Thomas Merton on Suffering

From Seven Storey Mountain, p. 91:

Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture. This is another of the great perversions by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves.

As I read Merton’s autobiography, this passage deeply resonated with my life experiences and my time in urban ministry thus far.  Merton is describing what’s true about trauma and about suffering – that ignoring it doesn’t make it go away; as fear of engaging with the suffering grows, so does our inability to tolerate other, smaller pains that aren’t much to deal with.  As fear grows, it can incapacitate a person.  Perhaps this is why Americans have pursued life, liberty, and happiness – because we can’t stomach suffering, and because we’re afraid of it.  So we complain about #firstworldproblems and take to Facebook to vent about the injustices we faced when the minimum-wage employee messed up our sandwich order at Panera Bread.

Rose Kennedy (mother of JFK) says it well: “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”

My neighbors, my interns, myself – the wounding within is sometimes so glaringly obvious from the outside as it seeps into daily interactions that I can’t help but wonder why we would stand it for even a moment longer.  Then I remember – fear.  We are afraid to re-enter the suffering: we are afraid to experience pain once more, we are afraid of what our healed selves could look like, and we are afraid to face who God really is.

For a long while I thought the opposite of fear was courage.  Finding myself to be fairly brave and stubborn to persevere, it was not immediately obvious to myself how fearful I really am.  Courage is what overcomes fear – fear still exists but somehow a person has the wherewithal to tell fear to shut up.  And they move on.  No – the opposite of fear is trust.  This is how I realized I am terribly fearful – by the complimentary realization that I don’t trust God much at all.  Oh.  No wonder I get so anxious. Anxiety comes from not believing God will take care of you.

I live in a culture of suspicion.  In a city where people wear masks to hide their true selves from others, in a neighborhood where people are leery of people they don’t know, trust is not the currency of interaction.  Trust is a rare gem.  Outwardly I have to cultivate trust with others; years of suffering have developed an inward dearth of trust with God.  I am constantly suspicious of God – of His goodness, of His ability to heal – and so, when suffering surfaces, I hit some kind of internal roadblock that’s developed to keep me from re-entering into pain.  Outwardly, too – our country’s motto of ‘In God we trust’ is rather ironic – is it not ‘in our 401ks we trust?’ or ‘in our investments we trust’ such that we can secure for ourselves life, liberty, and happiness by our own means?

So as I read Merton and consider my life, God, help me believe You are bigger than the suffering, help me believe You will hold me together, help me have hope in You.  Time doesn’t heal any wounds at all, but by His wounds, we are healed.