Day 31 – suffering and good choices
Unless life is lived for others, it is not worthwhile. –MOTHER THERESA of Calcutta
That a great deal of the world’s suffering stems from the bad choices of men and women should come as no surprise to any of us. We are all painfully aware of that reality. In fact, humans misuse their freedom of choice so much that one begins to wonder why God granted us the right to choose. But there is another side to suffering and choice that needs to be acknowledged, a noble side. It, too, should come as no surprise to us, for we see it in action every day. Like all good news, however, it tends to take a back seat to the bad.
Not only do our bad choices yield suffering, our good choices often do the same. Think with me a minute about the sacrificial suffering of mankind. Consider, for example, parental love. All over the globe, husbands and wives every day make conscious decisions to start a family. They do so knowing full well the sacrifices involved. To bear the responsibilities of parenthood is to yield on the altar their time, money, and emotions. The intimacy of their marriage may suffer, for the priority of their relationship as husband and wife is often usurped by that of parent and child. Even if all goes well, the voluntary sacrifice of childrearing is a challenge. When you add potential problems like childhood illness and teenage rebellion, it becomes a big gamble. Yet, with full knowledge of this potential for pain and suffering, they forge ahead. They literally lay down their lives for the lives of their children. And almost every couple agrees that it was the right thing to do, even when things don’t go as planned. Indeed, they would not hesitate to encourage their children to do the same. They consider parenthood a good choice, albeit one that demands sacrifice and guarantees suffering.
Other examples could readily be cited. A missionary makes a conscious choice to go to the Amazon to proclaim the gospel, trading the comforts of the suburbs for the dangers of the jungle. A physician stops at the scene of an accident and himself suffers second and third degree burns. A teacher has the courage to confront an abusive but politically prominent parent who promptly lobbies for her termination. A man gives a small child his coat and finds himself shivering in the cold. A woman donates one of her kidneys to her sister, foreseeing all too well the pain of surgery and the risk of mortality. Some airline passengers garner the courage to attack suicidal terrorists and, in meeting death, save the lives of so many others. A husband and wife give up the easy retirement they had longed for in order to raise grandchildren abandoned by their drug-crazed daughter. A single mom works three jobs to put her son through college and dies of poor health shortly after his graduation. An elderly passenger on the Titanic gives up his place on a life raft to a younger man and perishes moments later in the icy waters. A Jewish healer and teacher, full of love for all men, dies a cruel death on a Roman cross so that others might live. These and other similar acts of volition, all noble and good, are accompanied by suffering and pain just as real as that inflicted by bad choices. The point here is this: when we say that our freedom to choose makes suffering possible, we must include the good choices as well as the bad.
From this point on, I will refer to suffering caused by bad choices as retributive and that caused by good choices as sacrificial. Regarding the former, there is no implication that the one suffering has made the bad choice, only that someone’s bad choice is involved. The innocent pedestrian struck and paralyzed by an intoxicated driver and that driver, who must face within his soul and in front of the jury the consequences of his actions, are both by this definition retributive sufferers. Both are the victims of a bad choice. The term retributive, therefore, does not necessarily reflect the punishment due but rather the consequences of choosing badly. And such consequences, we all know too well, the innocent face as often as the guilty.
This relationship between suffering and choice, both bad and good, probably explains the majority of the misery you and I encounter in our daily lives. Tomorrow, we will begin to look at those aspects of suffering that seem independent of our choices.
Daily Quotation
Quoted in Mark Water, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations, 900.
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