The Difference Between Evil and Suffering

Over the next few days, we will meditate on truths that I hope will begin to transform the way you see suffering and help you see the way that God sees our suffering. CCC 412 concludes the section on Original Sin by asking "Why did God not prevent the first man from sinning?" Evil exists because angels and humans abused their freedom. To prevent evil, it would be necessary for God to take away our freedom. But then we would not be persons, and we wouldn't be able to love. Love requires freedom, and God wants lovers, not pets. I speak often of offering up suffering and suffering is closely related to evil, but they are not the same thing.

People always mix up suffering and evil, probably because suffering always indicates the presence of some evil. If we suffer, it’s either because we accurately perceive some present evil, or because we mistakenly think something’s evil when it isn’t – and that very mistake on our part is itself a failure in our judgment. So suffering doesn’t happen without evil. But the correspondence between evil and suffering shouldn’t lead to confusion. Only evil is evil. Suffering can be good. It can be the right response to a perceived evil, the sign and substance of a healthy emotional life. More than that, it can motivate change, and so improve both our understanding of reality (the intellect’s attainment of truth) and how we live our lives (the will’s attainment of goodness). Still, only evil is evil and suffering can be good.

We need to define the word evil. Since all existence comes from God, and God is all-good, it follows that evil cannot come from God or be a form of existence. Evil, consequently, is a specific form of non-existence. It’s a privation, that is, the absence of a good which should be present. If something is bad, it’s because it’s missing something it should have. It’s bad to be blind because it means you don’t have sight; it’s bad to have cancer because the cells lack the proper harmony with the rest of the body in their process of replicating; and it’s bad to do poorly on a test because it means that your test suffers from an absence of the right answers. Finally, it’s morally bad to be wicked, because it means you lack the virtue – the honesty and prudence and love – you ought to have. To repeat, evil, is the absence of a good which should be present.

What then is suffering as distinct from evil? Suffering is the felt response to something perceived as being evil. Different evils are all unpleasant in different ways, and the crucial point is that they should be unpleasant to motivate us to change things. We ought to be repulsed by evil. We should be disgusted at the thought of eating rat poison, …It’s not enough just to know abstractly that these things are bad; it’s a sign of human excellence to feel a concrete emotional repugnance for them. Indifference, callousness, nonchalance in the face of evil – these aren’t strengths, but defects of character. We ought to dislike evil But if we dislike evil then when we experience evil we’ll suffer. And that’s as it should be.

St. Leo the Great writes, "Christ inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon's envy has taken away."

Suffering is the felt response to something perceived as evil. If I lack something I ought to have such as health or a relationship, I do what I can to change it. If I can’t change it, then God is allowing it to bring about a greater good. I can choose to believe this which changes my emotional response and therefore I suffer less.

Another powerful way to transform our suffering is to thank God for everything even if we don’t like it or can’t see good from it yet. In this way we stop living by the feelings that say - this feels bad therefore it is bad. Instead we begin to live by the reality that God works all things for good for those who love him.