Suffering as Statistical Probability.
Do you focus your meaning on the “why” of suffering or on gratitude and joy?
Is it weird that my fever is the best sensation I’m feeling right now?
Seriously, the pleasant crispy warmth of my skin is so much better than the headache or the cyst the diameter of a baseball.
The pain is in overdrive and I am left here simply breathing. Thankful I have a writing challenge to prompt the question “what do I make of this?”
What comes to mind is how lucky I was to be friends with a mathematician.
He taught me one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned.
Suffering is based on statistics.
Yes, sometimes we eat the karma of our own actions but the random stuff is more or less a random statistic.
It was bound to happen to someone and it just so happened to you.
Whatever virus or bacteria has caused all these responses in my body it’s not targeting me, it was simply going to happen to somebody, probability says so.
Why was this revolutionary to me?
Because I was raised in a Christian family where every pain, every point of suffering was the testing or justice of God.
This caused a lot of “whys?” Why are you doing this to me?
Why the cyst? Why the headache? The fever?
Why (at the time that my friend told me this revelation) the car accidents, the rape of loved ones, my own assault by another, the mental breakdown, the sister fighting her deathbed? Why?
My friend’s answer, unfortunate, random statistics.
My family’s answer, the mysteries of God.
The problem of too many “whys?”
Though I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.
— Job 19:7
The problem with trying to find a meaning in everything is that some things are either a mystery or random chance.
Trying to find whys, when we think our fate dictated by another intelligence, leads to a constant questioning of “what did we do wrong?”
All the pain, all the suffering is multiplied by fear and guilt, real or imaginary.
On top of this is the suppressed, often “heretical” need to express frustration.
If all has meaning, if all has a design, why is it so cruel?
Answer to Job.
In the biblical account of Job, Job is a righteous man. He does everything right and God is pleased with him.
Until, ha-satan, the accuser tempts God into testing Job.
Now we often assign God the trait of omniscience, in which case no test would have had to been made but the God of Job agrees to ha-satan’s wager.
Job’s wives and children are killed. His home is destroyed. He is struck with disease and boils.
I have one cyst and I almost passed out in pain on my way to get water. Lost track of the world around me and had to focus on standing.
Job, however, was said to be covered in boils and sores.
To add salt to the wounds his friends come to argue with him. Declaring that surely he has done something wrong that needs confession.
Job knows himself though and disagrees. He hasn’t done anything wrong and surely God knows this, so why is everything going wrong?
When God finally responds to Job there is no talk of God being light and love, no summum bonum, the source of all good, but rather a demonstration of God’s power through nature.
As the source of the natural phenomenon, he is “The” force of nature.
Objective nature vs. personal suffering.
We might ask why the hurricane hit our house but few ask why hurricanes occur at all. When the effects of nature occur at a distance we often accept them as part of the natural world.
As soon as nature affects us personally, some of us are prone to asking “why?”
We handle nature from afar in an objective manner that sees it simply as it is. The nature that happens to us though takes on a subjective concerned.
It is personalized, even personified, we hold ourselves in relation to it, one being to another, rather than a natural force, or a random statistic.
Job, science, and statistics.
The Job of the Bible didn’t have access to scientific thought or the analyses of the world as a set of probabilities.
When nature affected him personally he personified its source as God and asked: “why?”
With science and statistics, we still receive a why but it’s not personalized.
There are viruses or bacteria in the water that cause illness. Human attention is limited and so car accidents will occur.
Tornadoes happen due to shifts in cold and hot air fronts.
Science provides plenty of whys, the trick is to avoid personalizing them.
I make meaning. I sing praises.
I know that my Redeemer lives. . .
— Job 19:25
We’re humans, our brains naturally ask “why?” We seek meaning in the world around us, and it is a natural function to personalize the events that occur in relation to us.
We will apply meaning somewhere, the question is where?
When I was able to start to see the world as statistics, it took the focus away from the question of “why?”
Specifically “why me?” Or “why us?”
It changed my relationship to natural phenomena, no longer looking for the God beneath or behind the act, the being that judges all that I do and responds with punishments or tests of some kind.
The movement away from a personalized force took away the frustration when there wasn’t really anything done wrong, and yet suffering still occurred.
It took away the personification of pain and misery.
That doesn’t mean however that it took away my God.
Now, I sing praise songs. In the midst of the pain, the cyst, and the fever my mantra is a “thank you.”
I’m not asking “why this?” “Why me?”
I know it’s going to happen to someone and I am recognizing the blessings that I have.
I’m in an airconditioned room on a soft bed in a homestay where the lovely Mina tells me to call her Meh-Meh (mother) and boils me the water for a hot compress.
I have access to clean water. I have a shower. I have the money (just barely) to get a surgery tomorrow.
I’m not rolling on the dirt floor of a hut in pain with no resources to treat it.
I’m not asking “why?” I’m saying “thank you.”
When I stopped worrying about what I did wrong, why I was experiencing suffering, the unfairness of it all, I started seeing the presence that was there all along.
That inner aspect of acceptance, of love, of strength, and all the blessings of my past and the life around me.
So now I get sick with fever, I am wracked with pain, and I sing praise songs. I know the fever will pass, the pain will go away, and that this life and its miracles are worth more than the suffering and the random acts of nature.
We’re going to ascribe meaning somewhere, it’s just a matter of where.
What do we emphasize? The pain or the blessings?
Where do you ascribe meaning?
What questions do you ask when something goes “wrong?”
Where do you look? What does your attention focus on?
What perspective creates this focus of attention?
Would another perspective serve you better?
Try writing about it. Be mindful of it. Take notes throughout your week. If you find your meaning-making mind is only adding to your suffering, envision a new way to explore the experiences you have.
How does this change things? Does it lead to a better life?
Let us know.
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts on binary paper.
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