Nonsense Ought To Be Suggestive

Few moments deserve more attention than the one in which your primary goal is to make it to the toilet on time. That first realization and the reckless dash following it surmise the tragi-comedy of the human condition. No, i'm not talking about the fact that you shouldn't have had Chinese food for the 2nd time this week, i'm talking about the fact that you shouldn't have had McDonalds at all. I'm talking about food poisoning.

I spent the long hours of yesterday with my arms wrapped tightly around my porcelain savior. But snug as we were, i'm glad it's over. I only bring it up because 1) it's funny and 2) because, given the history of my attitude toward suffering of any kind, i'm surprised that i find it funny.

There's more psychology than i care to relate, and more philosophy than i know, but as far as the observable facts of my life go, no issue has caused more relational strife between God and i than the existential problem of pain. Of course, i have no room to talk about suffering; i am the quintessential poster-child for bratty Christians. My only excuse is that, having been given so much, i am more sensitive to ailments. Now trust me, i’m not justifying myself; if anything, I’m condemning.

But let me pause before you think i'm indulging in an episode of self-loathing. Public confessions shouldn't be public unless the goal of said confessor is to benefit consciousnesses external to himself. I have a serious disagreement with several theologian's take on the book of Job. They are under the impression that God provides the man from Ur an answer to his probing question. In point of fact, without hermeneutical gymnastics I cannot find within the text a clear, definite, and most importantly, satisfying answer.

Frost puts our modern formulation of Job’s sentiment accurately, "I'd give more for one least beforehand reason than all the justifying ex-post-facto excuses trumped up by You (God) for theologists." Who cares to grow if growing requires suffering? In those bleak moments, ontological standings matter little when ignorance is bliss. The values of comfort and stability rule when a man desires no change. But just because the sentiment is accurate, it does not follow that it lasts.

Chesterton distinguishes between the kind of paradox upon which the mind can build, and one which kills thought. The paradox inherent to Job, the paradox inherent to the existential problem of pain, is of the first order, requiring the whole man to participate. God hurting us to heal us is nonsense, but it is paradoxical nonsense which suggests something.

And to suggest is exactly the point. As a poem and drama, subconscious suggestion is all Job is. It suggests something alien, on the parameters of consciousness—something alive. Job’s existential problem of pain is answered only by God’s existential derailment of Job’s question. “The answer is in the full drama.” The meaning of the event is, of itself, nonsense, as no event can have meaning. We can, if we like, abstract meaning from it (and here our ambitious theologians go too far), but Job’s moment by moment conscious engagement with the Divine is pure experience. Nevertheless, it was here, in the unmeaning, that Job found his answer. Not that he found an answer to his question, only that he discovered, certainly to his wonder, that he no longer had a question. As Orual put it, “Before Your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice”?

All that to say something rather simple. Whether it be upchucking, nose two inches from the same place all manner of evil abides, or angst of the most violent kind, the point is that sometimes there is no answer. Sometimes the point is that you aren’t asking the right question.

the K. H.