“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” This leads us to the question of “Why?” It is not the cry of Greek tragic figures lost in the despair of fate; it is a cry of the absence of God in the world, which is echoed by every man. God’s absence, the absence of justice, truth and morality creates suffering in the world. Pilate, who lost every sense of justice and truth, asks Jesus the world famous question: what is truth? Jesus of Master and Margarita of Mikhail Bulgakov answers thus: “The truth is, first of all, that your head aches, and aches so badly that you’re having faint-hearted thoughts of death. You’re not only unable to speak to me, but it is even hard for you to look at me. And I am now your unwilling torturer, which upsets me. You can’t even think about anything and only dream that your dog should come, apparently the one being you are attached to. But your suffering will soon be over, your headache will go away.” It is the headache of every man, it is a question that vexes everyone. It is the only question which one must give an answer to and live up to. Pilate, who loses all faith in the people around him and refuses to see goodness in man, makes friendship with beasts. He never had truth to live and die for.

Truth cannot be a system irrelevant to human concerns even if it were attainable. Kierkegaard argues; “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth …if it had no deeper significance for me and my life?” To be human is to be confronted by choices, by possibilities, which cannot be systematically comprehended precisely because they have not yet passed.Choosing is a matter of the greatest seriousness, because you are always “making headway” in your life. Even if, for example, one could be objectively certain about the facts of the biography of Jesus of Nazareth, this would provide no objective evidence for the divinity of Christ. So we can accept at the outset that there is an important difference between ethical and religious subjectivity, and that science drops out of consideration when we take up the latter as a theme. The highest truth attainable for an existing individual is that for which the individual suffers and offers the gift of death, such person is the truthful individual. For such a truthful person sufferings are consolations.

“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.” The Greek makarios is also a congratulatory word for blessedness of a meaningful life. Meister Eckhart, the medieval German mystic, says, “My suffering is in God, and my suffering is God.” Eckhart notes how “impossible” it is “for a man to find true consolation who seeks his consolation in created things.” It is there in his Book of Divine Consolation written within the tradition of consolation literature. In this book written in the context of the condemnation proceedings of 1326, his accusers list fifteen articles which are taken from a book that Meister Eckhart sent to the queen of Hungary, written in German. Eckhart takes the coincidence of comfort and suffering still further, into God Himself. He comments in detail on the Psalmist’s declaration that God is with us in suffering and suffers with us. Concluding his commentary, Eckhart says: “My suffering is in God, and my suffering is God.” God is not only our fellow sufferer but is one who turns our very suffering somehow divine. This paradox places Eckhart’s art of suffering and consolation squarely within his metaphysics and mystical theology. God becomes the ultimate measure with which one measures oneself and others and suffers because of and is consoled and blessed by the same. Therefore, since I suffer “in” God, Eckhart says, “my suffering is God.”