On Suffering

“So, what do you study?” or “What did you write your dissertation on?” These are pretty common questions when you have the initials PhD after your name. Since I wrote a doctoral dissertation on suffering, I have had to come up with a succinct and (hopefully) interesting way of summarizing my work. The subject matter pretty much guarantees that I will only have about thirty seconds before my questioner will desperately seek out greener pastures or begin to joke about how the ordeal of doctoral work is in and of itself a dissertation on suffering. While some of you may have heard the “elevator speech”version of my dissertation, I think it bears sharing here as well.

Our collective hearts break at the reality of yet another mass shooting, and again like with Sandy Hook, innocently people were gunned down in a place of sanctuary, a place that should always be safe. I find myself returning to my own research for comfort and for a theological framework with which to move forward when what I really want to do is curl up and weep. So, here it is, in the hopes that it might help you think theologically about the reality of suffering whether in Sutherland Springs or your own lives and communities. I also hope that it will motivate us to action to work for a different future.

“My dissertation develops a contemporary theology of suffering in conversation with five theologians who almost span the history of the Church: Gregory the Great, Julian of Norwich, Jeremy Taylor, C.S. Lewis and Ivone Gebara. I chose them because they all write theologically out of personal experiences of suffering. If you take Ivone as a starting place, then she asks the very important question: is this suffering endemic to the human experience (like disease or natural disasters-things we can reasonably expect to encounter in our lives) OR is this suffering the result of injustice? If it is the latter than we, as Christians, are called to fight against it, to speak out and to prevent it. Suffering that is the result of injustice is not some cross we have to bear; it must be stopped. If it is suffering that is endemic, then we can return to Gregory, Julian and Jeremy for wonderful resources and spiritual practices to help us cope. We can also read Lewis, so that we can have permission to be angry in the midst of our suffering.”

I hope you find comfort when your suffering is endemic, and I hope you remember that Jesus calls us to action whenever we encounter injustice in the world.  

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If you are interested in the full length version, my dissertation became the book pictured above, available from Wipf & Stock and on Amazon.