Universal Suffering: Whom Do We Blame? Understanding Its Mystery

By Reynaldo Pareja

The suffering that we humans experience every day, in some place on the planet, where does its comes from? Who produces it: nature, man, or God?
Valid questions because the phenomenon is universal. Just listen to the news on radio or television; read a newspaper, a magazine or in the internet and soon you will hear or see some natural phenomenon causing tragedy, death, destruction in some part of the globe. When suffering is not caused by Nature, it is then produced by men hurting others.
We also attribute God as the Cause of suffering. We do so because we believe that He is Almighty, and we thus question, why does He allow these tragic events to occur to his most precious creatures, us men?
To make a judgment about the responsibility of each of these causes, it is necessary to make a dispassionate analysis, based on scientific data that allow us to understand that we reside on a living planet, in constant evolution, in cycles of manifestations of Life that have occurred over thousands of years of the planet’s evolution.
Likewise, it is necessary to resort to an existential analysis and the ultimate meaning of Life to determine the role that man's freedom plays in defining his own and the destiny of others, while creating suffering.
Finally, it is necessary to unveil the role that God plays or not in this process. This is necessary to find a satisfactory explanation to the enigmatic mystery that suffering poses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669809203

Reynaldo Pareja

Reynaldo Pareja, PhD en Comunicación y Sociología del École des Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Maestría en Comunicación por la Universidad de Cornell, Estados Unidos. Licenciatura en Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Todos los libros en español del autor se pueden ver y adquirir en: amazonbooks.com

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Copyright © 2022 by Reynaldo Pareja.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 02/08/2022

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CONTENTS

Capitulo 1: Suffering produced by Natural Causes

Introduction

Searching for answers

Internal Natural phenomena with internal activity

Earthquakes

Purpose of natural phenomena

Conclusion

Capitulo 2: Man-made suffering

Domestic violence

Sexual violence

Classical Slavery

Suffering caused by the destruction of our planetary home

War

Conclusion

Capitulo 3: Why do we involve God in suffering?

God, the Omnipotent Creator

Omniscient God

God is All-Wise

Conclusion

Capitulo 4: Resolving Contradictions

Human freedom, a conditioned freedom.

Conditioned freedom in action

Freedom to grow

One is also free not to grow (not to evolve).

Freedom to interpret life experiences

Purpose of the created man

The timeless and non-space dimension of the I-witness

Divine attributes

Man’s worst enemy to his inner growth

Real cases of how suffering is an opportunity for growth

God’s Plan

Conclusion

BIBLIOGRAPHY

To my brother, Humberto, who’s sincere and passionate arguments caused me to reflect deeply on the sufferings that distresses so many of us. Sufferings that make us feel abandoned by God who seems unmoved by their onslaught on us, His most precious creation.

For all those who have lost hope and find no meaning in Suffering, I offer these reflections, the result of my own deeply felt questions.

Acknowledgements

It is curious how a book is born. The author asks himself a question, hears a commentary, reads an article, sees a film, listens to a lecture, hears a song, sees a play, and suddenly a complete idea of a book that he wants to write appears. It does not leave him alone; it haunts him in his sleep, under the shower, at lunch, while chatting with friends. The original idea is usually not complete, but its core content is quite clear even though the sub-ideas are still imprecise. But as soon as he starts to write, the torrent of word-ideas begins to flow and fill pages that soon begin to give the full portrait of what he ‘saw’ in his mind while he felt the urge to write on that subject.

That is what happened with this book. In an in-depth conversation with my brother, Humberto, when one day he expressed to me his dissatisfaction with the fact that there is so much suffering in the world, I realized that his arguments were valid, from his perspective. That is why I decided to present another perspective, which, as I elaborated it, I realized that it is not the one that is usually argued by those who know the subject. That encouraged me to continue along the path of these reflections that have resulted in this book. It is to my brother that I owe thanks, because his sincere passion for his arguments gave me the key to approach them from this perspective.

But it is not only him to whom I owe thanks, because a book is not written by one person alone. It is the contribution of friends and acquaintances that makes the difference. There are two versions of the book, one in Spanish and this one in English. In the Spanish version I had invaluable help from a long-time friend, Edmundo Perez, that I re-encountered after many years of not seeing him, who contributed with sharp observations on the content and style that helped me to improve the text significantly. Another great contributor to the revision of the content and style is my great ally in literary matters, José Luis Marqués, whose sharpness in catching subtle errors is endless.

This version had the input of several English-speaking friends who made an outstanding input. They are Rosemary Baily, a dear friend who gave me excellent observations that improved the presentation of some of the key ideas. Then, there is Tamara Feldman and Cecilia Granados, two dear high school friends always willing to polish the grammar, and my brother’s wife, Christal Pareja, a sharp editor by trade.

Finally, I must acknowledge my dear life-time wife, Patricia, who not only has provided me with countless free hours to be able to do this creative effort but has also contributed with two critical readings of the Spanish version, finding details of writing that would have escaped me. To them all my most sincere thanks for their continuous support.

INTRODUCTION

Where does the suffering we humans experience every day comes from, what or who produces it?

These are valid questions because the phenomenon is universal. It suffices to listen to the news broadcast on radio or television; read a newspaper or see it on the Internet to become aware that some natural phenomenon is causing tragedy, death, destruction in some part of the world. The process is constant.

The two sources most commonly identified as being responsible for such suffering are: one, the suffering produced by natural causes of the evolving living planet, and secondly, the cause of suffering is commonly attributed to God as the First Cause of all that is and who, being Almighty, yet allows these tragic events to occur.

To be able to see the difference between the natural causes of suffering and the causes in which God could intervene, it is necessary to become aware that we are inhabitants of a living planet, which is in constant evolution, in cycles that have been maintained during millions of years of the planet’s evolution. Thanks to science, we have very good explanations of how these natural phenomena occur, which are partly responsible for the suffering of the mortals that live on the planet.

However, natural causes are not the main causes of the suffering that overwhelms us. It is hard for us to admit it, but the greatest suffering is not inflicted on us by natural phenomena but by the people with whom we share this planet. Men and women are the cause of the greatest suffering in the world. We are going to take an in-depth analysis look at both causes of suffering to put it in perspective. and then we will address the role that God may play or not in this process.

Chapter 1

Suffering produced by Natural Causes

Introduction

Suffering is an evident, palpable planetary phenomenon. Wherever you look, on whatever continent, in whatever country, or historical moment suffering is omnipresent, both among the rich, the middle class, as well as among the poor. No social class is exempt from it, even if it is true that those who are economically better probably experience less suffering, due to natural causes, than the dispossessed.

To begin an understanding of Suffering, as a universal phenomenon, it is necessary to begin by asking the obvious question, what are the natural causes that give rise to suffering among the men and women of the planet?

We can affirm that the most common and devastating are:

- Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.

- Hurricanes, cyclones, storms; overflowing of rivers, lakes, or dams; landslides, storms, and droughts.

- Epidemics that are so pervasive that they can kill thousands, even millions of people in a very short time.

Not everyone has directly experienced the impact of all of these natural phenomena, but does know a relative, a friend or even a neighbor who has experienced one of them or has seen in the news the devastation caused by them. Those who have experienced the fury of any one of these phenomena has been shocked to the very fibers of his being, and then he has remembered the experience in recurring nightmares for many years. What is common to all those who have experienced them is that these forces of nature provided intense levels of suffering, such as they had probably never experienced before.

All of these phenomena have left throughout the history of mankind a trail of destroyed houses, collapsed buildings, uprooted roads, harbors razed to the ground, vehicles piled up like hills of rubbish, ships thrown inland as if they were made of light cork, bridges collapsed as if demolished by a gigantic sledgehammer. Amid these horrific panoramas of massive destruction, the mutilated bodies of hundreds, thousands of people buried under tons of debris, piled up under collapsed roofs as if crushed by a giant fly swatter, are found as rescue workers go through the debris.

Statistics give us some idea of the dimension to these natural tragedies. China, in 2008 suffered an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 in the town of Wenchuan, where at least 8,700 people died and some 10,000 were injured. (1) Managua in 1931 suffered an earthquake which left approximately 1,200 to 1,500 dead and more than 2,000 injured. (2) Another earthquake, also in Managua in 1972, destroyed the center of the city and caused some 19,320 deaths and 20,000 injured. (3)

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake devastated much of the city of Port-au-Prince. Haiti. It is estimated that it may have killed more than 315,000 people, leaving 350,000 injured and another three million people affected. It was by far, the worst catastrophe in the history of the Caribbean American. (4)

The worst thing about these tragedies is not the number of people who died, for they can no longer question the meaning of what happened, nor do they have to endure the insuring suffering. It is the survivors, those who are left behind, without water or food, a roof over the heads, no property, or clothes. However, even more tragically left without their loved ones, husbands, wives, children, relatives, or friends.

These are the ones who are left to ask the question as to why this has happened to them, to accuse life of being unjust, to curse their bad luck, or to reject any explanation or word of consolation. These are the ones who ask anguished questions trying to understand the meaning of this tragedy. Especially when the victims are basically good hard-working, innocent people, dedicated to their work and their families.

Faced with the sudden disappearance of their livelihood, unable to comprehend the deaths, many ask, quite rightly, why these good people are left to suffer such a horrible undeserved death and why the survivors are left to suffer for days, months, or even years.

Searching for answers

The mythical answer

In the face of these portentous phenomena that sowed panic, uncontrollable fear, and reverence toward such annihilating forces, men of antiquity, devoid of our present scientific knowledge to explain these phenomena, attributed this inherent power to nature-gods whose strength and capacity for annihilation were such that they had to be deified and venerated.

From their limited scientific understanding, mankind developed a reverence, leading to the point of worshipping these supernatural forces and the gods they believed were hidden in these phenomena. From such a belief were born the Sea god, the Storm god, the Water god, the Sun god. The names of these gods abound in all the language of the ancient tribes of all civilizations: Tlaloc, the god of thunder and rain to the Aztecs, Bhagavataru, to the Chenchus of the Hindu state of Andhra Pradesh; Quetzalcoatl, the wind god to the Aztecs; Poseidon, god of the raging sea to the Greeks; Amarú, the god of earthquakes to the Incas; Adad, the god of weather to the Assyrians. Among of all the animistic gods, the Sun-god was the most important. He was recognized as the source of life on earth, in command of the change of the seasons that gave life to everything that grows on earth. The adoration of this great and powerful sun-god was so important that even children were sacrificed to him, as was the case with the god Baal of the Canaanites in the time of the Jews (Jer.19:5), and the sun-god of the Aztecs in Mexico many, many years later. (5)

Reverence for these gods was expressed in many ways: sacred sites were dedicated to their worship; ritual animal sacrifices were elaborated; virgins were consecrated to serve in their temples; and the most important was the creation of a specialized priestly caste in charge of carrying out rituals and offerings to these gods in order to placate their fury against the defenseless mortals.

Many cultures around the world continue to believe that Nature is a god-entity that rages and punishes men with the natural phenomena that destroy men. Hence, they continue to use a variety of cults to placate the fury of the gods to prevent their wrath from manifesting itself and annihilating them.

Scientific answers

However, starting the 19th through the 21st century science has demolished these myths with explanations that have allowed us to understand how these natural phenomena occur. If we want to address the problem of human suffering caused by the phenomena of nature, we need to describe the forces and processes of nature that cause these events, to understand that none of them can be ascribed to a supernatural entity.

Let us begin with an obvious, immediate starting point, which needs no elaborate proof. We live on a sphere we call Earth, which is one of the eight planets that share the solar system that hosts them. This solar system is immersed in the Milky Way, which is a large, spiral galaxy that can measure about 100,000 light years in diameter, and has a mass of more than two trillion times that of our Sun. Our solar system is located in one of the of the spiral arms about 30,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy and about 20,000 light-years from the edge. The Milky Way is composed of about 100,000 million stars, including the Sun, which gives us the light and energy to sustain life on Earth. The other thousands of thousands of glittering stars come out to do their dance of celestial lights to adorn the black curtain of our nights. (6)

And as if this were not already grandiose, scientists have shown us that we live in a universe populated by thousands of thousands of galaxies, each with hundreds of thousands of stars and planets like our own, probably some harboring conscious life like our own.

Internal Natural phenomena with internal activity

Volcanoes

As long as we are alive on this planet, scientists tell us that, although from space this blue-green globe, our one true country, appears to be a solid, static, rigid and beautifully cold as seen in the pictures taken by astronauts that have gone out in space. However, a closer look affirms that the intimate reality of the planet is the opposite. The magnificent sphere that is the home of humankind is a living entity. Geologists explain to us that in the depths of the earth (down 20 km to 1,500 km) a sea of molten rock (magma) is stirring within that is boiling constantly like our sun.

From time to time this magma needs to find a way to relieve the pressure that such internal activity has generated, or else it will create an explosion of such magnitude that the Earth’s surface would crack into a thousand pieces. Thus, the gases and lava accumulated in this internal activity need to be released. This happens when gases and magma find cracks at the base of seamounts or terrestrial mountains and through these cracks they exit in the form of lava and gases propelled by a gigantic force.

The eruptions that a volcano makes through the crater it has formed spews out water vapor, smoke, gases, ashes, and melted stone with such a force that it reaches several kilometers high to fall thunderously on the slopes of the mountain creating true rivers of burning lava that consumes the trees, plants, animals, houses, rivers, and if people are found in the path of this burning river as if they were stalks of straw. At the same time, a dense layer of pulverized ash is ejected, which on some occasions manages to hide the sunlight for several hours, for several days. The net result of both forces of nature manifested in a single event of the explosion of a volcano is a topography completely covered by burning lava or by the storm of ash that drowns everything, including the people who are living there at that moment. (7)

When this phenomenon occurs, the suffering endured by those who are in its path is pathetic, as can be seen in the calcified bodies of the inhabitants who lived at the foot of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii. When the volcano exploded in 79 AD the mummified bodies that were unearthed (1,500 of them) show in their faces the horror experienced at that moment caused by the fury of Nature. It covered the whole city, burying it in a thick layer of burning ash that consumed everything while mummifying the people so that they remained as mute testimony of what nature’s fury is capable when it has a natural reaction.

The living planet, by letting out the pressure locked up in its depths, manifests itself as a roaring volcano whose rain of asphyxiating ash and burning lava consumes everything in its path, leaving a desert of gray silence, of freshly cooled volcanic rock, of desolation across the length and breadth of the territory where its destructive wave covers everything.

It was estimated that 2000 died at Pompeii, but the eruption killed as many as 16,000 people living elsewhere, while at Herculaneum it was estimated that there must have been between 10,000 and 25,000 when it was buried by 23 meters of volcanic material. (8)

The few who survive the devastating fury of a volcano are left to live in a veritable hell of burnt skin beyond restoration; or carrying monstrous scars for the rest of their