Suffering is the rock of atheism … But can atheism hold its ground on this rock of suffering if it is only the indictment against God which turns suffering into pain, and makes of pain so flinty a rock? That is the other side of the experience of suffering. If it were not for their desire for life, the living would not suffer. If there were no love of justice, there would be no rebellion against innocent suffering. If there were no ‘longing for the Wholly Other’, we should come to terms with the here and now, and accept the absence of what does not exist If there were no God; the world as it is would be all right. It is only the desire, the passion, the thirst for God which turns suffering into conscious pain and turns the consciousness of pain into a protest against suffering. But the atheism for which this world is all there is, runs aground on the rock of suffering too. For even the abolition of God does not explain suffering and does not assuage pain. The person who cries out in pain over suffering has his own dignity, which no atheism can rob him of. The story of Job makes this evident too. His atheistic wife’s advice, ‘Curse God and die’ (Job 2.9) does not reach the soul of the righteous man at all. He rejects it from the outset. Since that time no atheism can fall below Job’s level. Beneath this level there is no atheism that deserves to be taken seriously; there is mere triviality.
Quoted from
The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 48
