus wrote that many wise men of antiquity thought that heaven was unconcerned for us, letting the good suffer and the wicked prosper. Seventeenth-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes considered "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Even the early 19th-century novelist Charlotte Bronte observed, "Why life is so blank, brief and bitter I do not know."

A recent issue of the journal Priests and People calls suffering the most difficult subject of all. But before we can explore whether God gives us more suffering than we can bear, the question comes up of whether God causes suffering in the first place. A few Catholic editors that I talked to thought that God did not cause suffering. "God is too transcendent." One priest said that "God is not a monster."

If we think of suffering as evil (and that's another question!), God could not cause evil. In a 1994 U.S. Catholic survey 51 percent of the respondents agreed that "suffering and death are never part of God's will for us"; 38 percent disagreed.

Scripture, however, records that God does cause suffering. No, not in the Garden of Eden. But because Adam and Eve violated God's will, they were expelled. And we have had suffering ever since. The Old Testament is replete with stories of suffering. Adam and Eve, as we see, brought on their own. In the biblical account, God willed that the ground Adam tilled would be cursed and bring forth thorns and thistles. To Eve, God said, "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children" (Gen. 3:16). Another punishment for her would be that Adam would be the boss. A great many women do not accept that particular suffering anymore today. But why should all women succeeding Eve suffer pain in childbirth?

Cain, Adam and Eve's son, killed Abel, his brother. Lamech, a descendant of Cain, killed a boy for bruising him (Gen. 4:23). God caused the flood, and innocent children were drowned. As punishment for the golden calf, Moses had the Levites "slay your own kinsmen, your friends and neighbors" (Exod. 32:27-28). About 3,000 were slaughtered.

The Lord opened the earth and the recalcitrant Dathan and Abiram and their "wives and sons and little ones" were swallowed alive. "At their shrieks" the Israelites near them fled, afraid of the same fate. Then "fire from the Lord came forth which consumed two hundred and fifty men" (Num. 16:31-35). God also had a man stoned to death for gathering wood on the Sabbath (Num. 15:32-36).

The ten plagues were God's idea also, and many innocent people must have suffered. At Bashan, Moses, at God's command, slaughtered every man, woman, and child (Num. 21:35). Some time later, Moses had all Midianite boys and nonvirgin women slain--the army officers could keep the virgins for themselves (Num. 31:17-18). And so it went.

To get back to our title question, was the suffering, caused by God or brought on by the people themselves, more than they could bear? One priest said that he knew of several suicides caused by unbearable suffering, the suffering in his thought caused by God. In scripture, always the basis of our spirituality, we read of four suicides. Ahitophel hanged himself after failing in his plans to betray David (2 Sam. 17:23). Saul after seeing his three sons killed and himself wounded by the Philistines, asked his sword bearer to run him through lest the Philistine "make sport of me." But the frightened armor bearer refused, and Saul then fell on his own sword. And the armor-bearer did likewise. Perhaps he, too, feared what the Philistines would do to him (1 Sam. 31:1-6).

Judas, overwhelmed by grief and shame at his betrayal of Jesus ("I have sinned in betraying innocent blood"), hanged himself. Was his suffering more than he could bear? Jesus would surely have forgiven him; yet at the moment he so "deeply regretted" his abominable deed, he evidently found his anguish unbearable. Dante, in the Divine Comedy, places Judas in the bottom pit of hell, for to betray a friend, in this case Christ himself, is the worst of sins. When we think of Judas' repentance and agony, we have some sympathy for him, as we do for all suicides.

At the same time we have Mary, suffering at seeing her only son humiliated, bloody from scourging, reviled by the crowds, and nailed naked to a cross as a criminal. Cicero called crucifixion the "cruelest and most degrading form of execution." Mary's suffering as she stood at the foot of the cross must have seemed almost unbearable, even though she had friends and the Beloved Disciple with her for support, and Jesus from the cross tells the Beloved Disciple to take care of her.

But did God cause the suffering? On the day he arose Jesus asked the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory" (Luke 24:26)?

When Peter tried to rescue Jesus when the soldiers came for him, Jesus asked, "Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave me?" (John 18:11). He had told the apostles that he had to "suffer greatly" and be killed (Luke 9:22). Yes, his Father willed Jesus' suffering, and Jesus accepted the suffering because it was the will of his Father. The author of Hebrews wrote that "it was fitting that he [God] should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering" (2:10). It is not for us to question the wisdom of God. And since we all suffer, would we have fully accepted Jesus as one of us if he had not suffered? Since suffering is part of our humanity, would Jesus have been fully human to us without his suffering?

Jesus did not question his Father's will that he suffer and die, for he said in reference to his imminent death, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit" (John 12:24). But would this suffering be more than he could bear?

It almost seems like it, for in the Garden of Gethsemani, Jesus says, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death" (Matt. 26:38); "he was in such agony and prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground" (Luke 22:44); and, as Matthew, Mark, and Luke record, he asked his Father that this cup of suffering be taken away (but only if it were his Father's will).

Loneliness isan essential element of suffering and that can lead to the temptation to despair. We may have friends or family to give support, but I am the one who is suffering. No one else can take over my suffering. In the case of Jesus' agony in the garden, even the apostles fell asleep. To be betrayed by a friend (Judas) could only add to Christ's suffering. And then the apostles chickened out and fled, leaving Christ to face alone the enemy planning his destruction.

As the British poet Louis MacNeice says in one poem:

When my silent terror cried, Nobody, nobody replied. And what about Christ's cry from the crossess, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" (Mark 15:34)? Was Christ in near suicidal despair (not that suicide was an option in his situation)? This cry was considered one of the "seven last words of Christ," especially in the popular Good Friday Tre Ore devotion, designed to excite pity for Christ.

No, this was not a cry of despair. The words are the opening line of Psalm 22, a psalm of thanksgiving and triumph. We must remember that Jesus knew the psalms. Whether he managed to pray aloud the whole psalm or just the opening words, the whole psalm was his prayer. He said it in Aramaic, the language of the people, so that the people would learn and understand that Christ's suffering and death was not a defeat or a failure. Christ praying to his Father was confident, not desperate.

This psalm is a powerful prayer, a prayer of trust, a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, and a great prayer of triumph and victory. It is important for us to read the whole psalm to see that Christ was proclaiming to the people that God is faithful and does not ignore the plea of the afflicted or the cries of the poor or turn a deaf ear to our suffering.

Receive, then, what I owe you, Lord: A song of praise

before the great assembly; I will offer the Lord my promised sacrifice of thanksgiving in the sight of those who revere him. The poor shall eat now and have their fill, those who look to the Lord shall sing out in his acclaim (Psalm 22:26-27).

We see this in the Mass. The "seven last words of Christ" (I count eight), the basis of the Three Hours devotion, were often misinterpreted. Christ's utterances from the cross show us that he was fully aware of what he was accomplishing, that he knew that his suffering was good and necessary. He did not see himself as a pitiful victim with greater suffering than he could bear.

He asks forgiveness for those causing his suffering; he commends his mother to John's care; he tells one criminal that he will be with Jesus that day in Paradise; he commends himself to his Father ("Father, into your hands I commend my spirit"); and knowing that he has fulfilled his Father's will, he says, "It is finished." And then he 'handed over the spirit" (John 19:30). These are not the words of a desperate person.

It is important to see how Jesus suffered, how he reacted to it and accepted it; for unless we in our suffering are not with Jesus who suffered, our suffering could indeed become unbearable, more than we can handle. Glib answers are no help to the problem of severe suffering, but, like Christ, we must sense the nearness of God. At the Last Supper, in the Garden of Gethsemani, and on the cross Jesus talked to his Father-and thus his suffering was not more than he could bear, for his Father was present to him.

When in the Garden of Gethsemani his sweat became like drops of blood, Jesus prayed to his Father. The Father heard him, as he hears us, and "sent an angel to strengthen him." If we are unaware of God, we'll be unaware of the help God may be sending us. If even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God seeing it, how much more is God always aware of us.

If suffering were pointless, Jesus would not have accepted it. Yet if suffering causes us to lose our faith, that is where the real despair comes in. Only great faith can make us able to accept severe suffering.

And here, too, we can be tempted. Martin Skrpese made a great movie out of Nikos Kazantzakis's book The Last Temptation of Christ Touchstone, 1988). It is just a story, but it is based on the humanity of Christ. The novel has Jesus tempted to take the easy way out, to just lead an ordinary life, to, in effect, come down from the cross as people at the cross told him to do (Matt. 27:40). Ignorant people were scandalized by the movie, by the idea that Jesus could be tempted. But Saint Paul's Letter to the Hebrews reports that Christ had been tempted in every way and thus is able to help us in our temptations (2:18; 4:15).

We can, of course, pray to be relieved of suffering. Jesus himself did it, so do many of the psalms. We are not masochists.

In response to this question of God-given unbearable suffering, I pass no judgment on anyone whose suicide has been prompted by suffering. They are probably a small percent of suicides. I know of people who chose suicide calmly

By Father Henry Fehren, well-known author and a columnist for U.S. Catholic for 27 years. He has traveled to 130 countries.