Is human suffering so great that it at times overwhelms and crushes us? John Hick acknowledges that instead of ennobling a person, evil can break a man’s spirit and drive out whatever virtues he possessed.1 J. Glenn Gray, agrees. He claims that suffering does not make a person morally strong. The majority of people are not benefited by it, but rather are deteriorated in character and will. Those who are benefited by suffering are already strong, and have consciences that are already aware and do not have to be made more sensitive.2 Gray thinks that suffering has a limited power to purge and to purify.

Some of those persons mentioned in a report on life in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II could be said to be crushed by evil. According to one account, prisoners were surprised and shocked by the spiritual and moral decline around them. Everyone stole, even the deputy manager of one of the biggest Dutch banks. The wife of an industrial manager stole jam from a baby’s crib. A nurse would go through the beds and take sugar. The chief buyer of an international company stole bread rations from an acquaintance.3 In her diary, a young woman wrote of incredible cases of selfishness and ruthlessness. She claimed that she saw the desecration of corpses, prostitution, egoism, and all kinds of wrongdoing.4

In some cases it is not so easy to judge the existence or degree of a moral collapse. It is possible and even probable that some of the aforementioned persons were inclined toward immoral actions by the lack of proper nourishment or by physical infirmity. This appears to be what happened to Numa Turcatti, one of the survivors of the Andes plane crash. Turcatti, a beloved, respected, inspiring leader of the Old Christians Rugby Team, became weak after two tries to find a way out of the mountains for the thirty-two survivors of the crash. It was increasingly difficult for him to force down the raw flesh of his dead comrades that was keeping all alive. Bitterly disappointed, he grew weaker as his infections became worse. He would melt snow only for himself and would ask others to do things such as pass a blanket, something he was quite capable of doing for himself. Later, he refused to feed himself, lapsed into a coma, and died.5

Indeed, there is a certain tragic dimension to suffering. All of us must suffer the consequences of the mistakes of the past. Young men are sent to die in wars that should never be fought. Innocent children and civilians are indiscriminately killed in genocides. Much of the suffering that we must undergo is not due to our own failings but rather to the fact that we are born into a world with a history of mistakes and injustices; we are caught in patterns not of our own choosing. We suffer because of the way others respond to the color of our skin, our type of intelligence, the influence of fads and economics.6 Over the years these mistakes accumulate and become deeply imbedded in society. They affect us all.

Viktor Frankl tells us that some persons, far from being crushed by evil, find themselves in situations in which they can achieve fulfillment only in genuine suffering. Frankl is the Viennese psychiatrist, founder of logotherapy, a method of treating mental illness by means of deeper insights into one’s purpose for living.7 He tells of the brilliant young man who was paralyzed by tuberculosis of the spine. By chance this man found out that his case was hopeless. Rather than becoming bitter at his fate, he became grateful for having the knowledge of exactly when he was to die. He looked upon his situation as the last chance to test his fighting spirit, and he refused drugs to ease his pain. He was convinced that the fight he would put up against pain was all important. His last days were spent doing what he enjoyed most: listening to music and doing mathematics. A profound emotion of love for humankind and a sense of cosmic vastness filled his soul.8

Frankl was deeply impressed by another of his patients, a hitherto pampered young woman who suddenly found herself in a concentration camp, where she became terminally ill. Instead of cursing her state, she was very grateful for what had happened to her. The harsh realities of her present existence led her to view her previous life as too easy, too devoid of challenges that would put her into contact with the genuine realities of human existence. She faced death courageously, convinced of the reality of eternal life.9

The Bergen-Belsen account also contains evidence of the existence of many heroes who were not morally destroyed by the inhuman conditions forced upon them in the death camps. The author speaks of how the material he had to work with abounded with examples of kindliness, sympathy, compassion, heroism, nobility, love, faith, hope, self-sacrifice, the brotherhood of all men, and the like.10 In such a horrible place as a death camp there were those whose lives proclaimed that all the suffering in the world need not destroy the human spirit but could raise it to sublime heights. One cannot read the death camp literature without being impressed by the courage and holiness of many of those destined to die.

Before the accident Arturo Nogueira, the young socialist, was a closed and silent person, a difficult man who was convinced that radical solutions were needed for the problems of poverty and oppression. After the crash, he took an interest in determining the exact location of the camp, but as time went on, he lost faith and remembered that as a child he had a premonition that he would die at the age of twenty-one. He was moody and unfriendly, and isolated himself from the group, refusing to go outside the cold dark fuselage that served as shelter. Meat had to be brought to him by others who placed it in his mouth.11 There is strong evidence, however, that during the last days of his life he rose to new heights of virtue. Two days before his death, he accepted his turn to lead the prayers for all concerned, for their families, for his living and dead companions. He thought he was very close to God. In a note that he wrote to his parents, he said that he was suffering physically and morally like he never suffered before, but that he never believed in God so much. He expressed sorrow for the pain he caused his parents, and ended with a remark that life is hard but it is worth living even though one must suffer. We must have strength and courage.12

J. Glenn Gray in The Warriors tells us how men look back on the experiences of combat and consider it a moment in their lives that they would not want to have missed.13 The threat of danger and death in war makes a man insecure, but it gives him a greater awareness of the life which he might lose at any moment. Gray speaks of the surge of vitality during an air raid and the glimpse of what we really are or might become. Danger tests man and has a limited purgative force to make a man more human.14

For Joseph Campbell, evil functions as a stimulant to an appreciation of what it means to be alive. In his Power of Myth he tells us that "Men sometimes confess that they love war because it puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. In going to the office every day, you don’t get that experience, but suddenly, in war, you are ripped back into being alive. Life is pain; life is suffering; and life is horror--but, by God, you are alive."15

The above words are typical of Campbell’s insistence that pain is part of there being a world at all,16 and that it is a childish attitude to reject it--to say that this world should not have been. We must say "yes" to life and see it as magnificent in this way.17 The horror of the world is the prelude to a wonder: a tremendous and fascinating mystery.

For Campbell, death and life are two aspects of the same thing, "being, becoming," which we have to balance.18 Life would not be life if loss and sorrow were not involved. "The ends of things are always painful." Campbell emphasizes the necessity of our embracing the world with all its pain and evil. He reminds us of the Buddhist bodhisattva who, though he has achieved the realization of immortality, voluntarily subjects himself to the sorrows of the world. He cites Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians where we read how Christ takes the form of a servant on earth, even to death on the Cross.

C. S. Lewis and Simone Weil are convinced that we should see suffering and pain as instruments of God and treat them as such. For Lewis, pain and suffering call man to a higher kind of life that is his true destiny, a life in which he is close to God. This is what gives meaning to suffering. According to Lewis, pain and suffering shatters the illusion that all is well with us and remind us that what we have is not our own or not enough for us. It takes away from us things that would leave no room in our soul for God. In a sense, pain empties us and prepares us for our only true good, namely the Divine. If pain and suffering did not exist, humans would be thoroughly engrossed in their own self-sufficiency. Nothing would effectively call them to their proper destiny.19

The mystic, Simone Weil, also sees pain and suffering as bringing us into a special intense relationship with God. Weil tells how she suffered for twelve years from a neurological disorder which caused her intense pain even during sleep and "has never stopped even for a second." For years it was so great that it exhausted her to the extent that she despaired of intellectual work, almost as a condemned man despairs the day before his execution.20 She did not morally collapse during that time, but came to the conclusion that suffering and affliction were the key to a full life.

For Simone Weil the purpose of suffering is to get us into contact with that necessity which makes up the order of the world. The universe is the vibration of the word of God.21 In order to hear that word, we need not only joy by which it reaches our soul, but also physical suffering by which it penetrates our body. The experience of pain is the means that God uses to get into contact with us. Simone thinks that when either joy or physical pain come to us, we must open our souls just as a woman opens the door to someone with a message from her lover. It doesn’t matter whether the messenger is polite or rude. It is the message that counts.22 Again, nature in all its beauty and horror is a means whereby God becomes available to us. We should revere the material world as a loving husband would revere the favorite needle of his dear wife who has passed away. As the needle is an instrument which operated at the will of his beloved, so too, nature is an instrument of the will of God.23

An appreciation of what it means to be alive, a suggestion of our real destiny, some kind of contact with the Creator are ideas compatible with Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy. Frankl claims that the main human concern is not to gain pleasure or avoid pain. What we are looking for in life is not pleasure or power, but insight. The primary motivational force in humans is that which leads us to find meaning in our life.24

One important way to find this meaning, according to Frankl, is to accept the challenge of unavoidable suffering. If one takes on bravely the challenge to suffer, then life has meaning up to the last moment, and one actualizes the highest value. The important thing to remember is that each day we are questioned by life, and our duty is to answer responsibly.25 No matter how great the suffering that confronts us, we still are free to find a meaning for it or to refuse to see it as a challenge and a chance to grow in virtue. The meaning is there to be found, but we have to be disposed for the search. With suffering we are given an opportunity to grow spiritually beyond ourselves.26

The way to handle suffering, according to Frankl, is to see it as having a purpose. It ceases to be suffering once we see that it can lead to a goal. If a person has a reason, then that person can endure any kind of suffering, while a person with little purpose in life would find even a life of pleasure boring and undesirable.27

Combat is one of those evils that test us, according to Gray. In his observations of men in battle, he tells us how in battle a man learns more about himself in a way never before experienced. The experience shows him who he truly is.28