white – Michael Ferber

Pandemic Book Recommendation #19: The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis

It has been quite a few weeks since I posted here, but like most things in this COVID world, it feels like months. For three weeks of this hiatus, I was teaching my annual Physical Geography class at King’s. The course is usually 50% outdoors and includes field trips to Jasper and Drumheller. This year’s COVID-19 edition was online – an entirely different experience! Early in the class, we had a good discussion on the age of the Earth. A theology student had some excellent follow-up questions that morphed into a conversation about evolution, the existence of a historical Adam, and The Fall. I pulled The Problem of Pain off my shelf to reference how C.S. Lewis managed to negotiate evolution and Genesis 1-3 way back in 1940. A few days ago, the volume was still by my recliner, and I got lost in it one afternoon, re-reading it cover to cover. It is a timely book for these days of ever-increasing pain.

I will leave the chapters on evolution and Adam alone, but for a more contemporary view of this checkout Richard Middleton’s lecture “Human Distinctiveness and the Origin of Evil.”

In this blog, amid the tremendous pain our world is experiencing, I want to focus on the idea of surrender as it relates to racial inequality. C.S. Lewis summarizes the problem of pain like this:

“If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able to do what he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.” (16)

Lewis works his way through the free will theodicy and aspects of The Fall to wrestle with how pain, though not all of it, can be linked directly to human evil and free will. Lewis identifies some good that can come from the horror of pain, and this good is linked to a theology of surrender, which he extrapolates using three “operations” of pain. First, pain shatters the illusion that all is well (93). Second, pain shatters the illusion of self-sufficiency – that what we have in and of itself is good enough (96). Third, pain is necessary for us to fully act out self-surrender to God, using martyrdom as the ultimate example of following Christ (102).

Still, Lewis struggles to get past the idea that pain in every form sucks ass. Those are not entirely his words, but he does claim that if he knew any way of escaping pain, he would crawl through the sewers to find it (105) – so it is close. Pain is painful, but he also argues from classic Christian doctrine that suffering is what makes us everything we were meant to be – that tribulation is a necessary element in redemption (114). We crave security and a lack of suffering, but this settled happiness would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose a return to God (116).

It has been twenty years since I read this book, but based upon my old scribbles in the margins, I have not learned much over this time. Like Lewis, I still prefer life without pain, adversity, trial, or tribulation. If I have learned anything in the last twenty years, though, it is the value of surrender – of being with God in the present and being OK with things as they are and not as I would like them to be (something I am much better at in theory than in practice). Contemplative prayer and mindfulness (Radical Acceptance) remind me of Lewis’s assertion that our highest activity is response, not initiative (44). This is love – not that we loved God, but that God loved us. We want to be nouns, but we are only adjectives (75).

There are times to radically accept our suffering, and in this, find the will of God. But there are other times when we are called to end the injustice and suffering of others. Blessed are the poor, says Jesus, but as His followers, we are tasked to help end poverty. It is this paradox that we find ourselves in today. Suffering has its place in helping us find submission in God’s will, but Lewis is clear (and I agree) that pain is not good in itself! “It would be a false view to suppose that the Christian understanding of suffering is incompatible with the strongest emphasis on our duty to leave the world better than we found it (114).”

For instance, the pain of my sisters and brothers of African and Indigenous descent will not find resolution through radical acceptance and surrender alone. No – the pain of a 500-year history of slavery, genocide and racism is deep, and we have hardly begun to scratch the surface of speaking the truth about this pain and suffering in North America. C.S. Lewis did not help us much here. He is a man of his times, and as you would expect for a Christian book written in 1940, he writes as a white man to other white men. It is time to listen to some other voices! (Though perhaps the world has not been as frightened, conflict-ridden, and painful since these words written in the advent of World War II.)

Black Lives Matter Rally, Edmonton. June 5, 2020

Last night Christina and I attended the Edmonton Black Lives Matter Rally. We heard pain, suffering, anguish, tribulation, and trouble (88) in the cries for justice and equality. We experienced all of these through the stories, testimonies, prayers, poems, and songs of people in pain. Sierra Jamerson moved us to tears as she shared her genealogical path of racism from the US South to Canada – where it did NOT improve. We bowed a knee with 15,000 Edmontonians and rested in silence with fists in the air. If you would have told me ten days ago that I would be at the Legislature with that many people – mask or no mask – I would have told you that you were crazy. But there was nowhere else we could have been last night – taking pandemic precautions to be in public and listening and reflecting on how our privilege relates to the suffering of others.

The theological problem of pain may find some resolution in Lewis’s book, but these racial manifestations are calls to action. God lacks neither power nor goodness but mysteriously allows us to be the manifestation of that power and goodness on Earth. We can end structural racism and systems that advantage some to the pain of others. Abandoning white privilege is a form of surrender that recognizes the operations of pain described above: all is not well, our current way of being is not sufficient, and we must humble ourselves in the same manner as Christ. The problem of racial pain in North America is a white one, and it is time we made the sacrifices necessary to address it. It is time to humble ourselves, listen, be obedient to what God is calling us to in this hour, and surrender.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Phil. 2:5-8)

Pandemic Book Recommendation #13: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Here is a book recommendation primarily for my white friends, and it is neither a comfortable nor easy read. This is especially true for my more left-leaning progressive white network – those of us who feel comfortable talking about race, have friends from many ethnicities, and generally see ourselves as part of the solution to injustices and disparities in the world. Robin DiAngelo is a white scholar with a Ph.D. in Multicultural Education from the University of Washington and a researcher in the field of Whiteness Studies. She argues that white progressives are the primary voices in America that are keeping the structures of racism in place. Yes – that said progressives, not neo-conservatives. The term she coined for why this is happening is “white fragility.”

White fragility is the inability of white people to tolerate racial stress – a disbelieving defensiveness that whites exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged. This is particularly the case when whites are implicated in white supremacy. For many whites, it is difficult to talk about racism whatsoever. Many of us would rather see ourselves as colour-blind. When the topic of race emerges, we may become overly sensitive, and in fact, DiAngelo’s research demonstrates that we often do. Her research establishes that we have a tendency toward weaponizing our hurt feelings and becoming defensive when confronted with racial inequality and injustice. “But I’m not a racist. I don’t say the N-word.” The mere suggestion of racism can cause more outrage among white people than the racism itself. “And if nobody is racist,” she asks, “why is racism still America’s biggest problem? What are white people afraid they will lose by listening? What is so threatening about humility on this topic?”

The original essay reflecting on these ideas was released in a paper in 2011. This book emerged after the term went viral, and it remained on the New York Times bestseller list for months. A central point of her argument is that being nice to people of colour is not enough. Whites hold institutional power in the structures of America, and this is arguably the case in Canada as well. In the western colonial context, racism is a system and not just a slur. It is prejudice plus power. The structures in place benefit whites over people of colour, and this can be demonstrated in just about every economic and social measurement.

The current pandemic is a case in point. Right now, today, more black and brown Americans are dying per capita than white Americans from COVID-19. Similar trends are occurring in Britain. This is being described as a crisis within a crisis, and the causes are relatively clear. Before the crisis, people of colour had a higher chronic disease burden and higher levels of obesity tied to racial health disparities linked to structural racism. Institutional biases exist in how people of colour are treated in care – this has been thoroughly researched and established. Additionally, because there are limited coronavirus tests available, the categories determined to administer a test put people of colour at a disadvantage. Not as many black or brown Americans have travelled abroad, nor do they know people who have. Entire communities lack access to testing. PBS ran a helpful segment on this earlier in the week.

The racially divided statistics of morbidity in this pandemic offer clear evidence that America has what DiAngelo describes as a “white supremacist culture.” And, BOOM – These kinds of statements are what tend to kick whites into our mode of defensiveness, as we picture radical neo-Nazis and want to be sure that everyone understands this is not us. “Now breathe,” she requests of her readers. “I am not saying that you are immoral. If you can remain open as I lay out my argument it should soon begin to make sense.” She asserts that racism is a white problem that was constructed and created by white people, and the ultimate responsibility lies with white people. “For too long we’ve looked at it as if it were someone else’s problem, as if it was created in a vacuum. I want to push against that narrative.”

DiAngelo provides steps for whites to reduce fragility and use racial discomfort as a mechanism to understand structural racism better. The book is eye-opening, especially for those who have not thought about structural racism and white privilege. It is a worthy and very timely lockdown read.