Why does everyone feel oppressed?
I asked myself this the other day, when I read a yahoo question asking why people were angry so much of the time. My question, I think, is the key to understanding that anger. A lot of people are upset, distressed, angry, or despondent because they feel oppressed. What is the source of this oppression?
In some cases, it is because the individual is being personally harassed by other people. Sometimes it is the oppression of an identifiable or demographic group, not necessarily one to which my hypothetical individual even belongs. And sometimes the most oppressive circumstance is the one that doesn't involve any oppressor at all. The impersonal nature of bad fortune sometimes makes it the cruelest oppressor, for this oppressor cannot suffer our wrath in any way. The ill winds of misfortune are not even disdainful of our suffering: they are utterly ignorant of it.
In the book of Job, great misery is visited on the protagonist. God himself does not bring this misfortune, it is important to note. Within minutes, Job learns that he has lost all his possessions, and all his family. Later, he falls ill, but says, “We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?”
But Job does not understand why he has suffered – he is told by his friends that he must have done something wrong, but he can find no explanation in that. He searches through his memories, and cannot find an instance where he “allowed the eyes of the widow to languish while I ate my portion alone,” or “rejoiced at the destruction of my enemy or exulted when evil fell upon him.”
Why then, why? “Of all my steps I should give him an account,” Job says, wishing that his accuser would “write out his indictment.”
What did we do to deserve it? Sometimes nothing, nothing at all. Then why?
The problem of theodicy is that there really is no easy answer; our sufferings are not always a calling to account. “Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?” God asks in Chapter 38. “Where were you when I founded the Earth? Tell me if you have understanding” pretty much sums up his response. The scope of all things is too great to grasp. Our misfortune is not always oppression, and it certainly is not divine oppression!
The Beatitudes in the gospel of Luke are almost karmic. Where Solomon says there is “A time to mourn, and a time to dance,” the Luke beatitudes rather promise, “Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.”
Right there is the simple solution, the RX remedy for oppression. Believe that things are made right. A dark day is always a prelude to a sunny day, just as spring always follows the winter. Our days are already advancing – the sun lasts a little longer each day.
Take heart. God will set it all right. And faith, hope, and love are how we may help him do so.
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