Orthodoxy: The Answer to a Suffering Heart, 2

Likewise, we can be suffering, but not necessarily in physical pain - grief and loss may provoke a physical reaction, but it is more than that - it is something that we experience not as a mental thing but a pain in our heart. In the second of the Terminator films, the Terminator asks the young John Connor why humans cry, and is it connected to this sort of pain. John replies: “No, it’s different. It’s like… you’re alright on the outside, but you hurt anyway.” The Terminator character does not truly understand this particular aspect of human life until the end of the film where he and John Connor part, and the Terminator recognises the source of that grief as the loss of someone dear to him. This inner pain also tells us of an imbalance - in this case, the loss of someone dear to us.

Thus, while both physical pain and suffering can occur together, we can also be suffering and not in pain, or in pain but not say that we are suffering. The Psalmist says of this inner pain: My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord (Ps. 85:1). But lest the materialist think that he is merely talking of a physical sensation, he adds: My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God (Ps. 85:2). Physical pain is to do with the physical body, and non-physical pain is to do with the heart. The two are interdependent, but not synonymous. Both are experiences that indicate that something is happening that we need to do something about. Much of the confusion around suffering in modern society has centred on this poor distinction between the physical and non-physical pain. This poor distinction has lead modern society to try to deal with the inward suffering of the heart in the same way as they deal with physical pain - try to medicate it, avoid it, or do away with it altogether. The underlying and unsaid value is “suffering is bad.” Therefore, on this basis, we go on to justify a series of what are frankly perverse medical practices in the pursuit of this value - euthanasia, eugenics as a prospective form of euthanasia - to avoid the “inevitable” suffering of children who are “not up to standard,” and so on. The underpinning value typically goes unexamined and unexplored.

However, is this explanation the only answer? Is it in fact the right answer? To answer these questions, we must go back and examine something we said earlier. While we said that pain and suffering were not synonymous, we also said that these experiences had a function; they were beneficial. Physical pain tells us that damage is occurring to our body and that we need to respond to it - putting our hand on a working hot-plate will pretty soon give us this kind of response! We also have other sensations that tell us that we need to respond to them - hunger, thirst, shivering when too cold, sweating when too hot, etc. No one can deny that all our sensations have a function. It is therefore not unreasonable to ask what function non-physical pain must have in our lives - in what way we should interpret it, and what it is telling us we need. Is it not that we often simply don’t understand it, or have not been taught how to deal with it by others?

We touched upon some aspects earlier when we identified that this inward suffering is connected with grief and loss. It is the aspect of our heart which loves things and people and becomes attached to them, and feels grief and pain at their loss. St. Isaac the Syrian said that “a merciful heart is one that bleeds for all creation.” We all feel this sort of pain at some point in our lives, usually around grieving the loss of something or someone dear to us. This experience of grief and loss tells us quite a lot about the nature of this sort of suffering - it is centred on something which we have become attached to, we want that thing to remain in our lives, and that we do not realise how much we want it until we do not have it. It is evident from this experience of pain and loss that this sort of suffering is bound up with our desires and what these desires are for. This sort of pain evidently occurs when what we want is not there anymore.

More succinctly, this experience tells us that this pain of heart is connected with: (A) what our heart desires (either an object or a person); (B) how much our heart desires it; and (C) what we do to get the object of our desire to satisfy our heart or keep it in our lives. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matt 6:21).