Suffering 'Has a Smooth Shape, Smooth as a Black Night. There Are No Handles.'

The quid-pro-quo stance to human suffering is prominent in psychological practice, in everyday life, and in attitudes to survivors of the Holocaust. In this view, suffering is the consequence of unrighteousness. Old Testament Wisdom literature as a whole is non-determinative about the cause of suffering, but much theology and christology still remains determinative, to the harm of suffering human beings.