Suffering's answer
I read something recently that responds quite succinctly to some of what is being debated here, about the "why" of suffering in terms of God or Eru. It explores five different answers to the question, and shows that each answer is lacking.
Suffering is a punishment. The argument: I must have done something awful for this to be happening to me. God can't be to blame, so I must be. But children never deserve to be abused by their parents, and loved ones never deserve to be killed by drunk drivers. So this answer can't be right.
Suffering sensitizes us. The argument: The purpose of suffering is to leave us more compassionate and tender. The problem is that the price is too high. Do some people have to starve in order to make me thankful for food? If God would do awful things to other people just to teach me lessons, he's not worth worshiping.
Suffering is a result of our free will. The argument: This is the "fallen world" argument. Our own choices have caused the world's pain; the mess is our mess. But no one chooses to have cancer. Victims of murder, rape, etc., never chose the crime committed against them. Suffering is a personal problem, not an "issue"; if an explanation doesn't hold up in the emergency room, it doesn't really help.
Suffering is a Test. The argument: Through suffering we discover what we are made of. Problem is that not all suffering has the benefit of testing our character. What's the test when an earthquake kills thousands in a Third World earthquake? A god who is obsessed with testing his creatures is not one of love and grace.
Suffering is simply a part of human life. The idea here is that our moments of pain are part of the natural rhythm of life; suffering just is going to happen, it's part of the human condition. The problem with this notion is in the specific cases: how can a baby born with an addiction to crack ever be seen as a natural part of life's rhythms? If you hang with this idea, you end up with a random succession of events that are either painful or joyful but have no purpose. Grave doubts would ensue about the benefit of having a god or a life.
Then the book offers an alternative, which is that the "why" of suffering is unanswerable as such, and is actually a prayer instead of a question seeking a propositional answer. Suffering's only answer is a numinous experience. For those of us from the Judeo-Christian tradition, we see this represented in Job, who lost everything, asked all kinds of "why" questions, and finally saw God; once he did, he no longer needed the question answered; having seen God was his answer.
Here's what I've been leading up to: I wonder if Frodo's vision was not Tolkien's presentation of the numinous experience that was the answer to Frodo for all his suffering? "...at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise." Scent and sight and sound. It's all there: a new dawn, something being "rolled back as a scroll", as it were, and a far green country that puts me in mind of both Niggle's Parish, and the distant mountains in "The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis. This numinous experience that Tolkien describes is meant for the reader just as much as it's meant for Frodo. No other answer satisfies for Frodo's suffering.
"May your song always be sung."
LMP
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