How do we suffer well? Reflections on City of God

“When the good and the wicked suffer alike, the identity of their sufferings does not mean that there is no difference between them. Though the sufferings are the same, the sufferers remain different. Virtue and vice are not the same, even they undergo the same torment. The fire which makes gold shine makes chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out of the same press. In the same way, the violence which assails good men to test them, to cleanse and purify them, effects in the wicked their condemnation, ruin, and annihilation. Thus the wicked, under pressure of affliction, execrate God and blaspheme; the good, in the same affliction, offer up prayers and praises. This shows that what matters is the nature of the sufferer, not the nature of the sufferings. Stir a cesspit, and a foul stench arises; stir perfume, and a delightful fragrance ascends. But the movement is identical.” City of God, I.8

Throughout City of God Augustine describes the providential ways of God as inscrutable. For him, God certainly acts in and through history, but his exact motivations and purposes are unknown. To be sure, Augustine, as a Christian, has a sense of the overall trajectory of history (everything is moving towards the City of God) but the particulars of history and vicissitudes of the everyday often remain mysterious. This is another way of saying that Augustine doesn’t have a complete answer to the question of why do we suffer, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything to say about suffering itself.

Again this is where Augustine becomes relevant for us. Though we are not living through the particular circumstances of the fall of Rome, we are none the less caught in the messiness of history, trying to make sense not only of our own lives but also of the circumstances all around us. Augustine’s reminder that the same experience of suffering produces different results can help us in the midst of our lives because it reminds us that we don’t have to spend all our time thinking about the spinning wheel of history, but instead can concentrate on the quality of our own character rooted by faith in the one who moves the wheel of history. While concentrating on suffering in general helps us cultivate a theology of suffering, concentrating on the particular of our suffering and how we respond to it helps us cultivate character.

This point has been driven home to me lately, as I have witnessed in the last few weeks different people suffering in similar ways (grappling with cancer), and yet their responses have been profoundly different. For me Augustine’s contrast of the stinking cesspit versus the pleasant perfume draws the contrast between what I have seen both vividly and accurately, and has driven home a simple point, but a point philosophically minded people like me need reminding of–witnessing particular suffering is so different from thinking about suffering in the abstract. I so often think about the problem of suffering from a detached, rarified viewpoint and only ask the question why. Why would God let these things happen? But if I only ask that question, I fail to confront the particularity of suffering in individuals, to meet them and empathize with them in the midst of their suffering, and in so doing ask a total different question–how is it that two people can suffer in extremely similar ways and yet react in such opposite ways? Why is it that suffering produces such different results?

Don’t get me wrong. Both the general and particular viewpoints on suffering are necessary. The question of suffering in the abstract helps us grapple with the nature of God, humanity, and the world, and Augustine himself is an able guide through these issues, showing us ways to think deeply about the nature of suffering in general. But the question of suffering in the particular helps us grapple with the quality of life and character, and helps us confront what can sometimes be a terrifying question–what kind of people are we becoming–a question that is often only answerable in the crucible of suffering.