Why?

The question of suffering is one that I have not pondered much. Mostly I have taken the position that suffering just is. Children die of leukemia. Populations of people are subjected to genocide in death camps, dark jungles and other hostile environments. My feeling was that there is no why, again it just is.

Recently I have been reading a book dealing with the cabbalists of pre-inquisition Spain. Starting around the 10th or 11th century it seems they began focusing on the issue of suffering, especially the suffering of the innocent children. While comfortable by standards of the world at that time, disease was omnipresent and hope for relief or cure of the afflicted was limited. An intellectual looking at her world could easy wonder why.

As the next several hundred years evolved the discussion of immense pain and suffering moved from theoretical to personal. This followed as the inquisition first in Spain and then in Portugal inflicted an early version of the final solution on the Jewish community of which the cabbalists were a part. In the period of the Inquisition the switch from tolerance to torture came quickly, it did not take a generation to pass to become the most unholy of purportedly holy exercises.

The rapid change for these people from secure to fleeing expatriates with no destination made me start thinking. While I may be comfortable, more or less in this downward economy, it can change at a moment’s notice. Suffering on a grand scale could become real tomorrow. When you let your mind go down those threads of logic it isn’t a great leap to the big questions, the imponderables, like why is there suffering.