The 'Terrible' Truth

The brilliant author and lay-theologian Charles Williams (CW, see another Blogpost) stated: "Most people are, effectively, dualists."
It is very natural to look at the world in terms of opposites: male / female, light / dark, we / them, good / bad, pleasant / painful. We certainly need to make distinctions in order to make the world intelligible. And we definitely need to have preferences in order to make decisions, to live our lives. One preference we naturally share for sure is that we abhor pain (and emotional probably even more than physical).

Pain also makes us feel that the world was not meant that way.
As the great apologist G.K. Chesterton remarked: "Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved."

Then pain must somehow be a punishment, if not for our personal faults then for those of our anchestors, right? Thus pain is to make us suffer for some bad act and happiness is not just pleasant but corresponds to natural goodness, to how things are intended to be. We now strive for happiness and avoid pain not just out of preference but because it is the right thing, a divine imperative.
Suffering is just evil. And God wants you to be happy. Precisely what the healing revivals in the 1950s in the USA, for example, proclaimed. Prosperity Theology it is also called. The opposites happiness / pain have become the duality good / evil (God / devil?!).

One way trying to avoid pain is to strive for an exemplary, virtuous life. Then certainly we will be blessed, right? However, the human perfection that the monk Pelagius promised so long ago somehow keeps slipping through our fingers...
Just when we think we have finally learned our lesson and acquired the necessary skills, something goes wrong again, an unforseen calamity enters our nicely organised and controlled lives and we have to suffer the consequences.

It's really frustrating, but as long as we carry the responsibility, then we are to blame and so still in control, and then next time everything will really and finally be right, right? No more suffering!
Especially in the extreme case of having been raped it can be some consolation to believe in having seduced the rapist.

Alternatively, we can try to avoid all those dangerous external influences that keep hurting us. Hic sunt Dracones! (Here be Dragons) as it says on maps from the 1500s. Can we not just stay away from everything even potentially bad?

But then we notice that the pain somehow still manages to enter our lives. So this devil will have to be excorcised! And because we need a proper hold on the evil, we try to make it tangible, concreet. In other words, we need a scapegoat to carry the blame and which we can eliminate, if not physically then at least mentally/emotionally. Then we'll surely also have gotten rid of that suffering that we cannot bear?!

And often enough the Jews have been ideal victims such as during the Black Plague or under the Nazi's; ironically precisely the people whom God instructed to send a literal goat into the desert to get rid of their sins; (Lev 16,21-22) and whose archfather was already given a ram to sacrifice instead of his only son. (Gen 22,1-19)
This way finds its perfection in Christianity with Jesus who offered Himself as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." (John 1,29) Yet even after two millenia we can hardly claim that suffering has diminished let alone disappeared...

Well then, what about glorifying the example of the Divine Scapegoat and falling in love with our affliction through which we after all have been allowed to participate in the act of Redemption, right? "The greatest love of all is to give your life for your friends." (John 15,13) Agony can even be turned into bliss: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” (Col 1,24)
Quite similar don't you think to the "Stockholm syndrome" (named after a bank robbery there in 1973 where the hostages started to defend the robbers)? No matter what, some emotional distance for sure makes our suffering more bearable...

Emotional distance can also be obtained by philosophising about this well known 'Problem of Pain': perhaps God is not all-Good or Al-mighty that he leaves us to suffer (or at least the innocents)?! And if philosophy doesn't provide consolation enough, perhaps altogether giving up our faith in God might do the trick...
But however clever our ideas (or lack thereof), it still F*CK*NG hurts! And one might finally resort to 'stimulating substances,' to some physical way of coping with the 'curse'

Whatever the choice, at least you can count on divine Solidarity, God understands, better than anyone. Love doesn't Judge: "neither do I judge you" (John 8,11) because "the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost." (Luke 19,10)

The contradiction of the Cross opposes the contradiction at the heart of reality. Life itself is an inexplicable paradox.
Perhaps Jesus presents us with paradoxes precisely to frustrate our constant attempts at solving what's not a problem? and so to help us accept the 'Terrible' Truth:
"And God saw everything He had made, and it was very good" (Gen 1,31); or "the glory of God is in facts" as CW put it;
Life's Good, according to a big tech company; La Vita è Bella ? yes, despite everything... Besides, as Peter said: "to whom should we go?" (John 6,68)
"Can terrifying things be good at the same time? She asked supposedly in passing. Certainly, he said more energetically, would our shivers then measure the Almighty?" (CW again)

"The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself ... Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me." (Siddartha by Hermann Hesse)*
"Nothing was certain but everything was safe⎯that was part of the mystery of Love." (CW) FIN
*PS "Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke."