More Reticent Theology: On Suffering

Every now & then I “do lunch” with Stuart, who is doing a PhD on the topic of forgiveness.  Recently he’s been grappling with Simone Weil, and has had some interesting thoughts on her approach to suffering.  It seems that for Weil, suffering is not something that the Christian - indeed anyone – can too quickly explain or account for: If we try to make sense of it or see beyond it, we haven’t genuinely faced it…

Two thoughts lighten affliction a little.  Either that it will stop immediately or that it will never stop.  We can think of it as impossible or necessary, but we can never think that it simply is.  That is unendurable.

Stuart’s reading is that Simone Weil (knowingly) lives in a paradox, both wanting to deny that suffering is redemptive (and so facing it as genuinely evil) and embrace the possibility that suffering is redemptive.  Or to put it in a more nuanced way: To secretly expect that suffering is redemptive, and yet face it as though it is not.

This does remind me somewhat of the book of Job: It certainly ends with a (double) restoration of all that Job lost… but Job is denied any explanation that would satisfy a human desire for resolution.