Practicing The Way: Suffering
The journey through life is a journey of loss. In fact, to experience pain and suffering is to be human. Every human being who has ever walked the face of the earth has experienced pain and suffering.
In the Old Testament, Job lost everything in a matter of a few days — his family, his wealth, and his health. One might say this is the most extreme example in all of literature of pain and surfing in such an acute way. Jonathan Edwards, 17th Century preacher, in a famous sermon said that the story of Job is the story of us all. Job lost everything quickly, while we tend to lose everything more gradually until we find ourselves of the door of death, leaving everything behind.
So what do we lose in life. Well, we lose our youthfulness and many of our dreams. We lose our routines and stability in periods of transition. Our children grow more independent and powerful through their lives. Our influence diminishes as we age.
Then there are the catastrophic losses in life — the sudden loss of a family member or friend, an affair, or breakup. Companies downsize, children are born with disabilities, or a friend betrays us. And this is just a start.
Life is a series of losses, and to experience these losses is part of what it means to be human.
Jesus suffered loss as well. He cried when his friend died, sweat drops of blood in Gethsemane, and was innocently murdered — nailed to a cross.
Jesus also said that “in this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33 NIV).
So why do we experience pain and suffering in life? In short, because of sin. When sin entered the world, the earth began to groan. People began to kill one another. War became a normal part of life. And natural disasters happened around us.
All of this is the result of sin.
Another result of sin is the propensity for evil that each one of us have inside of us. Scripture says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The result of sin is catastrophic, leading to death and decay in all aspects of life.
As a Christian, though, we have a different hope than the world when facing pain and suffering. The secular world, because of the belief that this life is all there is, cannot see any meaning behind pain and suffering. For other forms of religion and philosophy, the answer is to detach from the important things in life, so as not to suffer too deeply.
In Christianity, though, we have the possibility for joy and hope in the bodily resurrection of Christ and the eventual bodily resurrection of his followers. In short, Christianity gives our pain and suffering meaning.
Jesus’ brother James said that we can actually experience joy in our suffering. How is this possible?
John Mark Comer said in his book, Practicing the Way, “These unhappy times of great emotional pain, in a beautifully redemptive turn, have the potential—if we open to God in them—to transform us into grounded, deeply joyful people. Suffering is sadness leaving the body.”
The invitation in times of pain and suffering is to open our pain and suffering to God.
Instead, many people deal with pain in these other ways:
Deny
Detach
Drug
Instead of opening their pain to God, many people deny their pain, detach from the emotion of the pain and from other people, or drug their pain in various ways. Which one of these do you tend to do?
John Mark Comer also says, “Left unhealed, emotional pain can sabotage our transformation. But if we open it to God, it can become the secret to our transformation.”
How about you? What could it look like for you to reorient yourself to the pain in your life as an opportunity to be formed by God? Is your pain and suffering inhibiting your transformation, or do you see it as a gateway to your transformation?
My prayer is that through the help of the Holy Spirit, you can begin to see the difficulty in life as an opportunity to get to know God and our fellow Christians even more.