WHY WE SUFFER? A NATURALISTIC VIEW

When I was a teenager and occasionally had a headache or a stomach upset, the head of my Hebrew school (called Mahazike Hatorah), in Istanbul, Turkey, Mr. Nisim Behar, used to tell me, “Well, you must have done something wrong! That infuriated me, and I often responded, “No I did not do anything wrong. I simply don’t feel well today.”

The suffering of the righteous has been a challenge for many religions. In modern times, this subject has been discussed by Harold Kushner, in his popular book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981) and many others. The issue, however, is very old, and has already been dealt with in some of the ancient Near Eastern literary texts (See, “The Babylonian Theodicy,” ANET, 601 ff) as well as the Hebrew Bible, through the Book of Job, the Psalms (e.g.,Ps.73), the Book of Proverbs (e.g.3:12), Book of Deuteronomy and others with no satisfactory solution. The Rabbis, too, tackled this thorny subject, and came up with a variety of answers, most of them putting the blame on the individual (See, e.g., Ber. 7a). On the other hand, Rabbi Yannai (3^rd cent. CE) gave up and stated, “It is not in our power to explain the wellbeing of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous” (PA: 4: 19).

In attempting to solve the problem of why we suffer within the context of theism, many thinkers define God as the one who is the most powerful, perfect, righteous, fair, and able to relate to his (!) creations directly by having a personal relationship with them and by responding (or, not) to their quests. God, we are told, rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. Therefore, if a person is in pain, it is because he/she must have done something wrong. Hence, the answer of my teacher given above.

However, there is another way to look at the problem. And that is, to define God in a naturalistic way, namely to assert that God is the impersonal energy of the universe, which encompasses all creation, and is the force that keeps it going. This position is called “religious naturalism,” which was defended by many in the past (see Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, 3^rd cent. BCE), and, in our time, by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (d.1983) and others, who saw God as the sum of all natural forces in the universe. It is also the one that I subscribe to.

In religious naturalism, God’s energy is impersonal, and when bad things occur to good people, it is not because God “willed” it and “wanted” to punish them, but simply because we still do not know how the universe fully operates. Every day, through our scientific research, we keep discovering more about God, and learn how the laws of nature work in our daily life. We need God, because we are part of the maintenance of all the planets and the laws that govern them. We cannot live without God, because that is all there is in life! At the end of time, when we finally learn all the secrets of existence, we will celebrate it as the long awaited Messianic days. 

What shall we do in the meantime? We obviously cannot blame the God of nature for all the bad things we do to ourselves or the world around us. In cases of suffering due to illness, aging or simply bad luck, we need to accept these as being part of life, and not divine punishment. We now live longer and have a clearer understanding of nature. But, we still have a long way to go. Hopefully, future generations, with more research, will have a better handle on our existential conditions.  

I believe most people would be more comfortable with this type explanation, instead of looking to blame either God or other individuals.

How about that ? I invite your comments.

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

   

Dec. 15, 2019 

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