Problem of Evil: Death (part 4 of 4)

Last part!

I didn’t think my meditations on evil would be complete without some discussion of death. To do this I re-read a very short meditation by Nicholas Wolterstorff called Lament For A Son. His son, Eric, died in a climbing accident at 25 and these were his meditations and reflections during that time which 10 years later he decided to publish in hopes of helping others to share their feelings in times of loss and lament. 

I couldn't help thinking of others I have known who have lost like this. My friend Brit drowned in the red sea while free diving. He was the oldest of five. 

​Silence. 'Was there a letter from Eric today?" "When did Eric say he would call?" Now only silence. Absence and silence. When we gather now there's always someone missing, his absence as present as our presence, his silence as loud as our speech. Still five children, but one always gone. (14)

​​I also think of a two different parents I have known who had to bury one of their children and how much that loss shaped their lives and was always with them in our conversations. 

​​Rather often I am asked whether the grief remains as intense as when I wrote. The answer is, No. The wound is no longer raw. But it has not disappeared. That is as it should be. If he was worth loving, he is worth grieving over. Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved. That worth abides.

So I own my grief. I do not try to put it behind me, to get over it, to forget it. I do not try to dis-own it. If someone asks, "Who are you, tell me about yourself," I say--not immediately, but shortly--"I am one who lost a son." This loss determines my identity, not all of my identity, but much of it... Lament is a part of life. (5-6)

​​I think our tendency when facing grief is to feel we ought to take comfort in the resurrection; that it is ok to be sad, but we should also be happy. 

​​Elements of the gospel which I had always thought would console did not. They did something else, something important, but not that. It did not console me to be reminded of the resurrection. If I had forgotten that hope, then it would indeed have brought light into my life to be reminded of it. But I did not think of death as a bottomless pit. I not grieve as one who has no hope. Yet Eric is gone, here and now he is gone; now​ I cannot talk with him, now I cannot see him, now I cannot hug him, now I cannot hear of his plans for the future. That​ is my sorrow. A friend said, "Remember, he's in good hands." I was deeply moved. But that reality doesn't put Eric back in my hands now. That's my grief. For that grief, what consolation can there be other than having him back?

... Though I shall indeed recall that death is being overcome, my grief is that death still stalks this world and one day knifed down my Eric. (31-32)

​​And one of the reasons this feels so intolerable, one of the reasons death is connected to evil and Paul calls it our enemy, is that each human person is made in the image of God. "A person, an irreplaceable person, is gone ... The world is emptier. My son is gone. Only a hole remains, a void, a gap, never to be filled."

Wolterstorff is clear that death is demonic, it is an enemy of God’s peace. This is not what is always said at funerals, but it is grounded in Paul’s language about Death being the last enemy. So why does Jesus preach “Blessed are those who mourn.” Wolterstorff wonders if it is because they know and ache for the new creation … they are “aching visionaries.” But just before this he asks another powerful question.

Made in the image of God: That is how the biblical writers describe us. To be human is to be an icon of God … In what respects do we mirror God? In our knowledge. In our love. In our justice. In our sociality. In our creativity. These are the answers the Christian tradition offers us.

One answer rarely finds its way onto the list: in our suffering. Perhaps the thought is too appalling. Do we mirror God in suffering? Are we to mirror him ever more closely in suffering? Was it meant that we should be icons in suffering? Is it our glory to suffer? (83)

Recently I was listening to an interview with a famous Buddhist monk. He was friends with Merton and somewhere in my files I have a dialogue between the two that my roommate from college gave me. In the interview he said he would not want a place without suffering, he would not want to send his kids to a place without suffering “because from suffering, we learn understanding and compassion.” He used the image of the lotus flower … you cannot grow a lotus flower on a marble floor, it must grow out of the mud. This struck me as true, as something that is deeply true within the Christian story, which is a story of the savior suffering and dying.

I also thought of a book by Henri Nouwen called Compassion. He defines compassion as derived from the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean “to suffer with.” He and the other writers argue, from long discussion and thought, that “the call to compassion slowly revealed itself to us as the center of the Christian life” and that “through compassion our humanity grows into its fullness.”

I also thought of a encouragement from Bonhoeffer in a letter to his fellow conspirators to continue to be compassionate to others who continued to obey the party lines: “There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity … We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

And that is Wolterstorff’s admonition to anyone who would try to comfort those who have lost someone to death:

Please: Don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.

I know: People do sometimes think things are more awful than they really are. Such people need to be corrected—gently, eventually. But no one thinks death is more awful than it is. It’s those who think it’s not so bad that need correcting. (35)

Finẽ