God Has a Dream by Desmond Tutu

Author:Desmond Tutu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religious
ISBN: 9780385512626
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2003-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

6

SEEING WITH THE EYES

OF THE HEART

Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional. It seems to be part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter or ennoble. Our suffering can become a spirituality of transformation when we understand that we have a role in God's transfiguration of the world. And if we are to be true partners with God, we must learn to see with the eyes of God—that is, to see with the eyes of the heart and not just the eyes of the head. The eyes of the heart are not concerned with appearances but with essences, and as we cultivate these eyes we are able to learn from our suffering and to see the world with more loving, forgiving, humble, generous eyes.

We tend to look on suffering as something to be avoided at all costs, and yes, we need to work to remove suffering whenever and wherever we can in our lives and in the lives of others. But in the universe we inhabit there will always be suffering. Even if God's dream were to come true, there would still be pain in childbirth, torment in illness, and anguish in death. Sadness, longing, and heartache would not disappear. They would be lessened greatly but never ended. This should not discourage us. It should simply allow us to see suffering—and our role in decreasing it—differently. When we are able to see the larger purpose of our suffering, it is transformed, transmuted. It becomes a redemptive suffering.

In our universe suffering is often how we grow, especially how we grow emotionally, spiritually, and morally. That is, when we let the suffering ennoble us and not embitter us. In God's universe, while we are not free to choose whether we suffer, we are free to choose whether it will ennoble us or instead will embitter us. Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison, eighteen of them on Robben Island breaking rocks into little rocks, a totally senseless task. The unrelenting brightness of the light reflected off the white stone damaged his eyes so that now when you have your picture taken with him, you will be asked not to use a flash. Many people say, “What a waste! Wouldn't it have been wonderful if Nelson Mandela had come out earlier? Look at all the things he would have accomplished.”

Those ghastly, suffering-filled twenty-seven years actually were not a waste. It may seem so in a sense, but when Nelson Mandela went to jail he was angry. He was a young man who was understandably very upset at the miscarriage of justice in South Africa. He and his colleagues were being sentenced because they were standing up for what seemed so obvious. They were demanding the rights that in other countries were claimed to be inalienable. At the time, he was very forthright and belligerent, as he should have been, leading the armed wing of the African National Congress, but he mellowed in jail.

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