I Believe … But I Don’t Understand

Image source: gospelcoalition.org.

On Monday, May 23, Patheos published an article by Rebecca Bratten Weiss on suffering and “the clamor of insufficient explanations”. By “insufficient explanations”, Weiss means not only the myriad of clichés we Christians inflict on the suffering and despairing (“If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it;” “God shapes the back to fit the burden”), but also the assertion, “It must be God’s will.”

The Challenge of Suffering

The problem of suffering is the single most potent argument against Christian theology and cosmology, because it cuts past the dry hairsplitting of philosophy to pose a direct challenge to the heart. As Weiss puts it, “The fact that we need to suffer to be well is a symptom of a fallen world, but to suggest that the suffering itself comes not from the darkness of nature but from God on high is horrifying, sadistic.”

In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the atheist brother Ivan refuses to believe in a God who allows the suffering of children, and says that even if there is some inexplicable benefit to be derived from this, he will not have it. “I respectfully return the ticket” he says. I sympathize. I respectfully return the ticket to whatever fun-house or extravaganza somehow necessitates this terrible suffering. I would rather join Ivan and deny God outright, than believe in a God who is up there pulling all the strings that lead us to torment and loss, because this was the only way, the best of all possible worlds. [N.B.: Weiss has not abandoned the Faith, either formally or informally.]

We can’t escape the challenge by blaming the darkness of nature; for if Nature is dark, it can only be by God’s Will. And it’s not even the best of all possible worlds (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I:25:6 ad 3). Whether God manipulates all events directly, or simply sits back and watches everything play out by itself, or some combination of the two, the buck stops at His desk.

The hollow men

In Book 3 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we find a version of the story of Narcissus. Son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, Narcissus was stunningly handsome but haughty, breaking the hearts of many women by refusing them his attention, including the unfortunate Echo. In Conon’s Narrations, the unrequited lovers are all males, one of whom commits suicide on Narcissus’ doorstep. In both, at least one such heartbroken person utters the wish that Narcissus learn the pain he has inflicted on others … a wish Nemesis hears and grants.

So one day, while Narcissus is out hunting, Nemesis leads him to a pool of particular clarity and reflectivity. Stooping to get himself a drink, Narcissus sees his own reflection and falls desperately in love with himself. Ovid portrays him as initially deceived into thinking the reflection is of someone else; nevertheless, eventually, he learns the truth, yet can’t stop gazing at his mirror image. Eventually, he either wasted away or committed suicide; not much to choose between the two.

There is another story about Narcissus [writes Pausanias in the second century], less popular indeed than the other, but not without some support. It is said that Narcissus had a twin sister; they were exactly alike in appearance, their hair was the same, they wore similar clothes, and went hunting together. The story goes on that Narcissus fell in love with his sister, and when the girl died, would go to the spring, knowing that it was his reflection that he saw, but in spite of this knowledge finding some relief for his love in imagining that he saw, not his own reflection, but the likeness of his sister.[1]

So much for “choice” …

Here we go with the third annual Ask Them What They Mean By Choice Day, in which we pro-life bloggers all pretend that, if we pile on with the posts, the pro-aborts will stop communing within themselves, step out of their echo chamber and actually pay attention to what’s really happening with the Great Western Atrocity.  Oh, I’m sorry — that was bitter and cynical, wasn’t it.

Actually, Planned Barrenhood announced that it will be moving away from the word “choice” as “unacceptably limiting”:

“I’m neither pro-choice nor pro-life,” said one woman in a focus group commissioned by Planned Parenthood.  “I’m pro-whatever-the-situation is.” Said another, “there should be three: pro-life, pro-choice and something in the middle that helps people understand circumstances [...] It’s not just back or white, there’s grey [sic].” A recent research push by the organization found that large numbers of Americans feel this way — uncomfortable with both the pro-life and pro-choice labels. And so Planned Parenthood’s newest messaging will be moving away from the language of choice.

PB has also rolled out a companion website and advertisement, with the advert — in a touch that must have Friedrich Nietzsche smiling in whatever part of the hereafter he occupies — titled “Moving Beyond Labels”.

“A growing number of Americans no longer identify with the pro-choice and pro-life labels that they believe box them in,” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said in a statement. “Instead of putting people in one category or another, we should respect the decisions women and their families make.” The campaign also has a companion website focusing on abortion as a personal decision.

“The decisions women and their families make”.  “A personal decision”.  Another word for decision is … choice. 

Of booties and killing

“Thou shalt not kill.” Seems obvious, right?

It isn’t. Not really. And let me explain why.

As you may have guessed, I’m fascinated with words. I’m not a trained linguist, just a logophile with access to the virtually unlimited resources of the internet and a little too much time on my hands. But I’m also in a continuing study of my own religion, as a revert whose religious formation was spotty and arguably mismanaged, and as person fascinated by the cultural and philosophical richness of the Catholic faith.

As I explained the other day, semantics is calling a spade a spade because it isn’t a shovel. The application of sound to concept may be socially constructed; but it doesn’t follow that you can therefore mean whatever you want with words. In fact, it’s precisely because they are socially constructed that you have to mean what the rest of society means by those words in order to be understood. Failure to do so is failure to communicate your thoughts and emotions, which is what words are supposed to accomplish.

The last couple of years have been full of stories concerning translation, about how specific words and phrases are rendered into good or poor English. The biggie, of course, was the most recent Latin Missal translation, with various people getting into Web donnybrooks about the replacement of “one in being” with “consubstantial” and the reintroduction of “ineffable”. But there have been lesser tempests in smaller teapots.