The Sorrow that Weans

An aura of injustice surrounds the idea of human sorrow and God is often the accredited agent in creating it. It is questioned: Why would He would create beings who will inevitably grieve over the various circumstances in which their lives unfold? If God is good, it is thought, why do tears so often enshroud the lives of His beloved children? Does not a human father shield his child from moments of sadness in any situation that lies under his purview? And does not God’s power extend to the ends of the earth thus enabling Him to annihilate any possible situation of sadness? Is it rather that God was never really any good to begin with? Perhaps we have just wished Him to be good to soften the harshness of the world around us. His power would be able to abolish human grief, but His supposed beneficence chooses not to do so. What are we to make of all this?

Before dismissing God’s omnipotence and/or His benevolence, let us first ask the question: In His power, can God use human grief as a means of enabling a human to share in His goodness?

To answer this, let us consider the contentment and comfort a growing baby experiences within the womb of his mother during pregnancy. Her body offers him continual nourishment from the nutrients of the food she consumes, protection from harsh temperatures behind the insulated wall of her flesh, isolation from all dangers by the hiddenness of pre-natal development within.

For an exercise, let us pretend ourselves to be these babes in utero once again. Would we be able to imagine a greater existence than this possible? Yet, as self-aware babies in this scenario, we would all too quickly find our contentment abruptly end after nine months when we mature to such a size as to outgrow our peaceable surroundings. Then we would be forced out of our only-known paradise and shoved into a world of cold air, strange noises, and blinding light. We are no longer fed when we so desire- we must cry out to be given nourishment. Exposed to new and previously unthought of dangers outside the womb, we begin to understand anew the woes of Job as the unfortunate man cursed the day of his birth (c.f. Job 3).

Yet our exposure to the threatening elements of this world is simultaneous to our exposure to the world’s delights as well. Gradually we are granted the ability to use the light of day to encounter a whole new world full of other selves like us. We see beautiful colors, landscapes, faces, plants, and animals; we taste satisfying food and drink; we smell sweet and attractive scents; as we listen, we begin to distinguish laughter and music from other sounds of lively activity. Indeed, it appears as if countless opportunities await our senses to encounter this new realm we have been thrust into. All these opportunities begin to make us feel at home here on earth, wishing to hold onto this world in a similar way we wanted to remain in the ever so familiar womb of our first days. Quickly then have we begun to imagine no other place so conducive to fostering our happiness than outside the womb.

However, it must be admitted, even in the novelty of extra-utero life and our experience of its newfound joys, we find sprinkled throughout our earthly bliss that ever present menace of grief. Things ranging from mild discomforts to sharp pains, minor emotional loss to profound loneliness, shallow heartaches to tormentingly deep regrets. Swiftly does doubt begin to cloud our vision and taunt our former innocent perception of a good world around us.

Yet, maybe this doubt caused by the sum experience of all these distresses we experience has a divinely ordained purpose. Perhaps, rather than being an interruption to the goodness of earthly life, human grief is a uniquely fitting avenue that leads to our possessing the very Source of that goodness. Maybe our sorrows in some mysterious way allude to a greater hope.

Perhaps, like Mary Shelley we can conceive that those very same sorrows we experience “are sent to wean us from the earth.”[1] Just as the baby needs to be forced through the birth canal to live in the world, and then forced off the breast to eat solid food, do we not think in our various attachments to this world we will not similarly need to be forced off the terrestrial tit of earth to leave the delights of this world behind for something better? Human sorrow is the goad that pushes us forward.

By periodically sending crosses our way, God is gently tugging at our hearts, pulling them away from inordinate love of what is not meant to last forever to that which is. Should we then be really grieved at this? Rather, let us rejoice in the burdens of our hearts knowing that to the extent of our sadness God is calling us into an even greater joy.

To reflect on sorrow in this way certainly does not call us to ignore its reality by seeking hypothetical happiness that can serve to distract us from it. Rather, to recognize sorrow as a fleeting reality that points to something bigger brings the question of God’s goodness into clearer focus and enables us to accept moments in which we might become sad much as we would accept medicine that is administered to make us ready for health. Sorrows are not sent to us as woes that bring despair but as redirecting signs that point to the reality of a more permanent world beyond our immediate senses.

“Is everything sad going to come untrue?”[2] This was Samwise Gamgee’s way of reflecting on this as he approached the end of his journey. For this little hobbit, as more things became clear to him, what was previously experienced as pain during his journey in the end is put into a marvelously new and joyful light. Similarly, will everything that we experience as sorrow in this our earthly journey become “untrue” for us as we begin a new one into the next where “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor 2:9)?

As we go through our second birth, the one that leads us into eternal life, may we see earthly grief and sorrow as signs that point beyond themselves to the greatness of what is to come when God draws all things to Himself.

[1] Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1992), 89.

[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994), 930.