What kind of God are we left with after we have honestly faced the problem of suffering? Certainly not a God who wants us to suffer. Such a God would have little love, and if we ourselves can respond to suffering with love and a desire to alleviate the pain of others, then we are already greater than such a God. To suffer "for God's sake," as the rabbi from Berdichev put it, does not mean to suffer because God wills it but to suffer in a way that makes us better, more loving, closer to God. The God we find after struggling with this problem is a paradoxical God: this God is "in" our suffering but not "of" it.
How can we understand this better? Most theologies fall into one of two categories: they are either anthropomorphic or metaphysical. "Anthropomorphic" theologies picture God as a person, a conscious being separate from ourselves with a will like our own, with whom we can have a relationship almost as if with another person. "Metaphysical" theologies view God as an abstract principle, entirely separate from our experience, without even any knowledge of our suffering. Both these types of theology are wrong.
Anthropomorphic theologies try to give us the sense that God loves us, but they cannot solve the problem of how a loving God can permit the horrors of extreme suffering. Metaphysical theologies do solve this problem, but at too great a cost. We have a deep spiritual need to know the presence of love in our lives, and to know that love is not denied by suffering. This need cannot really be satisfied by a God who knows nothing of our struggle. The metaphysical God is a perfect principle and can have no knowledge of imperfection or suffering. Metaphysical theologies even call suffering an illusion. In contrast, people who suffer look for a loving presence that can meet them where they are, and not merely in some abstract state of perfection they can never hope to attain. They need to know that God has not forgotten them, even if God is not a person who can literally remember or forget. If God cannot meet us on the ground of our own suffering, then the problem of suffering truly has no answer. The abstractness and detachment of the metaphysical God may be a large reason why unhealthy dependence on a guru, a human source of wisdom and love, is so epidemic in metaphysical circles. These spiritualities awaken a need they cannot fulfill.
The alternative to anthropomorphic and metaphysical theology is existential. This means God participating fully in our existence, including our suffering. This means beholding the God that survives after the God we thought we knew has died in the doubt that our suffering raises. The surviving God - the "God above God" (Tillich, The Courage to Be) - is a God we know much less about than the God we thought we knew in either anthropomorphic or metaphysical theology. We know of the existence of the surviving God not from the outside - from a belief in unbelievable concepts - but from the inside, from the transformation of our hearts.
We find a hint of God's encompassing love through witnessing the compassion that suffering awakens in us. This loving response changes us; it transforms us from separate, isolated creatures of self-interest to full participants in the ongoing flow of life. We are transformed not because we suffer, but because we love. We begin our spiritual journey wanting to know that God loves us. Ironically, the only way that we can know that we are loved is to become loving ourselves.
The compassionate love that grows within us is more than just our own response to suffering; it is a presence, abiding, enduring, and encouraging. This presence is God, or at least what we are humanly able to know of God. "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them" (John 4:16). We can live in this presence. We can know this presence directly; we need not rely on any external authority or religious belief in order to sense it as real.
This presence of love is our inner guide, guiding us toward the most loving response in a difficult situation. Sometimes this response will contradict our own wishes or perceived self-interest, since love's awareness may show us deeper needs than our own. To pursue the loving response anyway, not out of a sense of duty but out of the desire to be compassionate that suffering awakens, may mean the temporary loss of what we want - but it also means gaining God's presence, a sense of connection to God and to the mainstream of life.
Suffering is always connected with loss. We suffer when we lose something we hold to be important: our possessions, our health, someone we love, perhaps even our faith. We question God; we demand to know why we have lost what we cherished. We see how foolish such questioning is when we reflect that the day will come when we will indeed lose everything we have. We cannot prevent it. Our health, our wealth, our contact with those we love, all will be taken from us; the only question is when. Realizing this fills us either with despair or with compassion - it all depends on how willing we are to face it. If we can face it and live with our fears for as long as it may take, we have a chance of breaking through to a deeper, more durable faith. This faith is based on the discovery that there is indeed something fulfilling in our lives that never gets lost, that is eternal.
All material good in our lives eventually disappears; that is its nature. But there is a spiritual good that remains. It changes as the circumstances in our lives change. Sometimes the change requires us to make difficult adjustments, but the good itself does not disappear. If we have learned through suffering to become more aware, truthful, and compassionate, these changes remain; we are never the same as we were before. If we grieve over the loss of something of true value or beauty, the love we once knew is preserved even in our grief. Even if we lose those whom we most loved, we do not lose the love itself; it remains, still changing us, deepening us, and making us more responsive to life if we let it - if we do not choke it off with our anger. The material is only the temporary carrier of the spiritual. We may lose the outward form, but the love and beauty contained within continue to make their impression on our awareness.
We may so desire to hold on to faith that we are driven to ask: Is there anything we can do to keep it? Faith is like anything else that is spiritual: if we try to grasp it, it tends to disappear. But there is a practice we can follow to help preserve our faith in times of suffering.
We need to be willing to feel the pain that suffering brings, and especially how it tears open the heart. Compassion is born in the heartfelt response to loss.
We need to focus our attention, not only on what we ourselves experience but also on how others respond to their own suffering. This focus must be maintained until our heartfelt response to loss becomes a heartfelt response to their loss as well.
We need to recognize that the compassion this brings represents a love that is greater than ourselves. The response of another individual to his or her suffering is sacred ground. Our own response to it means we have entered that sacredness. Our compassion has pulled us outside ourselves. It has become a presence greater than ourselves.
Finally, we need to let ourselves live in this "greater than," to sense it as an atmosphere surrounding us, to trust it to move us, pull us forward in life, and take us to whatever our destiny intends for us. Our response to suffering gradually grows, from heartfelt grief, to compassion for others in pain, to sensing this compassion as something greater than ourselves, to living in it and trusting it to reveal itself as God's presence.
Moving from our own compassion to the presence of God may seem like a very big jump. But the Bible tells us this connection is real: "Those who abide in love abide in God." God is Goodness Itself, Absolute Goodness, so there can be no question that God is good. We can know also that God has the power to transform our lives by our abiding in this love. This is the real "leap of faith": to trust this compassion as more than just a feeling but a pointer to an actual presence beyond ourselves. Trust it, surrender to it, live in it, feel its comfort, and see whether it works. That is the only way to know. Not even this book will help without the practice, and if you know the practice, you don't need the book. The verification of this faith is existential: see whether it actually works in your life. It will work if the love that grows within you is spiritual love, reflecting God's nature, because God always responds to that within us that reflects God's own nature. Translated into human terms, this divine love is the awareness of others' individuality.
This practice is a lifetime's pilgrimage. We may not see the changes overnight, but we can have confidence that they will steadily increase, in response to our devotion.
And so we can preserve and renew our faith if we allow suffering to open our hearts. Our hardest trials show us what is transitory and ultimately worthless, and what is durable, valuable, and eternal:
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:19-21
No corrupting influences can touch the changes that take place within the soul as suffering opens our hearts to greater awareness and love. The heart is where our real treasure is - not in external things that decay and disappear. The changes in the soul that take place when we are not destroyed by suffering are the treasures that do not spoil, which we are told to lay up for ourselves. These hard-won gifts of the spirit give us the presence of God.
Therefore Paul could say that not even all the unimaginable horrors of life - neither life, death, height, depth, principalities, nor powers - can separate us from God's love. We find the answer to the problem of suffering in the compassion that suffering plants like a seed in our hearts, where God's presence works to awaken love in us, and with it the courage and strength to continue living until the hour arrives when we will finally see God "face to face."