Suffering and human purpose

These are times that try people’s souls. With calamity after calamity, misery after misery, scandal after scandal, there are few things we can cheer about. Not even our rosy economic ratings and beauty-pageant winnings can lift the pall of gloom on our beautiful land, as the massive movement of tectonic plates and the mighty surge of wind and sea combine to humble and test us.

And yet hope springs eternal. Life goes on amid the ruins in the valley of tears. A young girl dying from massive injuries begs her mother to “let go and save yourself.” A TV newscaster becomes a willing participant in a rescue effort, even helping carry a corpse for identification by grieving family members. Volunteers contribute whatever they can to make a difference, even while looters descend on the hellish landscape that is now Tacloban, Leyte.

The scenes of death and devastation are reminiscent of the great Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that overpowered coastal countries in 2004, resulting in the death of over 230,000 people.

As people pick up the pieces of their lives in the wake of Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” painful questions will again be asked about the meaning of life and human purpose: Why was I saved but my child killed? Why did so many good people die while evil ones survived? Why was the capital of Romblon, which lay in Yolanda’s path, spared but Cebu and Roxas City were not?

Flashbacks: Historic churches are leveled to the ground in Bohol as the faithful pray. A superferry sinks off Sibuyan, taking 2,000 lives to their watery grave, despite the screaming prayers of doomed passengers. Do people count in the unfathomable scheme of the creator of the universe, who seems neutral or indifferent to human suffering? Calamities such as that inflicted by Yolanda force us to look at ourselves in the mirror, long and hard. The answers are both disturbing and reassuring, depending on one’s outlook and values.

The skeptic will say humans are children of Nature but theirs is an uncaring mother, indifferent to their concerns and purposes. The “evils in the world”—such as natural disasters and epidemics—are labels humans pin on events they cannot fathom or accept: Deadly microbes and poor sanitation, not an angry God, unleashed the Black Death that nearly decimated medieval Europe; the killer tsunami that wiped out great numbers of people in South Asia within hours was the function of shifting tectonic plates deep in the Earth’s crust, not the Lord punishing the wicked; the cataclysmic earthquake that rocked Haiti in 2010 and claimed over 100,000 lives was the work of Nature, not a cruel deity.

Similarly, in the primarily moral realm, the hundreds of thousands of innocent women put to the torch during the Inquisition in the Middle Ages was the brutality of men clothed in dogmatic faith, not God. The mighty Titanic sank, not due to divine will, but because of human (navigation) error and faulty ship construction. The Holocaust that claimed the lives of over six million Jews was the handiwork of madmen, not a vindictive God teaching the children of Israel an unforgettable lesson in humility.

To which the faithful will say: You don’t understand, the creator works in mysterious ways. There is a reason and purpose for everything that happens in life and creation. We just don’t comprehend it because it is beyond reason. Anyway, suffering strengthens us and is good for the soul. Accepting that all that happens in the universe is the will of God requires no less than a leap of faith.

It is a debate with no clear winners and losers because one school is based on science and the experimental method while the other is anchored on faith in scripture and the unknowable.

The scientist Albert Einstein offered an elegant aphorism to bridge the great divide: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” He did not believe in a personal God that responds to prayer, but he recognized that science, too, is a kind of faith and has its own set of dogma.

Can humans ever find their true identity in creation? Intellectually, they are in the cyberspace age but emotionally, they seem stuck in the Dark Ages.

In college we were taught that memorable Latin phrase: “Operatio sequitur  esse.” Behavior follows one’s nature, such that a tiger will always be a predator and a lamb will always be prey. Are violence and avarice dominant, unchanging parts of human nature, traits so deep and stubborn that we are doomed to self-destruct because of them? Or do humans have what it takes to reinvent themselves on time, to achieve and maintain the balance of life required for their own existence, purpose, and redemption?

Francis Collins, former head of the multimillion-dollar Human Genome Project aimed at deciphering human nature and genetic disorders, had a disconcerting prognosis on humankind’s future: that despite the many wonderful medical advances that make longer life spans possible, people will always find ways to kill one another out of self-righteousness and the desire to be on top. “We may understand a lot about biology … about how to prevent and treat illness … but I don’t think we will ever figure out how to stop humans from doing bad things to each other,” he said.

And so like Sisyphus chained to his rock, we plod on, not really sure (beyond doubt) of our destiny. But this much we do know with certitude: half-brute, half-saint, the same brain that harbors murderous thoughts also births sublime ideas. Minds that drove airline planes into the World Trade Center towers also built the greatest cathedrals, libraries and hospitals. The killing fields at Auschwitz and Kampuchea are the other side of Mozart’s masterpiece, Concerto in A-Major. Humans’ duality is hardwired into their genes, like the unbroken wholeness of the crest and trough of a wave. It is the very nature of their being.

More and more people are asking: Is our final destination really that important? To this increasing tribe, it is the journey itself, filled with adventure, excitement, danger, and uncertainty that is the real meaning and purpose of life.

Narciso M. Reyes Jr. ([email protected]) is a former journalist and diplomat. He is the author of the book “The God in Einstein and Zen.”