The Struggle

Have you ever stopped to wonder why suffering and death are so awful?  After all, they are a ubiquitous part of the human experience, and have been for as long as we know.  On what basis do we judge them as wrong, unnatural?  How do we know things shouldn’t be this way?  How dare we fight against what seems to be the natural order of things?

One of my favorite books asks this very question.  In The Plague, by Albert Camus, a mid-20^th century city is stricken by the bubonic plague.  Each of the main characters grapples with himself, his deepest beliefs, and his understanding of human existence.  

One character, after observing the tireless yet futile efforts of the doctor and the priest to stop the suffering of so many, comes to a startling conclusion.  The plague, he realizes, is the normal, natural state of affairs.  If no one fights it, it will take over.  Health is only to be achieved through ceaseless struggle against the plague.  Doing nothing will result in things getting worse and worse.  Doing something may not accomplish much, but it’s the best course of action to take.  At least then you know you tried.

“Yes, Rieux, it’s a wearying business, being plague-stricken.  But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it.”

What I find most profound about this story, though, is that the characters acknowledge they are caught in an irrational position.  They don’t know why they are so sure that the plague is bad, given that it is the natural state of affairs.  And yet, they are strongly compelled to fight against the plague with all their might, even if they will never win.

As I become more aware of the world of people whose lives have been touched by serious congenital defects, I have been reminded of The Plague often.  Parents, doctors, nurses, patients, support and awareness groups are fighting with all their might.  For what?  A cure?  While medicine has rapidly found ways to save more and more little lives, there is a limit to what we will be able to fix.  Money for research, more awareness, better education will only be able to accomplish so much.  They know this, more profoundly than anyone.  And yet they fight!  Because even though what has occurred in the child’s development is “natural”, they have an overwhelming sense that it should not be so. 

They are right, of course.  Things are not as they should be.  Our world was not created to be full of evil and suffering.  And yet it is.  

Some people, in their crusades, seem to honestly think we can defeat evil and suffering once and for all.  These humanists set much stock in the ability of mankind.  More medical intervention, more living naturally, more guns, fewer guns, more education, more research.  But, if they were to stop and ponder for a moment, I wonder if they would acknowledge what the characters in The Plague understood:  their fight will never ultimately succeed, and yet the only other alternative is to let sickness and death run amok.  And so they fight.

While the humanist tendency can be to put trust in man’s ability to overcome evil and suffering, the Christian tendency can be to face pain with pessimism.  After all, if sin has corrupted the entire natural world, including the hearts of each person, what’s the point of fighting?  We will never truly succeed. 

The Bible speaks to this tension in Romans 7 and 8.  Romans 7 deals with the struggle against the evil in our own hearts while Romans 8 covers the struggle against the evil in the world around us.  Our own hearts and our world are still in some way in bondage to sin, even though we don’t want them to be.  In both instances, however, Romans preaches a balance between fighting and waiting.  Fighting, because that’s what we have to do.  Just like the characters in The Plague realized, to not fight is to give in.  When we know something is wrong, our best response is to seek to eliminate it, even if we know we won’t fully be able to.  But there is a peace in Romans 7 and 8 that is not there in The Plague.  A peace that only comes from realizing that, however futile the fight may seem, there is certain hope that one day the fight will be won.  Not by our own cunning and strength, but by the redemption of our bodies and of all creation that Christ purchased.

“But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.” (Romans 8:25 NAS)