The Siren Song of Despair

This was preached on May 18, 2008. There has been some updating.

“ First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If anyone unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.” (The Odyssey, where Odysseus is being warned about his voyage home)

I was 13, 14 tops. I was walking home from my girlfriend's house. Correction: ex-girlfriend. She had just dumped me. And as I walked the 6 blocks from her place to mine, it started to snow lightly. Even with my heart breaking, I was enough of a film buff even then to think, “Where's my soundtrack?” I wanted music to compliment the snow which so perfectly represented the bleakness of my soul.

That was my first taste of the siren song of despair. I rather liked the image of myself trudging through a cold despairing world as I grieved the end of my first love. But music would have made it so much more acceptably sad and romantic. That is the continuing appeal of sad songs, tragic novels and 3-hanky films. They offer us catharsis. “Catharsis” comes from the Latin “to purge” and goes back to the Greek for “pure.” When properly approached such works of art can help us achieve emotional release and purge ourselves of debilitating feelings.

On the other hand there are artists who deliberately withhold catharsis. They do not give us happy endings or even acceptably sad endings. Sometimes they don't give us endings at all. They may do this out of artistic integrity. After all, in real life neat endings and stories with clear morals are not that common. Sometimes artists withhold catharsis to provoke the audience—into discussion or social action or just outrage. But sometimes it is because they believe that happy endings and hope are lies. They think the world is as uncaring and unforgiving as it seems at our darker moments. And they believe that darkness is the ultimate truth.

I am not speaking of those who are suffering from clinical or even situational depression. There is nothing voluntary about those feelings. They require therapy and sometimes antidepressants. Still, most therapists will tell you that dwelling on negative thoughts will only make things worse and that a person must distinguish between their feelings and the real state of things. Yes, this part of your life is bad. For now. There is no sense projecting it onto everything else and forever. Night only covers part of the earth and only for part of the 24 hour day. It doesn't mean the sun is a lie.

Still there is the allure of giving up hope. It can be considered cool. A hero's stature is increased by the odds against him, so how much more heroic is it if a person faces a whole cosmos which is at best indifferent and at worst hostile? Plus there's the whole self-pity thing. If there's no hope you have permission to mope. From House, MD to Angel to Torchwood, there have been a lot of brooding heroes, bravely facing a universe in which there is ultimately no hope. That's the siren song.

Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies, wrote a book called God's Problem, in which he tells how he lost his faith because of the problem of suffering. There is so much of it in the world that he could no longer believe in a loving God. And certainly when one hears about disasters that kill thousands, not to mention when one suffers more personal losses, it can be tempting to give up the idea that there is any kind of God at all.

But this is not so much an intellectual problem as a cry of rage or pain. It is akin to the moment in Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital when George C. Scott's character contemplates the sorry state of the embattled institution he serves and roars, “We cure nothing! We heal no one!” Even though this is a satire, what he says is not true in his world. In fact, at the end of the film, he turns down a chance to run off with Diana Rigg in order to stay at the hospital and try to heal it. But his previous fiery nihilistic declaration is an arresting moment. And when we are frustrated or bereft it is tempting to howl along with the siren song of despair.

But the existence of evil doesn't even come close to disproving the existence of God anymore than the existence of darkness disproves the existence of light. In fact it does the opposite. If there was nothing but darkness in the world, how would you know what darkness is? Darkness is the absence of light. Cave fish who live in a world of darkness are blind. They see nothing. Darkness is just the way things are. If you see any shadows at all, you must remember that shadows are only possible if there is light. Shadows show that something is in the way of the light. In the same way, nothing can be evil if there is no such thing as goodness. After all, how could you define what illness is if there were no such thing as health?

Evil is indeed God's problem but not in the way Ehrman meant. It is only an intellectual problem for armchair philosophers and theologians who contemplate it in the abstract. For God it is a problem in the same sense that disease is a doctor's problem. It is a practical problem. How do you prevent it from spreading? How do you limit its damage? How do you cure those suffering from it?

In the Bible God tells us how he is dealing with the problem of evil. Like any good health organization he gets the information out about what is healthy and what isn't. So first, God sets out what is good and what isn't. The values that are proclaimed as good throughout the Bible are justice, peace, generosity, love, wisdom, mercy, faithfulness and humility. God has given us rules for spiritually and morally healthy living. But it is obvious that we are too sick to live by such rules. Our hearts are not up to it.

So he sent his son both to model spiritual and moral health and to bring healing to us. To extend this medical metaphor, Jesus is our donor. His blood saves us. Like a heart donor, his death means life for us.

But even after a lifesaving operation, there is still much to do. For those recovering, there are goals. Every physical therapist sets up goals for a patient: that he will be able to walk a certain number of feet or be able to bathe or dress herself or increase his strength or increase the range of motion for an injured limb. The goals God sets are his commandments. And we don't like them any more than rehab patients like the exercises the physical therapist expects them to do every day. It's hard work. At times it hurts and every fiber of your body rebels against it. Often it seems like there's too little progress over too long a period of time. And sometimes it feels like no progress is being made at all.

And believe it or not, some patients give up on getting better. They would rather sit in their wheelchairs or beds and take their painkillers and complain and wallow in self-pity, rather than work towards health and independence. As a nurse I've seen this happen. They succumb to the siren song of despair.

We see the same thing in society. God's commandments are too hard. It's too hard to have a just society when you are dealing with refugees and terrorists and mass shooters. It's too hard to be faithful to one person when you're dealing with biological urges. It's too hard when you're dealing with complex issues and people who oppose you. It's too hard to help the poor when you have profits to make and new smartphones to buy and badly run corporations to prop up. It's too hard to love my neighbor. It's too hard to love God. It's too hard to hope.

Against the siren song of despair, the Holy Spirit, like any good therapist, encourages us. He gives us strength. He pushes us to do more than we would normally do, to move out of our comfort zone, to challenge ourselves to do more than we thought we could.

Because the idea is to make us better, to lead us to triumph over what is crippling us, and finally to discharge us from this place. That is why the world is so full of pain and suffering: because it is a hospital and rehab center, albeit one under siege like the one in the Chayefsky film. It is hell to those who do not wish to get better, who keep harming themselves and others, who prefer self-medication to rehabilitation, who don't really want to get better and go out into a bigger world.

It's an imperfect metaphor but it is a more balanced one than the idea that the world is nothing more than a slaughterhouse. People do get better. People do help others.

But we have to resist the siren song of despair, lest we die spiritually. And we must dare to hope that there is life outside the hospital. If we don't, there is nothing to do but wallow in our spiritual and moral sickness and use it as an excuse not to try to get better. But, remember, we all get discharged from this world at some point. Will it be because nothing more can be done for us? Because we are resisting treatment? Or will it be because we are ready for the next step, to live the life we were meant to?

In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “In my Father's house there are many places to stay...I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2) Some commentators say the Greek word translated “mansions” really means something like rooms in a hostel or way-station, not a place to live permanently. Because heaven is only where we rest after getting out of the hospital until our real home is ready. Heaven is not our final destination. Instead God promises us a new earth where there is no sickness or suffering or death. (Revelation 21:1-5) In other words, the new earth will be a place where there is no need for a hospital, a place where we can start a new life. Isn't that the purpose of a hospital? To get us to the point where we can leave it? It only exists so we can get better, go home, join our loved ones, and live a very different and very healthy life. And so we can stop listening to the siren song of despair and learn some new, more joyful songs. (Psalm 96)