Oedipus, Paul, and Suffering
Earlier this semester we read Sophocles’s Oedipus the King in my Literature I class. One of its key themes is the inevitability of suffering and how to respond to it. In the story, Oedipus, born a prince of Thebes, is left to die as an infant, rescued, adopted, and raised as royalty in Corinth. Returning to Thebes many years later ignorant of his own origins, he gets into a fight on the road with an unknown noble and kills him. Following this, he wins the throne over Thebes along with the hand of Jocasta, the widowed queen. Many years into his reign, his people are suffering under a mysterious plague. Oedipus inquires of oracles about the cause, all the while fearful of an old prophecy about himself, that he would murder his own father and share a bed with his own mother. The revelation of the play–that it was by running from this prophecy that he unwittingly fulfilled it–becomes the great horror and tragedy of Oedipus’ life. The noble he killed over a petty disagreement is revealed to have been his own father. Since this fight he has built a life and family with his own mother, the wife of the man he murdered. Unfortunately, his children now live under the same curse as Oedipus, their father and half-brother.
This terrible unveiling is truly sorrowful and tragic, and it raises the question that people across history have asked: how should we view and respond to our suffering? Sophocles presents us with a character who goes through great pains to avoid this prophecy being fulfilled but unwittingly brings it to pass by his own hand. We see that our best attempts to avoid pain or evade sin by our own power are futile because we ourselves are broken and live in a broken world. We read about Oedipus’s abortive attempts to escape the horrific prophecy, and we mourn with him because we share his deeply rooted longing to be made whole. But reflecting on our suffering also requires us to acknowledge our own sin. Even though Oedipus had no choice of which family he was born into and no knowledge of his past, he was still responsible for his own choices. He fled Corinth out of fear and murdered several men out of pride. While Oedipus’s fate is tragic, he ultimately suffers both as a consequence of his own actions and as an inhabitant of a world radically tainted by sin, living a life apart from God.
No matter how much we seek to avoid suffering like King Oedipus does, sin and pain will come. Christians especially should not be surprised by this. A tragic event can certainly be shocking, but it should also be filtered through our acknowledgement of the sin and brokenness in the world and in ourselves. Spurgeon writes, “Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.” Note that he says our worst enemies lie within us. He is distinguishing the sins that a person embraces from the person themselves. We willingly bring about our own affliction, yet this doesn’t determine who we are as Christians. We all suffer by our own hands, but we are also new creations rooted in Christ. That doesn’t mean that the hard realities of sin and suffering cease to exist for the Christian. We are still susceptible to great moral failure and its consequences, but the way we respond should be vastly different from the rest of the world.
How we respond to suffering, by our own hand or not, reveals our beliefs about ourselves. Upon discovering that the prophecy has been fulfilled, Queen Jocasta commits suicide, Oedipus gouges out his own eyes, and he and his cursed children banish themselves to exile. The ancient world lived in a social economy of honor and shame, so this reaction is understandable. Shame means expulsion from society. Scripture, however, teaches us that while shame can be a crushing blow to a person, it does not define their personhood. In fact, Acts 5:41 shows that the apostles rejoiced to be considered worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ.
Our own sin and suffering should not be endured in isolation but rather in community. Oedipus’s gods and friends were brutally quiet in the midst of his suffering, whereas Paul writes of our God that He is “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” He says, “as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. …Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3-7). Jocasta kills herself. Oedipus banishes himself. The children go on to fight each other rather than comfort one another. All are left to their own suffering. For Christians, we are called to suffer in joy as an act of worship. Sin requires repentance, but once repentance is complete, suffering and comfort should be shared communally. So often, we don’t want to be associated with sinners. But those that Jesus called to be his followers, he called out of their sin into relationship with him. I imagine Mary Magdalene the former prostitute and Matthew the tax collector had bouts of shame even as they walked with Jesus, but they surrounded themselves with people that loved them and did not abandon them. God calls us to remember his faithfulness in the midst of suffering. The lesson of Oedipus is not to be terrified of suffering. For the Christian, sin and suffering do not win in the end.
Jake Hilburn
Upper School Teacher
