Entendre Raison

10Oct/113

Entendre Raison

Written By: Dr. Dan P. Collins, Sr

This past year I have been pondering the age old question, "why do bad things happen to good people?". All who have seriously studied have reasoned the answer is to be found in the "spiritus" (spiritual) aspect of man ("the soul") rather than the profain ("material") aspect. A course on the Sapiential Books of the Bible (ie. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon...) given by Father Joseph Korterski, S.J., of Georgetown was informative and all pointed to the love and fear of God as the beginning of wisdom. Fear in not the fear of a slave, but an acknowledgement of the enormous discrepancy between God's omnipotence and our total dependency. Wisdom "resplendent" comes with "solicitude" to Job: God has reasons but has no responsibility to explain himself.

In my quest, probably as a result of my limitations, two sources provide greater satisfaction. One is a poem I will attach. The other four words from a Third Century theologian. Irenaeus's concept of the redemptive tutelage of suffering. Meditating on suffering as a tutor or a teacher that promotes redemption brings insight.

Suffering requires an increase in faith and hope; promotes virtues of Patience, Perseverance, Humility and above all Love... "The fulfillment of the Law." Seen in this dimension suffering is the reason itself.

The poem "The Silversmith" makes this point in a more artistic way.

[poem to be inserted here]

Enoch_Root

Person with kids,a beautiful wife, a job. Catholic of the Latin Rite.

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Christopher Taylor
October 16th, 2011 - 14:29

I like what R.C. Sproul says: bad things don’t happen to good people. We’re not good, we’re sinners.

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Cowboy
November 4th, 2011 - 20:07

Enoch: I know you put this up quite a while ago, so I don’t have any real hope that you’ll see this comment, but I am now reading C. S. Lewis’s *The Problem of Pain*. It has several chapters that deal with the almost random nature of suffering. Lewis is to me a lot like Chesterton, in that I can read a paragraph or a page and then mull that over for a day or two before moving on.

I am also reminded of a poem that suggests that suffering is at best unplanned. It starts with these lines:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood

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Enoch_Root
November 24th, 2011 - 07:46

Cowboy – beautiful.
Christopher – excellent.

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