"The culture of suffering - Timothy Keller

Dr. Timothy Keller’s book ‘Walking with God through pain and suffering

‘The culture of suffering’ 

I found this next chapter very intriguing as Dr. Keller describes the suffering across different cultures and contrasts that with the Western culture’s view of it. Dr. Keller begins with a survey from Richard Shweder about how non western cultures help their people to be “edified by their misery”. Richard Shweder states that some cultures have taught that pain and suffering stem from the failure of people to live rightly and goes on to describes that many societies believe that if you honor the moral order and God or the gods, your life your life will go well.

The doctrine of ‘karma’ is perhaps the purest form of the moralistic view as it holds that every soul is reincarnated over and over again. According to his viewpoint the soul brings its past deeds and their latent effects, including suffering, The doctrine of ‘karma’ believes that your soul is released into the divine bliss of eternity only when you have atoned for all of you sins.

The second viewpoint is called the self-transcendent view. Buddhism teaches that suffering comes not from past deeds, but from unfulfilled desires, and those desires are the result of the illusion that we are individual selves. Buddha taught that the solution to suffering is the extinguishing of desire through a change of circumstances. We must detach our hearts from transitory, material things and persons. Buddhism’s goal is to achieve a calmness of the soul in which all desire, individuality, and suffering are dissolved.

Some societies address suffering with a high view of fate and destiny. Life circumstances are seen as set by the stars, or by supernatural forces, or by the doom of the gods, or as in the case of Islam, simply by the inscrutable will of Allah. In this view, people of wisdom and character reconcile their souls with this reality.

The older pagan cultures of northern Europe believed that at the end of time, the gods and heroes would all be killed by the giants and monsters in the tragic battle of Ragnarok. In those societies it was considered the highest virtue to stand one’s ground honorably in the face of hopeless odds. In Islam too, surrender to God’s mysterious will without question has been one of the central requirements of ‘righteousness’.

Finally, he describes the cultures with a ‘dualistic’ view of the world. Those cultures see the world as a battleground between the forces of darkness and light. Injustice, sin and pain are present in the world because of evil and satanic powers. Sufferers are seen as casualties in this war. Sufferers see themselves as victims in this battle with evil and are given hope because, they are told, good will eventually triumph

Dr. Keller writes that at first glance each of these world views seem to be at odds with each other, but they are very much alike.

The self-transcendent cultures call sufferers to think differently. The moralistic cultures to live differently. The fatalistic cultures to embrace one’s destiny, and the dualistic cultures to put one’s hope in the future. They are very much alike because each one tells its members that suffering should not be a surprise- that it is a necessary part of human existence. Second, sufferers are told that suffering can help them rise up and move toward the main purpose of life, whether it is Spiritual growth, or the mastery of oneself, or the achievement of honor, or the promotion of good. Third, they are told that the key to rising and achieving in suffering is something they must take the responsibility to do.

The communal culture tells sufferers to say, “I must die- but my children and children’s children will live on forever. Buddhist cultures direct its members to say, ‘ I must die, but death is an illusion—I will still be as much a part of the universe as I am now. Karmic sufferers may say, I must suffer and die—but if I do it well and nobly, I will have a better life in the future and can be freed from suffering. But in every case, suffering poses a responsibility and presents an opportunity.

Dr. Keller then contrasts the Western culture approach to suffering. Western thought understands that it as consisting of material forces only, all of which operate devoid of anything that could be called purpose. Western societies view suffering as simply an accident. In this view while suffering is real it is outside the domain of good and evil.

Dr. Paul Brand argued in his book, the gift of pain, that the meaning of life in the United States is the pursuit of pleasure and personal freedom that explains why suffering is so traumatic for American’s. In all of the other culture narratives, suffering is an important way to come to a good end to the story. All of these ‘”life meanings” can be achieved not only in spite of suffering, but through it. It can be an important chapter in your life story and crucial stage in achieving what we want in life. In Western societies the meaning of life is individual freedom and happiness which means that suffering is of no possible use. In this world view the only thing to do with suffering is to avoid it at all costs, or if it is unavoidable, manage and minimize the emotions of pain and discomfort as much as possible.

Richard Schweder says that under the metaphor of accident or chance, “suffering is to be treated by the intervention of agents who possess expert skills of some kind of relevant to treating the problem. Traditional cultures believe that the main responsibility in dark times belongs to the sufferers themselves and the things that need to be done are forms of internal “soul work”—learning, patience, wisdom and faithfulness. Contemporary cultures does not see suffering as an opportunity to test, but because sufferers are victims of the impersonal universe, sufferers are referred to ‘experts’, whether medical, psychological, social or civil whose job is the alleviation of the pain by the removal of as many stressors as possible.

But this making suffering a domain of experts has led to a great deal of confusion in our society because different experts differ markedly on what they think sufferers should do. According to James Davies, “during the twentieth century most people living in contemporary society have become increasingly confused about why they suffer emotionally.” He writes about each of the treating experts and says, “as each tradition was based on its own distinctive assumptions and pursued its own goals via its dominant cause. As the saying goes, Dr. Keller writes, if you are an expert in hammers, every problem looks like a nail. The secular model puts sufferers in the hands of experts, but the specialization and reductionism of the different kinds of experts leaves people bewildered.

James Davies refers to a BBC interview with Dr. Robert Spitzer in 2007. Spitzer is a psychiatrist who headed the taskforce that in 1980 wrote the DSMIII Mental disorders of the American Psychiatric Association. When interviewed 25 years later by BBC he admitted that in hindsight he believed that they had wrongly labeled many normal human experiences of grief, sorrow, and anxiety as mental disorders. Davies goes on and say that the DSM focused almost completely on the symptoms.

“They were not interested in understanding the patient’s life, or why they were suffering from those symptoms. If the patient was very sad, anxious or unhappy, then it was simply assumed that he or she was suffering from a disorder that needed to be cured, rather than from a natural and normal human reaction to certain life conditions that needed to be changed.” Through the various scientific techniques the job of the experts was to lessen the pain. The life story was not addressed.

Davies concludes,” the growing influence of the DSM was one among many other social factors spreading the harmful cultural belief that much of our everyday suffering is a damaging encumbrance best swiftly removed-a belief increasingly trapping us within a worldview that regards all suffering as a purely negative force in our lives.”

In the secular worldview suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life, but only as a interruption. There are only two responses to suffering. The first is to manage and lessen the pain. Over the past two generations, most professional services have moved from talking about affliction to discussing stress. They no longer give people ways to endure adversity with patience, but instead use a vocabulary drawn from business, psychology, and medicine to enable them to manage, reduce, and cope with stress, strain and trauma. Sufferers are counseled to buffer themselves with time off, exercise, and supportive relationships. All the focus is on controlling your responses.

The second way to handle suffering in this framework is to look for the cause of the pain and eliminate it. Suffering, according to the Western culture, has a material cause and therefore it can be in theory ‘fixed’. Western people are outraged when suffering happens and they seek to change things on the outside so that the suffering never happens again. This is in contrast to some of the older cultures which choose to look within and see a purpose for this suffering.

In the Boston Review, Larrissa MacFarquhar, was interviewed on her writing and research on very “saintly” people who make great sacrifices for the good of others. She had no religious faith, nor was she raised in one. Larissa responded to the interviewers question with this response

“I….think that, within many religious traditions, there is much more of an acceptance of suffering as a part of life and not necessarily always a terrible thing, because it can help you become a fuller person. Whereas, at least in my limited knowledge, secular utilitarians hate suffering. They see nothing good in it, they want to eliminate it, and they see themselves as responsible for doing so.

She went on to say that secular people also have no belief in a God who will someday put things right. For people of faith, “ God is in control”. Whereas, for secular people, it’s all up to us…that’s why I think that, for secular people, there can be an additional layer of urgency and despair>”

Max Scheler contrasts suffering across the different world views with the comment that “Christian teaching on suffering seems a complete reversal of attitude when compared to the interpretations of other cultures and religious systems. In Christianity there is none of the ancient arrogance, none of the self praise of the sufferer who measures the degree of his suffering against his own power to which others bear witness. Christians are encouraged to express their grief with cries and questions.

Unlike Buddhists, Christians believe that suffering is real, not an illusion. Unlike the believers in ‘Karma’ Christians believe that suffering is often unjust and disproportionate. Life is simply not fair. People who live well do not necessarily do well. As the doctrine of karma does not, which insists that an individual’s suffering is fully deserved. The book of Job is of course the first place this is clearly stated when God condemns Job’s friends for their insistence that Job’s pain and suffering had to be caused by a life of moral inferiority. The entire Christian faith is centered on “ the paragon of the innocent man who freely receives suffering for others debts. In the light of the cross, suffering becomes “purification, not punisment”.

Unlike the dualistic and to some degree the moralistic view, Christianity does not see suffering as a means of working off your sinful debts by virtue of the quality of your endurance of pain. Christianity does not teach “that an ascetic, voluntary self affliction… makes one more spiritual and brings one closer to God…” Dualism divides the world into the good people and the evil people, with suffering being a badge of virtue and the mark of moral superiority that warrants the demonization of groups that have mistreated you. The Christian understanding of suffering is dominated by the idea of grace. In Christ we have received forgiveness, love, and adoption into the family of God. These goods are undeserved and that frees us from the temptation to feel proud of our suffering.

Dr. Keller further contrasts the different cultures with Christianity with this analysis. Christianity teaches us that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming: contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail into the love of god and into more stability and Spiritual power than you can imagine. Suffering—Buddhism says accept it, karma says pay it, fatalism says heroically endure it, secularism says avoid it or fix it.

While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, forseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy. The chapter concludes with Emily’s life story regarding the tragedy of her husband abruptly leaving her and her children and how the sorrows made her a stronger person in the end. Emily eloquently concludes with this statement…

” Like being in a race, where it starts to rain and you hit a mud pit. You can’t go around it, you have to go through it—you can’t go through it fast; you must concentrate on each painful step….. but at the same time, something is keeping you upright and compelling you to continue. In the distance you see what appears to be a sheet of rain and then you see it—the sun; it is perfectly clear…the person you will be there will be stronger, with more understanding of how to run this race