God Squad: More on the difference between pain and suffering

Dear Rabbi Gellman: I look forward to reading your column every week and have learned a great deal from you. However, your claim in the Nov. 30 column that suffering “is a choice we make” has left me confused. Your insight is no doubt true for those of us who have enough food and water, clothes and a home, and live in a country that is not at war. But for the millions of people who are dealing with disease, no food or water, no shelter, untreated bullet wounds and the constant threat of being blown up, suffering is not a choice; it is a reality. Please, help me understand how these people can choose not to suffer, and can take comfort in knowing that God is with them and promises them a glorious afterlife. — From C in Southport, North Carolina

MG: I completely understand your confusion, and for years I shared it. Like you, I could not imagine that people living in the most dire circumstances could overcome their pain and transcend suffering, but it is possible. The key to overcoming suffering is faith.

Once we believe that God is with us through all the travails of life and beyond death itself, we can regain our spiritual agency and summon the power of faith to help us move forward in life with gratitude and joy.

For both Father Tom and for me, our shared belief that suffering is a choice was the result of being in the presence of two very different groups of people.

The first group are people who choose to suffer for no reason at all.

They are people who are blessed to live lives of wealth and health and yet constantly complain about minor irritations in their lives. If people can suffer when there is no reason to suffer, then it must be true that suffering is a choice.

The second group of people are those who are born into lives of such grinding poverty that we could excuse them if they spent each and every day complaining about their fate, and yet they have chosen to face every bleak day with a smile and with a gratitude that puts the rest of us to shame.

Father Tom told me a story about his visit to Mother Teresa in Calcutta. She took him to a slum filled with people who were crushingly poor. One woman he visited got a bag of rice every month. The rice was not enough for her, and yet her first act upon receiving her packet was to divide it up into smaller packages of rice which she then distributed to her neighbors who were just as poor as she.

In another ramshackle hut, Tommy was introduced to a woman who proudly offered him a cold bottle of soda. She would have had to work weeks to earn enough money to buy that bottle of soda, but she was happy to greet her guest with the best gift she could afford.

Both those women chose to overcome suffering and embrace a life of gratitude and joy.

These two women were saints, and it is foolish, I know, to suggest to anyone that the key to overcoming suffering is simply to become a saint. However, there are certain elements of sainthood that are accessible to us.

Tell me about saints in your life and what they taught you.