Nothing Lasts Forever

The main point was something else entirely, but the sermon last shabbat briefly talked about the idea that nothing lasts forever (except apparently for the anointing oil in the mishkan). It’s an idea that’s often talked about when good things come to their end in an attempt at consoling someone. Reminding oneself that nothing lasts forever can be a way of lessening the blow of disappointment when something we really loved comes to an end, whether it’s a relationship, a positive experience, or something else.

That’s not what I thought about when I heard this, though. I’ve been really struggling in a few different areas of my life lately. It’s really easy to see that as something that will last forever. I know I’m not alone in that. The idea of something ending isn’t easy to conceptualize, whether that thing is good or bad. For me, I am much more likely to think that bad things in my life will last forever than to think that good things will. I guess that makes me a pessimist. It definitely makes a hard time harder.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy sees this dynamic as one of the core mechanisms behind suffering. It’s basically a loss in perspective. You’re holding an idea or experience so closely that you can’t see beyond it. That in itself is damaging, but all the moreso because what you’re holding isn’t the eternal reality. Depression, for example, can feel endless when you’re in it. Yet one of the things we know about depression (from a clinical perspective) is that it is episodic. By definition, it will end (although there’s a good chance it’ll come back, too). Thinking it will last forever contributes heavily to the sense of hopelessness many experience in depression. Realizing it won’t can make it easier to bear.

I write this not because I have this figured out. I definitely don’t. I needed a direct reminder from my therapist this week that what I’m going through won’t last forever. I write this because I still need that reminder and I know others do, too. It’s sad that the good things in our life won’t last forever, but the consolation comes from understanding that the bad things won’t either. Whatever you are going through, it won’t last forever.

Making Sense of Bad Things

I just finished reading Sacred Fragments (highly recommend), which discusses multiple approaches to key religious questions, such as revelation, how we know God, and the role of ritual (or lack thereof). I have a lot that I’m thinking about with the book, but something that’s on my mind is the problem of the existence of suffering. I have suffered a lot in my life. The meaning and reason for suffering is something I think about often. A lot of my issues are with family, so I’m not surprised that this is coming up the week of Thanksgiving.

The book goes into a lot of detail about the question of suffering and the challenges it raises with a monotheistic religion that believes in an omnipotent God. As you can imagine, there have been a lot of different approaches to this in Judaism. The traditional approach is that bad things happen as retribution for sin and that retribution is taken out on the community as a whole, so, sometimes righteous people get caught in that, too. The Book of Job goes completely opposite that, with the conclusion being that God does things and we don’t understand why. Richard Rubenstein, writing after the Holocaust, responded to that unimaginable suffering by saying that God is dead, meaning the idea of God we had before the Holocaust cannot live in this reality. Acknowledging the felt disappearance of God at times, Martin Buber argues that instead this is an “eclipse of God” and God will, in time, return so we can resume our relationship. Irving Greenberg expands this by saying that we’re mistaken if we see belief and non-belief as exclusive and final. We all travel back, forth, and in-between. Abraham Joshua Heschel says the least about this, but argues that God suffers with us.

Using that information, how then do I understand suffering? Let’s start with what I don’t believe. Suffering is not retribution and I don’t know how any thinking and compassionate person can still believe that in a post-Holocaust world. I have worked very hard to get past the idea that I somehow “deserved” the things that happened to me, so I’m certainly not going back to that. Similarly, I reject the answer Job offers that there is some reason for it happening, but only God can understand. At least at this point, I cannot stomach the idea that God caused these things for a reason. Life didn’t have to kill those ideas of God for me; it didn’t allow them to live in the first place.

The theological answers that resonate most for me are those of Buber and Heschel. They fit most closely with my still-developing views of God and most clearly avoid the idea of bad things as somehow being part of God’s plan or justice. I’m mostly satisfied with the idea that bad things happen because people do bad things and this can happen because God gave us freedom of choice. These theologies don’t make sense of that or why God doesn’t stop people from doing bad things. Instead, they address our feeling of being abandoned by God. Buber argues that God doesn’t abandon us, but there are moments of “eclipse” where God turns away or is more distant, much like happens in interpersonal relationships. He argues for a leap of faith that this “eclipse” is not permanent.

This doesn’t explain, though, why the “eclipse” happens and what God is doing during the “eclipse”. I use Heschel’s ideas to fill in those blanks. He argues that God wants to be in relationship with us and work with us for the redemption of the world. The “eclipse” happens, then, when we don’t let God in. I don’t like the implication this can have of it being our fault when we don’t believe in or have a relationship with God. Yet, I like the agency it gives us in the process. Heschel’s idea of God isn’t a God that just turns away without us having a say; instead, God is waiting for us to let God in. More than that, I like his answer about what God does while waiting. God isn’t detached and unemotional during this wait. Instead, God suffers with our suffering. I don’t know how much comfort it would have provided at the time, but I find the idea that when bad things were happening and I felt like no one cared about my suffering, God did. It doesn’t make those things go away, but it means that I wasn’t as alone during that as I felt I was.

As emotional and relational as all of this is, it’s still really abstract. How do I make sense of this on a daily basis? When I think of suffering, I don’t usually think about where God was. Instead, I’m trying to figure out what to do with what happened. My answer is largely aspirational because I can’t always get there. I don’t think that what happened to me happened for a larger purpose or to fit in God’s “plan”, but I recognize that I would not be where I am today if those things didn’t happen. I would be a very different person with different life circumstances. When life wasn’t going well, I used this idea to fuel a lot of resentment. Now that I’m in a much better place and often happy, I’m more willing to see this positively. There are actually some days that where I am now and the people in my life make up for some of what happened. Theology is important, but doesn’t come close to touching that feeling.