Scroll down a few posts and you'll find another essay on kids and why we have them. For the past year and a half I've been preoccupied with that question. Hopefully in doing so I'm creating a foundation for my own sanity as well as yours, because here's another question parents surely wrestle with often, especially when fears are realized: what happens if my kid turns out to be awful?
Imagine the suffering the parents of mass murderers undergo when they learn that their kid just killed a bunch of people, often for either no good reason or hatred. No doubt the parents ask self-reflective questions about where they went wrong. Especially if there are other kids in the family that are in the running for peace prizes, the parents must be at a loss. "Didn't we raise them the same? What went wrong?" I bet that usually nothing went wrong. Every child has free-will and can, without warning, choose to commit a heinous act that nothing in our parenting, nothing in their childhood, and nothing they've ever been exposed to, could possibly have predicted. Yet the suffering of the parent is real. While I pray that parents are not driving themselves crazy worrying that their child may turn into a mass murderer, we almost certainly still have concerns about the child being awful, albeit with a lesser definition of 'awful.' So how do we parents deal with the suffering associated with such legitimate concern, and how do we do so theologically?
While I do not agree with much of Jurgen Moltmann's theological project, he does provide a fascinating understanding of the Trinity that unites the concepts 'God is love' and 'God suffers.' His The Trinity and the Kingdom contain most of these ideas, based in mystical Judaism's understanding of God's Shekinah being separated from God Himself in order to be present in God's creation.
Taking the assumption that God is love, we then say that love is "the voluntary laying oneself open to another and allowing oneself to be intimately affected by him; that is to say, the suffering of passionate love," and, further, "Love humiliates itself for the sake of the freedom of its counterpart." We can even say that "the sole omnipotence which God possesses is the almighty power of suffering love." God has suffering within God's self because God loves. Yet love cannot survive on its own, "Love has to give, for it is only in the act of giving that it truly possesses, and finds bliss." Here, then, is the kicker: "if God is already in eternity and in his very nature love, suffering love and self-sacrifice, then evil must already have come into existence with God himself, not merely with creation, let alone with the Fall of man." God then cannot possibly have created a world absent of suffering. To perhaps quote C.S. Lewis without having the quotation in front of me: to say something is possible that is actually impossible is to have said nothing at all. If God loves, God suffers in longing and desire for the other, and therefore God can only create a world with suffering.
As a summary: God is love, and because He loves God contains suffering within Himself. So, then, when God creates, there is inherent risk of continued suffering in the freedom of the creation.
Why is this important theologically? Moltmann has found a way to answer the question, "Why is there evil and suffering in the world?" without attributing the source either in a character flaw of God's or in one of God's creations. Usually the answer to the problem of pain, as C.S. Lewis puts it, rests either in indifference (God created and didn't care), in Satan/Devil (whom God created), or in humanity's free-will (whom God created). The first answer seems incompatible with a God of love and can therefore be rejected. The second two, however, raise more questions than answers. If Satan/Devil is the source of evil and suffering, why did God create an evil being? Whether God created this evil being or not, blaming Satan/Devil then sets up a near heretical battle between good and evil in which God seems unable to conquer. How many thousands of years have humans lived on this planet and God has yet to conquer? That answer seems a reject, too. If humanity's free-will is to blame, then again we have questions. Couldn't God intervene more often? Why does God allow so much suffering? What about natural disasters? While our free will is a common answer to the problem it is not without its own problems. Instead, Moltmann cleverly skirts all these issues and answers that suffering exists precisely because God does not want suffering. God loves, though, and so God suffers; and it is in that suffering love that creation happened. It is not that God created evil and suffering or allows them, but evil and suffering entered the world naturally in the act of creation by a God who loves. Creation does not exist without suffering and vice versa. Thinking this way then easily explains the Trinity: God created and part of God lived in the world taking on the suffering, and in the suffering almost becomes distant to the Creator God, enough, certainly, to explain distinctive 'persons.' Love is shown not in the absence of suffering but in part of God's self, the Son, glorifying the suffering.
There is then an inherent risk in creating, especially if the creating act is done out of love. Here is where Moltmann's understanding of love and creation become important for us: it is because we love that we continue the creative act begun by God. If we did not love, then surely we'd say that the world is too dark and horrible to create life. How could we not? Yet we love, and so we create. It is with the same love of God, though perhaps to a smaller degree, that we bring new life into the world. Love must give, love must share, love cannot live alone. When given the opportunity, then, love creates. Yet doing so brings inherent risk because love contains suffering.
Even so, I cannot imagine God sitting around before time thinking, "Should I create? If I do, there will be suffering. Not because I want it, not because I'll create suffering, but because I create, there will be. Should I create anyway?" Not to detract from God's own freedom (as Moltmann would, and therefore I think he's wrong), but if indeed God is love then the answer to God's own hypothetical-surely-didn't-happen question is that of course God should create anyway, risk and all. Yes, God knew that one of his creatures would soon brutally murder his own brother, or at least God knew that it was a possibility. Still, God created. Yes, God knew, or at least knew the possibility, that very soon eleven of his creatures would throw their brother into a pit and later sell him into slavery. Yes, God knew, or at least he knew the possibility, that His chosen righteous people would suffer many generations in slavery. Still and still, God created. Knowing His own self, God could have said, "I don't want my creatures to experience suffering as I do in my love," but God could not hold back from sharing love and its consequent peace and joy. Knowing the risk, the divine host still sang songs of praise at creation.
We, too, as parents or prospective parents, must know there is inherent risk in creating because of our love which in itself brings suffering into the world. Conceiving new life itself brings suffering into the world. There's nothing we can do about it. Thankfully, this means that we should let ourselves off the hook. Our lives and parenting will an affect on how our kids 'turn out' but who we are and how we raise them won't be the end of the story. We can steer our kids away from all violence and they still become violence; we can steer our kids away from having dreams and they still become an Olympic athlete. Who knows? I surely don't know how it works. As God says to Job in the whirlwind, "Do you know all these things? Tell me. Surely you do." And Job must remain silent. We do not know how to maximize joy in the lives of our kids except to love them, and in that love there may then be unexplained suffering and pain. None of it is necessarily our fault. We can't keep our kids from all suffering nor can we prevent them from causing suffering in others. That suffering exists by nature because we created in love. We can stop worrying about whether our kids turns out awful or not or experiences a lot of suffering. Instead we can focus on our relationship and the presence of love.
But just as God was bold enough to take the risk in order to share love, so, too, should we be bold enough. The greater the love, the greater the risk. God's suffering present in the risk led to God's suffering on the cross. Our love will bolster us to undergo suffering for our love, too, to maximize joy in the loves of those we create out of love in order to share love.
Most of all, though, whatever happens in your relationship with your child, God gets it. The very nature of God, the Trinity, understands. You will suffer as a parent, you will suffer for your child, and hopefully you will praise in great joy with your child. Whatever happens, God is right there with you, because God who is love created.
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