The Answer to Pain is a Person

Check out this clip and then go through the link to Katie McEachern’s splendid post:

In light of this conversation, I was reminded of the “Grand Inquisitor” chapter of the mammoth book The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. In this section the “main” brother, Alexei sits and listens quietly while his brother Ivan (the most intellectual of the four brothers) bares himself completely, telling a story which encapsulates what he believes to be the ultimate argument for unbelief in God — essentially the problem of gratuitous pain and suffering. In response, Alexei says nothing in defence of his faith or his God. Instead, he answers Ivan’s questioning and argument in the same way Christ may have responded to the Inquisitor’s attacks, giving his brother nothing but a loving, comforting kiss.

I love this. I could sit and ponder this answer for days (and believe me, I have)… because, honestly, what kind of answer is this?!? It isn’t one. And I find it so frustratingly Biblical.

To me, this answer echoes of the God who answered Job’s cries for rescue from suffering, not with an explanation or immediate relief, but instead with a long exhortation saying nothing more than he is God and Job is not. It likewise echoes of the Messiah who, though the Jews hoped he would ride into their world in triumph and on a war horse, instead rode in on a donkey. And his triumph was in his death (and resurrection). All of these answers to the very real question of pain were, to say the least, underwhelming. Like the kiss with which Alexei bestows on the problem of his brother’s pain, these answers seem to ignore the question completely.

But, if we stop and think for a moment… what other answer could we want, than this? What are we really asking for when we challenge God to prove himself, to answer us, to explain our pain?