Nebulous "It" and Absolutes

[littlemanpoet]

I read something recently that responds quite succinctly to some of what is being debated here, about the "why" of suffering in terms of God or Eru. It explores five different answers to the question, and shows that each answer is lacking.

Suffering is a punishment. The argument: I must have done something awful for this to be happening to me. God can't be to blame, so I must be. But children never deserve to be abused by their parents, and loved ones never deserve to be killed by drunk drivers. So this answer can't be right.

Suffering sensitizes us. The argument: The purpose of suffering is to leave us more compassionate and tender. The problem is that the price is too high. Do some people have to starve in order to make me thankful for food? If God would do awful things to other people just to teach me lessons, he's not worth worshiping.

Suffering is a result of our free will. The argument: This is the "fallen world" argument. Our own choices have caused the world's pain; the mess is our mess. But no one chooses to have cancer. Victims of murder, rape, etc., never chose the crime committed against them. Suffering is a personal problem, not an "issue"; if an explanation doesn't hold up in the emergency room, it doesn't really help.

Suffering is a Test. The argument: Through suffering we discover what we are made of. Problem is that not all suffering has the benefit of testing our character. What's the test when an earthquake kills thousands in a Third World earthquake? A god who is obsessed with testing his creatures is not one of love and grace.

Suffering is simply a part of human life. The idea here is that our moments of pain are part of the natural rhythm of life; suffering just is going to happen, it's part of the human condition. The problem with this notion is in the specific cases: how can a baby born with an addiction to crack ever be seen as a natural part of life's rhythms? If you hang with this idea, you end up with a random succession of events that are either painful or joyful but have no purpose. Grave doubts would ensue about the benefit of having a god or a life.

Then the book offers an alternative, which is that the "why" of suffering is unanswerable as such, and is actually a prayer instead of a question seeking a propositional answer. Suffering's only answer is a numinous experience. For those of us from the Judeo-Christian tradition, we see this represented in Job, who lost everything, asked all kinds of "why" questions, and finally saw God; once he did, he no longer needed the question answered; having seen God was his answer.

Here's what I've been leading up to: I wonder if Frodo's vision was not Tolkien's presentation of the numinous experience that was the answer to Frodo for all his suffering? "...at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise." Scent and sight and sound. It's all there: a new dawn, something being "rolled back as a scroll", as it were, and a far green country that puts me in mind of both Niggle's Parish, and the distant mountains in "The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis. This numinous experience that Tolkien describes is meant for the reader just as much as it's meant for Frodo. No other answer satisfies for Frodo's suffering.

"May your song always be sung."

LMP

[davem]

Or, we 'transcend' sufering, passing into a more spiritually aware state. Like Jung's example of being caught in a storm in the mountains. You cannot stop it, so you climb above it. The storm is still going on, but you can watch it from a safe distance. Perspective. We are spiritual beings, when we awaken to our true state we will be able to look on our experiences & those of others & see them as part of the growing process.

Frodo's suffering remains 'wrong', but rather than this wrong being put right, it is transcended. So, are we talking about Frodo being 'healed' in the usual sense of the word? Is he actually 'healed' in the sense of having what was wrong with him put right, or do his wounds remain forever, but he himself is made different by having had them inflicted on him, suffering them?

I remember a few years back, I found a big chunk of green glass buried in a field. The plough had scraped & cracked it, broken it's edges into jagged angles. But when its held up to the light those flaws refract & reflect the light shining through it. The inside is like liquid. If it hadn't been battered & damaged in the way it has been, by both man & nature, it wouldn't have been as beautiful - yet its not the glass alone which is beautiful, its the light shining through it. If the 'flaws', the 'wounds' in it were 'healed' it would not be as beautiful when the light shone through it.

So Frodo is not healed in the sense of being made into his old self again. The wounds are not made to 'disappear'. They remain always, but are made into something else. Which would mean that our flaws, possibly even our 'sins' (forgiven, but 'transformed' rather than forgotten) remain with us, but because we have become different, our 'flaws' too, have become different.

But then we come back to hope without guarantees. Only God, the numinous, can give meaning to life, can offer that transformation. Without 'God' there is only wrongness, & life is ultimately without meaning. Which is a stark choice - Hopelessness, or Hope without guarantees.

I don't know where this is going - not this thread, but my train of thought at the moment. I still don't think the 'wrongness' is accounted for. Rising above it - or being raised above it - doesn't make it disappear. The wrongness is still there, even if you are no longer affected by it. And if that wrongness continues, that's unjust, & we are back at the question of why Eru, or God, allows that injustice. Is bringing right out of wrong, good out of evil, sufficient justification for allowing the 'evil' to go on existing?

I don't know, but you have got me thinking

[littlemanpoet]

davem: Maybe that's putting too bald a face on it, but I found your comment interesting:

I still don't think the 'wrongness' is accounted for.

Precisely. You are saying what the book said: accounting cannot arrive at an answer, because you're still trying to add things up, and they will not. Your example of Jung and transcendence is an example of numinous experience.

And if that wrongness continues, that's unjust, & we are back at the question of why Eru, or God, allows that injustice. Is bringing right out of wrong, good out of evil, sufficient justification for allowing the 'evil' to go on existing?

This is just another version of asking "why". I think "why" is unanswerable. One has to let go of "why" and move through the suffering to the numinous, that completes the suffering with joy.

It is also telling that, from the Christian tradition again, Christ still bears the scars of his suffering, even in his "perfect", resurrected body, and will forever, according to the texts. So perfection no longer equals "without blemish", but seems to equal "completed and restored to wholeness, even with the signs of suffering still there". Apparently, if one accepts the Christian point of view on this, every scar we bear after our how-ever-many-years of life, may still be visible, whether emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical, or whatever, but will be made part of the perfection of the resurrected body. Sorry if this was offensive to those of you who do not hold to this particular faith; it's the way I think and view the world, and you know, I'm rather glad of it right now.

Completeness seems like the only possible conclusion to suffering, and it seems to be what Tolkien is suggesting not only for Frodo, but for Sam and the rest of the Fellowship as well.

[davem]

I suppose part of the problem is that LotR ends before we see Frodo's final state. We see the broken Frodo setting out for the West, but not what becomes of him. As if the story of Job ended with him sitting in the dust & his friends telling him he must have done something to have brought it on himself.

So, Gandalf can say that he will be like a vessel filled with light for those to see who can, yet Frodo seems unable to see that light in himself. Perhaps it is the light (God) that shines though us that makes our faults, our 'wounds' beautiful. And yet our wounds come so often from our 'sins' - as has been pointed out earlier in this thread, Frodo's wounds are recieved when he gives in or loses hope. So, wrongness & 'evil' are what shape us into what we finally become. No wounds or flaws are ugly when the light shines through them. So, 'forgiveness of our sins' is when the light of God shines through us, making our wounds beautiful. If our sins are not forgiven, the wounds remain ugly because they are not illuminated. The Light shining in the darkness.

So, we can only be beautiful in the eyes of others, never in our own eyes, because we cannot see the light which shines through us, only the light which shines through others. So, we can never see God in ourselves, only in those around us. This reminds me of William's 'Beatrician experience' - seeing God in the beloved. God reveals Himself to us by His light shining through those around us. And He reveals himself to others by His light shining through us.

So all the saints experience themselves as sinners & unworthy, & less than those around them - as Frodo does at the end of LotR. Which, I suppose, means that his 'healing' in the West is perhaps simply (!) about him learning to see himself as others see him.

Or something.

[littlemanpoet]

davem Poignant! Well stated. Moving, too!

I do think it would be more apt to say that the last state we see Frodo in - wounded and going over sea - is more akin to Job repenting in dust and ashes after he has seen God. As you said, we don't see the part of Frodo's story that is akin to Job being blessed with a whole new flock of herds and children and houses, etc. You know, I don't think LotR would have worked if Tolkien had written it that way. I like it better the way it is.

[Bêthberry]

davem, if I may interject something here, I think your point about Frodo is particularly important in terms of the story.

I suppose part of the problem is that LotR ends before we see Frodo's final state. We see the broken Frodo setting out for the West, but not what becomes of him.

It accords first of all with Tolkien's observation in "On Fairy-Stories":

for there is no true end to any fairy-tale

The footnote to this comment (footnote H) elaborates upon it essentially to suggest a reason for this: it takes us out of the limited frame of our own time into timelessness.

Perhaps another example of this 'open-ended narrative' also accords with your thoughts here. Acts of the Apostles, the book of the New Testament which tells of Paul's ministry, ends not with Paul's execution in Rome but with his ministry there. Much is left to the imagination and thought of the reader, as you so ably provide here.

For myself, I would not have wanted a 'complete' resolution to Frodo's fate any more than that of the others who sail West with him, for that would take the story out of the perilous realm, in my humble estimation. If I read your posts correctly, I think this is something you imply as well.

[davem]

LMP, Bethberry,

So, we have Frodo 'repenting'. I wondered at first. Then the question got too big. Has Frodo anything to repent of? If he claimed the Ring in full knowledge of the implications, then, yes. He is, like Job, broken - but broken by his own 'sins', or by God, or by the way things are in the world?

Julian of Norwich wrote 'Our life here is penance'. For what? If our whole life is penance, then not for something we as individuals have done or not done. So penance for what? Being imperfect? Yet that's how we were made. Yet, if our life was not a penance, we could not be remade through suffering into something wholly different - as Tolkien says of Frodo. So, we repent of what we are - no matter who is responsible, or how it came to be that we did not appear already perfected. The 'wrongness' we feel - about the way world is, is because we are 'wrong'. We see as in a Glass, darkly. So everything seems dark. Till the Light shines - or until we can see it, till our eyes are opened. And Lewis said that pain is what opens our eyes, wakes us up. Suffering is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. So, we are awakened, & see beyond this little world, the 'Shadowlands' as he called them - always in shadow because the 'light' seems always to be shining somewhere else, over the next hill, around the next corner. We seem forever to be chasing that light, never realising that the reason it seems far away is because our eyes are darkened. The Light is everywhere, but we see it only in other people & other places. Chasing after God, without realising He is right here. Frodo feels lost, confused, broken, because he can't see himself as we or as God (thanks for that, Helen) see him. And his 'healing' will come when he is finally able to open his eyes & see what's really there, who's really there. So, it all seems 'wrong' simply because we're not able to see that its 'right' - or at least that its well on its way to being so.

Frodo's story cannot be completed - not till our own is completed. Because till ours is completed we won't be able to see Frodo's complete. Or perhaps that should be we cannot hear the Happy ever after of Frodo's story, till our own is told to its end.

On a personal note, I remember, many years ago, walking by a river on a foggy day. Suddenly I had this sense that our lives are 'stories' God tells us, stories that while they are being told, seem absolutely real. But when they're finished we can step back & laugh, or cry. But the stories will go on till the final word of the tale is spoken. And then we shall live 'happily ever after' beyond the stories, whether or not the story itself ended happily, because, after all, it is only a story. As Lewis put it, 'real life has not begun yet'.

And now I'm so far off topic I expect this to be removed not just to another thread but to another site altogether