Our Quest for Understanding
It seems that we are always trying to rationalize things in our world. We see suffering and instead of being moved to action by compassion for those who are in the middle of it, we are provoked on an intellectual level – like it is some kind of equation to be solved or a theory to be proved. While it is important to understand what leads to suffering so we can fight against it, this should never be divorced from compassion. Seeking to rationalize pain without compassion can lead to tragic results, especially when our outlook doesn’t match Jesus’ teaching. In John’s gospel account, we read the following story.
As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. (John 9:1-3)
Jesus and his disciples come across a man who was born blind. He spent his childhood blind and now has grown up and is living as an adult having never seen anything in his entire life; he has, no doubt, been through much hardship because of it. When Jesus and his disciples encounter this man, the disciples have already seen Jesus heal many people, multiply food to feed more than 5,000 people, and even walk on water. They know that he has the power and ability to heal this man, yet instead of being moved with compassion and imploring Jesus to heal him, their first instinct is to try to find someone to blame, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Uncompassionate Responses
There is a lot that could be said about that instinct and the apparent lack of compassion inherent in it, but we should not condemn them too quickly. After all, we all ask questions and try to rationalize things when we encounter suffering. Why is it that people experience so much pain in our world? Or maybe more specifically, why is he experiencing this seemingly unfair suffering? The disciples had assumed that his blindness was a result of someone’s sin – either the man’s or his parents. At a first glance, this seems odd to us to think that the man could have sinned before he was born; I mean, was he sinning in some way while still being formed in the womb? Or maybe they thought that he was born blind due to some terrible future sin he would commit? Could this man be being punished for his parents’ sins? That would mean God was contradicting the specific commands that he gave to his people that children are not to be punished for the sins of their parents (Ezekiel 18:20). From our vantage point, these both seem obviously wrong, but these kinds of theories flow from our natural attempt to explain the suffering that we all see and experience on a daily basis.
Assigning Blame
Even beyond trying to explain this man’s blindness, the disciples here are trying to assign blame for it. After all, if the fault for this man’s blindness rests with him, it means that he deserves it – he is simply reaping what he sowed. This is not an idea that is unique to the world of first century Judaism. Many cultures and religions have a basic idea that you reap what you sow. It is an easy way for us to justify why others are suffering in ways that we are not. Some religions even go so far as to say that suffering in this life can be linked to sins committed in supposed previous lives. In this thinking, if a child is born blind, deaf, mute, or disabled in some other way, it is because of their karmic debt that they owe from sins in their previous lives. But Jesus rejects the idea flat out, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). This man’s blindness is not a consequence of some sin that he committed, rather, it is the result of our broken world. It is a disease in his body caused by a disease in our world. It is a by product of the fall and the brokenness of our world and not a consequence of some specific sin. It is an unfair, undeserved, random birth defect that demands compassion rather than blame. But it is also an opportunity for “the works of God” to “be displayed in him.” Jesus frees those suffering in similar conditions from the unfair and unjust assumption that it is their fault, it frees us from the pride of thinking that we are somehow better than people who suffer more than us, and it frees us to glorify God by acting out of compassion and love for people who are suffering.
The Right Response
I am not suggesting that our efforts to understand suffering should stop entirely; if we want to eliminate suffering, then it is critical that we understand what leads to it, but our understanding should be rooted in compassion with the goal of reducing and eliminating suffering rather than simply assigning blame and providing ourselves with excuses not to help. The Christian response when we encounter suffering people is not to try to explain it, justify it, or rationalize it; the only right response is the response of Jesus – compassionately working to eliminate suffering and free people from any guilt or shame that society has pushed on them.
