We know we live in a broken and hurting world. For example, In the past day’s news, the reporters tells us that ISIL is still a threat in Syria, the 14 blue helmets killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo are still mourned, Maduro is still in power in Venezuela, and all over the globe, thousands of innocents are still fleeing from their homes. Even on a personal level, looking away from world events, as I write these words, in some part of the globe, a baby has died of an easily preventable disease, a woman has been raped, a man has been stabbed, a teenager has started on the winding path to drug addiction, and a child has gotten sick because of water-borne illness. Or even taking it closer to ourselves, even if deep tragedy has not touched us, our own lives and the lives of those near us often seem comedies of errors, and we often find ourselves wounding those we love most. Pain is a daily reality, and yet somehow we continue with our own stuggles. Knowing all of this, it is so easy to despair, the world around us is scary and teriffying, and we desperately need an answer to the problem that such protracted human suffering entails.
This suffering is depicted in terror and beauty through the White Temple I had a chance to visit on Saturday. Here, the artist Chalermchai Kositpipat represented Bhuddism’s answer to human suffering, the four noble truths, through an intricate four-walled mural. Facing West, the wall depicted the face of a giant demon whose flaming beard and fangs were intertwined with both eastern and western heroes and a primeval sea of fire and fear. Facing North and South, there was the same flaming sea that wrapped around the room and was filled, not with water, but with scenes of fear and destruction and unearthly terrors. Above the sea, people, painted in attitudes of decreasing expression flew on feathered boats to the Buddha that faced east.The Buddha had a completely blank face, and as the supplicants reached him, their faces became blank too, and by all appearance, they had all reached bliss.
However, as all this weighed heavily on my mind, I slowly realized that the answer the murals gave to all kinds of suffering was to escape personhood and existence altogether, a very weighty and sad thought. But then, as I continued to think, my soul rejoiced because while yes, life has suffering, life is not suffering, and furthermore, there is deliverance, but it is not by eliminating myself, my reality, and my desires; deliverance lies in accepting a savior outside of myself. In fact, as CS Lewis wrote, the problem is not that our desires are too strong, but that our desires are simply too weak; we don’t want to live badly enough, we would rather settle for a mediocre half-existence instead of fully following Truth to His logical conclusion, grateful obedience presented as an offering of worship.
Because of this, all the suffering we se around us is not the end, as Ravi Zecharias wrote, this life is only beginning of a story written since the beginning of time whose end is meant to be full reality of all the characters. Nevertheless, the writer allows the characters to determine their own ends, and sometimes, the characters make bad choices, and someone inevitably suffers as the result. But, the beauty is that the evil and the suffering we see on Earth is not the end of the story, humanity has not been corrupted to the point where she must be thrown out and overcome, she can yet be redeemed.
So, as the Christmas season starts, I continue to rejoice despite all the evils in the world because it is during this time that we remember that two thousand years ago there was one born in Bethlehem that chose to take all the evils upon Himself and redeem all who call upon His name into full personhood. Because of His sacrifice, we are now able to rejoice in the small miracles and have hope through the large and small tragedies. So, as the Apostle Paul wrote “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:17, ESV).
