5. The Place of Real Pain and Suffering

This next teaching can admittedly be a little tricky. But it seems at least worth mentioning that, in some sense at least, Christianity may be the only religion where its very Gospel message not only includes, but absolutely requires the existence of real evil, pain, and suffering.

In other words, Christianity may be alone in admitting that the reality and centrality of pain is grounded in its central Gospel message of the death Jesus’ died. As a result, its existence cannot be ignored, set aside, or explained away as unreal. Rather, these notions must be embraced, without allowing it to be explained by metaphor, illusion, or delusion. Since Jesus’ crucifixion is at the very center of the Gospel facts, affirming evil and suffering is a literal fact and this requires its stark reality. Further, this type of suffering and pain is both physical as well as existential. It goes without saying that physical pain is a given in Roman crucifixion. After all, it may well be the most painful death to undergo.

Regarding the existential element, how are we to understand deeply the Son of God surprisingly crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk. 15:34). In spite of hearing the words of that terribly-anguished cry, it is impossible for us to understand all that is involved there between the Father and the Son. Then, seemingly to make matters worse, God did not even remove his Son from the cross!

Can it get still get more difficult? How are we to understand the teaching in Hebrews 5:8: “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (ESV)? Moreover, in Hebrews 2:10, we are told that it was fitting that Jesus be made “perfect through suffering.” What is going on in these verses? Some believers no doubt struggle with the idea that Jesus had to learn anything, though we often lose sight of the crucial truth that Jesus was fully human, too (see Lk. 2:52, for instance).

Well, not to disappoint, but we are far from being able to stop here in order to unpack any of these concepts.78 Our best thinking needs to be brought to bear on the issue, for sure, though this would take many hours and a number of books! Our reflections might have much to do with Christianity not shirking the issues, but facing the literal pain and suffering head-on, whatever that entails. But for better or worse, pain and evil are real and need to be accepted as such.

Is the Christian view of evil’s reality really a unique stance in religion? It largely depends on how the nature of particular Hindu and Buddhist beliefs are taken. Both Eastern philosophies have much to say about the nature of illusion. Among various scholars in these

traditions, suffering may be conceived and dealt with differently, sometimes as among the illusions, and even at times as the very outworking of God.79 Other times, evil is held to be ignorance and a part of the transience of all reality, which can be overcome.80 Then as Stephen Neill states, while Buddhism does begin with suffering, it “adopts the most radical of all

solutions: abolish the entity, and therewith we shall abolish the sufferer; abolish the ego, which believes that it suffers, and there will no longer be anything that can suffer.”81

The chief point here is that, with some Eastern delineations, evil could be taken as being illusory, as ignorance, and/or as an entity that disappears when the ego is properly denied (with some overlap between these). On notions like these, there could be a much more specific differences with the general Christian conception of evil and suffering, which could leave the latter as a fairly different and even unique contrast. On the predominant Christian view, the solution to evil is tethered closely to both historical figures as well as to the real, material world, and linked specifically to early documents.82 These three ideas tends to make evil far more concrete and less amorphous than in the East, where it can almost seem as some kind of floating metaphysical notion. Each of these three Christian truths stand in stark contrast to many if not most of the Hindu and Buddhist concepts.

But because of the wide range of Eastern religious views, not all of their expressions are necessarily this much removed from Christianity. Thus, in other cases, the amount of juxtaposition may be lessened. Hence, this fifth area is not necessarily quite as unambiguously unique as are the others that we are highlighting in this small book.

Endnotes

78 Hopefully to explore the possibility of some healing salve among other thoughts on these cognate issues and verses, see Gary R. Habermas, “Evil, the Resurrection and the Example of Jesus,” in God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain, ed. by Chad Meister and James K. Dew (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013), 163-174; see also, “Suffering and Jesus’ Resurrection: A Personal Account,” Chap. 8 of Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, 187-197.

79 Sri Aurobindo, Chap. 16 Readings, in A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, ed. by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 575-609, particularly 589-597.

80 Anderson, Christianity and Comparative Religion, 78.

81 Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths, Second ed. (Oxford University Press), 107; Anderson, Christianity and Comparative Religion, 80.

82 This third point is important from another angle. If we recall the cautions of the Buddhist scholar Edward Conze, we cannot be at all sure of Buddha’s original teachings (Buddhist Scriptures, 11-12). While it is true that Buddhism and Hinduism may survive without historical messages that are traceable to particular individuals, this would not only illustrate the contrast with the historical and early ideas in this sentence above, but such would also increase the tendency for the Eastern ideas to float more with “no objective criterion” (12), which is one of the main issues that Conze raises.