In this examination of Western approaches to suffering, the fourth motif reflects a tension crucial to understanding how the West has struggled to deal definitively with suffering. If previous motifs characterized aspects of the human journey with suffering, this motif characterizes the type of journey itself. Descent into suffering is seen either as a journey into avoidable suffering or a journey through which ascent from suffering is undertaken. Conversely, ascent from suffering is seen either as a journey away from suffering or as a destination, or secondary journey, achieved through a journey that first descends into suffering. There are, then, two possibilities:
either a direct ascent from suffering, away from descent into suffering, or descent into suffering that leads to some sort of ascent from suffering.
In Christianity is a profound and complex reflection of the tension between descent and ascent. This is due to the nexus in Christianity between the two polarities of descent and ascent that both draws them inextricably together but also maintains the opposing tension between them. From the resultant paradox arises the possibility of varying foci, and it is in these differences that arise the powerful tensions between descent and ascent, exemplifying clearly the two possibilities that characterize the Western journey with suffering: ascent from suffering can be either be a focus on ‘escape’ or transcendence, but the latter only arises from descent into suffering.
The extensive indexing in the examined hymnals provides a microcosm of life in hymns ranging from of joy and celebration to death and suffering. While many hymns repeatedly refer to the power of God as creator and redeemer, many equally recognize the presence of suffering in human life, and some are in part a prayer asking to share in the suffering of Christ on the cross as the way to God and love. Ascent from suffering to God is through descent into suffering. For example, hymn 252 (twelfth century) from AHB (1977) asks: “Grant us with you to suffer, Lord”, emphasizing the place of suffering in achieving love and joy. These positive emotions are achieved through negative emotions (suffering, sorrow, and shame), rather than through the healing of the latter by God. In a similar vein, hymn 270 (nineteenth century) from AHB (1977) also links suffering, love and faith. This hymn speaks to the centrality of Gethsemane and Calvary in both expressing and experiencing that faith, reminding the Christian of “the worth of pain” in the journey of faith and the vanquishing of pain and death by Christ.
Two modern hymns by Wren, contained in TIS (2006: hymns 262, 356), deal explicitly and powerfully with the problem of suffering in the world. Wren (Milgate & Wood 2006: 260) considers that “‘to the person who sits bowed in depression, there is no good news in being invited to join the celebration next door’”. For Wren the good news is to be found in the person of Christ who lived a human life fraught with pain, desolation and meaninglessness and who walks with Christians in their own suffering. In hymn 262 (TIS 2006) is found a concern with responding directly
and honestly to suffering, recognizing the place of chance, and openly pointing to and questioning the apparent weakness and vulnerability of God and Jesus. Described as “one of the best modern hymns on the subject of pain and suffering” (Milgate & Wood 2006: 182), this hymn does not shy away from the depth, chance, and absurdity of human suffering by concentrating on God’s healing power or on the resurrection. Rather, the focus is on a God who knows what it is to be subject to chance, to fragility, to pain, and to death. It is only through such suffering that the resurrection is both realized and understood. The hymn points to both the experiential and relational nature of the descent into suffering and the ascent from suffering through this descent in the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
Similar responses to suffering can also be found in hymn 356 (TIS 2006), in which Wren paints a very stark picture of the absurdity that lies at the heart of Christianity: the apparent foolishness of a God who suffers and dies, yet promises life eternal and freedom from suffering. The language is bare, direct, and honest and speaks powerfully to the suffering person. What can constitute unhelpful references (for a suffering Christian) to God’s healing power and joyful praises of the resurrection are absent in this hymn. Indeed, the emphasis is on the suffering of Christ as “a scarecrow hoisted high, / a nonsense pointing nowhere”, and on the absurdity of his words in this contemporary world of “dazzling progress”. The hymn focuses on the presence of this suffering “clown” in a Christian’s “deepest emptiness” and “pit of life’s despair”, where Christ “can name our hidden darkness / and suffer with us there”. Finally, the hymn, while acknowledging the resurrection, does not do so in a burst of Christian zeal and joyous acclamation. Rather, it depicts Christ as choosing to walk as a friend with the suffering person into the darkness of “the night”.
In his notes about this hymn, Wren (Milgate & Wood 2006: 260) writes that “‘to anyone who feels life to be empty and meaningless happy stories about resurrection and grace can be an alienation’”; yet it is in Jesus, whose life was “‘emptied of all meaning, drained out in bleak distress’” and who was left forsaken by God in the “‘greatest crisis of his life’”, that the suffering person may find affirmation and companionship. The absurdity of the cross is manifest as God’s chosen way of self- revelation, as a nexus between descent into suffering and ascent out of suffering. Indeed, the cross is at once a symbol of resurrection and a symbol of suffering and
death, with the former realized only through the latter. Drawing on his background in classical art and archaeology, Nigel Spivey (2008: Programme Five) considers the Christian cross / crucifix to be unique:
It’s the one single image that’s working on the human mind in two opposing ways. It’s a terrifying image, representing pain, loss, and suffering, and yet at the same time it’s an image that reassures, one that holds out hope. This combination has made the cross one of the most powerful symbols ever.
However, the tension between descent and ascent in Christianity is variously interpreted and emphasized. Indeed, concern with ascent often obscures or ignores descent altogether. Easter Day and Pentecost are preferable for many Christians, particular those belonging to Pentecostal churches, than are Ash Wednesday and Lent. Yet, essentially Christianity is a religion of ascent through descent, not ascent alone. The prosperity gospel, exemplified in the songs from Hillsong, is tied to ascent as ascent only, denying or avoiding ascent that comes through the suffering of painful descent. Such a journey of ascent only is only representative of life for some people some of the time, and for many, perhaps never. When life is full of health, success, and happiness, songs from Hillsong are eminently appropriate, magnificently celebrating life, love, and gratitude to God for abundant blessings. Sentiments such as falling in love with Jesus (Hillsong 2002: song 55), soaring high in God’s love (Hillsong 2001: song 43), “made glad” by God (Hillsong 2004a: song 40), dreams coming true today (Hillsong 2004a: song 22), and being rescued by God’s love (Hillsong 2004a: 48) resonate throughout the songs from Hillsong. Indeed, the prosperity gospel dovetails perfectly with a life of love and plenty. However, although Hillsong Church has brilliantly and effectively fused the individualism, consumerism, and emphasis on pleasure of modern Western culture with Christianity it has been criticized for its shallowness, commercialization of Christianity, and its emphasis on consumption and entertainment (Power 2004, Connell 2005, Frost 2006).
Taking the same tack, but from a different perspective, Plato is also focussed exclusively on ascent from suffering. Plato considers that ordinary people make life prone to tragedy and suffering by attaching value to the wrong things because they
are “misguided” by their “distinctively human nature”, which is “‘buried deep in some barbaric slime’”, and are therefore unable to see clearly; Plato’s argument is that “correct perception would come from a standpoint that is more than human, one that can look on the human from the outside” (Nussbaum 1986: 138). The Platonic position was that “there is available in the universe a pure transcendent standpoint, from which the whole truth of value in the universe is evident” (Nussbaum 1986: 342) and that such truths could only be seen from the correct perspective of the philosopher. Nussbaum (1986) observes that such Platonic argument is “dangerously circular” because for Plato (and Socrates) “appetitive activity is rejected from a point of view that has already purified itself of appetite” (155); hence, the Platonic perspective that determines what is of value and what is valueless is “from the viewpoint of one who no longer sees his characteristic human needs as genuine parts of himself” (154).
For this reason Plato cannot see the value that may come from descent into suffering, and from within which may come ascent from suffering, because ascent from suffering is equated with avoidance of suffering through the rule of reason in the ascetic, philosophical life. In the ancient Greek tragic poets and Aristotle, however, the embracing of human life in totality not only accepts descent into tragedy and suffering as inevitable and unavoidable but also as a necessary precursor for the full flowering of the best in a human being, where excellence “could not be made invulnerable and keep its own peculiar fineness” (Nussbaum 1986: 2). In this sense, the close linking of descent into suffering and ascent from suffering, particularly the presence of human excellence to be found only within the human vulnerability to suffering, is closer to the later Christian position than is Plato’s.
Similarities to the Platonic position on ascent from suffering can also be found in a different time and in a very different culture. In its oral form the story of Job predates Plato’s thinking by possibly some one thousand five hundred years, yet Job’s ‘friends’ also approach suffering through rationality. However, whereas Plato is concerned with a scientific rationality that can prevent suffering, Job’s ‘friends’ are concerned with a theological rationality in which ascent away from suffering is dependent on obeying God and descent into suffering is caused by disobeying God. Job accepts his descent into suffering, finding within it his ascent towards a closer
relationship with God. Some scholars argue that the ‘nice’ ending to Job, where Job’s health and wealth are restored, was added much later (Irwin 1962, Rutledge 2009) as the original ending, concerned so much with descent into suffering, was possibly unpalatable. This underlies a significant problem with descent into suffering; the journey that descends into suffering is truly awful. Little wonder, then, that some Christians would later emphasize the happy ending to Job and the resurrection of their Lord over any descent into suffering as seen in Job’s plight or in the crucifixion. Yet, “[p]ain instinctively repels” at the same time as it is “privilege ... and opportunity” (Irwin 1962: 408). In his pain Job eventually finds such privilege and opportunity, ascent (via descent into suffering) into the presence of God, whereas his ‘friends’ see Job’s pain in no such terms and only as an example of descent into suffering caused by disobedience.
In the secular-atheistic literature, as in Job, the descent into suffering is a very real and present fact. The possibility of focussing on the judgement of God, as with Job’s ‘friends’, or on love, as in songs from Hillsong, or on methodological self-control, as in Plato, in order to avoid suffering is simply not even remotely possible. This twentieth-century literature represents extreme suffering, so descent is a given, and ascent is explored through that imposed descent into terrible suffering. In these texts, the finding of meaning is paramount, and is achieved through ascent from suffering via descent into suffering. Frankl (2004), drawing on his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, developed a form of psychotherapy based on the pursuit of meaning as opposed to pleasure. This subtle shift of emphasis sees a radical re- orientation to meaning and suffering, where instead of asking questions about the meaning of life and suffering, Frankl (2004) sees life as questioning each person about the meaning in his or her life, whatever the situation. Similarly, in the Soviet labour camps (Solzhenitsyn 1963), it was possible to find ways of ascending suffering through the imposed descent into suffering, whether non-religious, as with Shukhov, or religious, as with Alyosha, where the journey is one of hope and thankfulness amid deprivation and suffering.
Camus’s vision of suffering, and its impact on people, is best seen as a combination of bleakness and hope. In the descent into suffering to which the people of Oran are subjected to by the plague it is only from within this suffering that they can ascend in
some way out of the suffering. Dr. Rieux at the bedside of his dying friend, Tarrou, feels that “all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories” (Camus 1960: 237). Dr. Rieux’s memory of Tarrou would be mixture of knowing life and death: of “a living warmth, and a picture of death” (Camus 1960: 237). Dr. Rieux later reflects that what he and his fellow- citizens had in common were the certitudes of “love, exile, and suffering” (Camus 1960: 246), and that his chronicle of the plague was a memorial that “might endure” as a record of what they all suffered and fought against and that stated “quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise” (251). The plague was a catalyst for both “the bane and the enlightening of men” (Camus 1960: 252). This rather profoundly and poignantly combines the pain of descent into suffering with the knowledge that can come from ascent out of such a descent into suffering. As with Aristotle, out of suffering can come the best that is possible in a human, even though the suffering may be the worst of experiences.
In the tension between ascent and descent can be seen long-standing Western concerns to fathom a way of journeying with suffering. On the one hand, as seen in the positions taken by Job’s ‘friends’, Plato, and songs from Hillsong, is a journey of ascent away from suffering, that concentrates, because of its tight focus on ascent only, on ways to avoid or overcome or ignore suffering. However, where Job’s ‘friends’ approach suffering in a concretised theology of divine retribution or blessing, Plato approaches the problem of suffering from a rational perspective of rigorous self-control, and the songs from Hillsong reveal not a rational response but an emotional response grounded in ‘feeling good’. All reject descent but for quite different reasons: for Job’s ‘friends’ descent signifies disobedience to God, whereas for Plato descent points to a lack of methodological control of life, and in Hillsong songs descent seems not to exist. On the other hand, as seen in the perspectives of Job, the ancient Greek tragic poets and Aristotle and in some Christian hymns and the secular atheistic texts, is a journey with suffering that combines both polarities, in which ascent from suffering takes place from within descent into suffering. Where confinement to one end of the continuum can only reflect a part of what constitutes human life, the con-joining of both polarities within a single journey embraces a far wider understanding of human suffering and life. This motif reflects how the human
journey with suffering has manifested in Western culture. It represents both the powerful human need for ascent from suffering and the profound human acknowledgement that within descent into suffering is the means and possibility both of ascent from suffering and of the flowering of what is most valuable, poignant, meaningful, and beautiful in the human condition.
3.6 Conclusion
These four motifs represent one possibility of approaching how Western culture has sought, and continues to seek, for ways to make sense of suffering. Neither comprehensive nor definitive, this approach, nevertheless, reveals certain long- standing preoccupations in the West about how to deal with suffering. While the tensions in these motifs are revealed in various shades and combinations, the motifs themselves have remained unchanged over some four thousand years of Western history.
Drawing on ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, Christian, and modern secular-atheistic literature I explore a number of tensions that characterize how the West has approached the problem of suffering and found these responses to be strikingly similar in their emphases and fluctuations. The literature reveals four consistent tensions that oscillate between polarities of ‘acceptance and resistance’, ‘relationship and causality’, ‘chaos and certainty’, and ‘descent and ascent’. Essentially, these tensions suggest two enduring perspectives. One is concerned with resistance to suffering, emphasis on causality and control of suffering, and the need for ascent away from suffering. The other is concerned with acceptance of suffering, emphasis on relationality and recognition of the presence of chaos, and the possibility of ascent from suffering within descent into suffering. The former is oppositional and restrictive, viewing suffering as unwanted, unnecessary, without value, and anathema to human life. The latter is inclusive and holistic, seeing suffering as a constituent part of human life within which is found special value, meaning, or attributes, often not available without that suffering.
Situating the contemporary Western framing of depression within an historical context is to position it as part of a long-standing human journey with suffering characterized by enduring tensions between the same polarities, rather than as a linear journey towards a specific destination of definitive solution. Although the modern West is a secular-atheistic society its roots are embedded in its Judaic- Christian and Greco-Roman past, and exploring these roots elucidates both origins and patterns of thought central to understanding how Western culture arrived in the twenty-first century in its present form. My research for this thesis indicates that the contemporary framing of depression in the West is situated very much at, or towards, the resistance, causality, certainty, and ascent end of the Motifs of Suffering, reflecting attitudes to suffering evident over at least four thousand years of Western thought.
These motifs assist in comprehending the wider Western conceptualisation of suffering in which depression is situated. They are useful as a way of specifically