A theology of Suffering

This post was originally written on November 21st, 2015 and posted on my Facebook timeline. It is posted below with minor stylistic changes. the original post and comments can be viewed at: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1146255068735429&id=100000528402588 

November 21, 2015

What has the world come to?!

An 18-year-old American citizen studying in yeshiva murdered in cold blood!

5 people killed in 2 separate terrorist attacks in one day!

18 people murdered since October 1^st, 2016.

While I never met Ezra Schwartz and am not part of the Maimonides High School community, the sense of loss is palpable among the many YU students who knew Ezra. The Talmud says that shlukhei mitzvah, those on the way to perform a mitzvah, will not be harmed.  Yet recent events make it impossible for me to find this statement theologically tenable. The unpleasant truth of the matter is that recent events have made the concept of a personal God, who is intimately involved in the minutia of daily life difficult to accept as something borne out in the reality which I see on a day to day basis.

Similarly, the concept of hashgakha pratit, divine providence based upon the notion of a personal God who is intimately involved in daily life and directs the course of events from the most minute to the grandest is simply not reflective of the current reality.

Over the past few months, as the situation in Israel has rapidly deteriorated, I cannot help but wonder whether we are all in some way Iyov (Job), the metaphorical perfectly righteous individual who suffers for no apparent reason. the lack of any apparent or implicit textual reason for Iyov's suffering is perhaps the single most difficult element of a theologically, textually and linguistically challenging Biblical book which holds back no punches and forces us to confront the eternal problem of the righteous who suffer and wicked who prosper.

While the Rambam (Maimonides) enshrines the notion that ultimately, the wicked will be punished and the righteous rewarded as a sacrosanct ikar emunah (principle of faith), the reliance on a messianic era to serve as a corrective force against the injustice of human experience does nothing to relieve our mental, emotional and spiritual-theological pain and questioning of faith.

Indeed, the notion of a messianic era in which the injustices of this world will be corrected is necessary as a theological counter-argument to the problem of the tzaddik v'ra lo/ the righteous who suffer.

While this may relieve some of our theological-spiritual pain on the cosmic time scale of divine justice, it must be noted that eventual, Messianic justice does nothing to correct for the immediate pain, overwhelming sense of loss, despair and spiritual/theological struggle that the murder of an 18-year-old causes.

And yet paradoxically, in our search for meaning, we are forced to call out to God, the same God who we feel has abandoned us and turn unto God and like Avraham, demand that God, the Judge of all the world not conceal God's presence from us and take heed of the pained cries of God's creatures who "cry out together with the Prophet Habakkuk (1:13): You whose eyes are too pure to look upon evil, Who cannot countenance wrongdoing , why do You countenance treachery, and stand idly by while the wicked devours the one more righteous than he?!"

Our search for meaning amidst tragedy has led us to question the notion of a personal god who is intimately involved in daily life and the concept of divine providence and yet despite or perhaps because of the unanswerable nature of the theological question of suffering, we are forced to return to the divine and with no other recourse, call unto God to remember us in our time of affliction have mercy upon His people, whom He created in His Image.

In times such as these, we are forced to confront the paradox of the circular nature of faith amidst doubt, in the words of Rav Aharon Lichtenstein ZTL, "the source of faith is faith itself."

We believe not because belief in God is easy but despite the challenge of faith. And when we are confronted by inexplicable tragedy, we must not dwell upon finding an explanation, for there is none, but instead view it as a call to action