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Monday, October 3, 2011

Strong at the Broken Places


(First published in Reality. Re-reading this today in the face of many people close to me suffering, as well as millions of others world-wide, I stand by what I wrote 15+ years ago and find these perspectives personally helpful - having long since forgotten what I wrote back then!)

I've been thinking about pain and suffering quite a bit lately. 
CS Lewis's famous book on the subject is called The Problem of Pain. Why are pain and suffering a problem? Silly question? I don't think so. The answers we give to it are revealing. (If you can resist reading on, stop and give your own answer first).

Generally I think there are three main reasons why suffering is a problem:
         *Suffering is a problem because we can't understand how a God who is loving and powerful could let it happen. (The WHY question).
         *Suffering is a problem because it hurts; it disrupts life and we don't know how to cope. (The HOW question).
         *Suffering is a problem because it seems so pointless. If we could see a constructive purpose it wouldn't be so bad. (The WHAT FOR question).

Now the last thing I want to do with a subject as complex as this is to sound simplistic. There are no pat answers for anyone in the midst of the dark valley of physical, emotional or relational pain. One of things I find hardest myself is the sheer helplessness I feel as I sit with someone who is suffering and know that I can't make it better.

Yet as I consider the three problems above I can't help wondering whether suffering brings us face to face with the very essence of Christian faith. The Apostle Paul said that ultimately there are only three things that abide: faith, hope and love.[i] We need them all to come through suffering constructively.

The WHY Question and Faith.

Why does a loving God allow such awful suffering to happen? Theologians for centuries have grappled with this one! Some of their reasoning is helpful. Some of it makes a person in pain want to scream! In the end I don't think the question can be answered by logic, only by faith.

We can't possibly understand all the interrelated dynamics of God's sovereignty, human choices, a fallen world and the suffering of innocent people. Most of the questions we ask about all of this are the wrong ones I suspect! But what we do know is that God is loving. That non-negotiable fact is what we are called upon to trust no matter what we may be feeling.

A nine year old friend of mine provides a human analogy. He recently had his tonsils out. When he discovered after the operation how painful it was and how sick he felt, he was very very angry with his parents for "making me have this operation". He could not logically understand why it had to be this way. He was free to be angry. But he did not reject his parents and their love! In fact he relied on the constancy of their care in the midst of his pain and anger. His trust in them at the very time he could not understand why, was crucial.

Our faith in the nature of God is revealed when we face the agonising 'why' questions. If we can say (even through gritted teeth) "I don't understand it but I trust you" we are on solid ground.

The HOW Question and Love.

A person in the midst of suffering doesn't usually want theological arguments so much as the loving companionship of friends. Sheila Cassidy's excellent book Sharing the Darkness depicts this beautifully in a series of illustrations showing first a professional in the uniform of a "helper", next the same person in ordinary garb just like the sufferer and finally both sufferer and "helper" naked and vulnerable to the pain.

Dealing with the pain and disruption that suffering brings is made more manageable by the knowledge that we are loved and companioned in the midst of it. Usually we want and need the tangible love of other people who will, as Cassidy suggests, be vulnerable with us. But with or without this human support we desperately need to know the love of God. And tragically, so often this is the time when God is seen as the enemy, the heartless bystander. Yet all the time God weeps with us. Stripped and broken, hanging alongside us on the cross, Jesus is, as Peter Kreeft puts it, "the tears of God".[ii]

I know of nothing more important to communicate to a person in pain than this: Jesus suffers with you because he loves you. Everyone who has loved someone will know that when a loved one suffers your own heart is torn. God's heart is no less tender.

Antionette Bosco relates how she realised that the HOW question was more significant than the WHY question when a wise person said to her: "The question you must ask is, 'How do I come to find peace out of my pain?' ... You can only do this by walking into your grief and accepting the mystery knowing that He is with you."[iii]

The WHAT FOR Question and Hope.

That last quote ushers in the third question. Is there any purpose in all this? What is it for? If we are to walk right into the depths of our pain and accept it, we need to have some hope that it makes sense to do so. Human beings can survive a great deal if they have hope, as numerous stories from the holocaust remind us.

What hope can we cling to when suffering seems impossible to understand and our limits of coping seem to have been reached? I suggest that it is the ultimate hope of the great gospel principle that after death comes resurrection.

I am not primarily talking about physical death, though the principle certainly holds true there.  No, rather I mean the constant discovery of the life-death-resurrection principle in all the numerous "little deaths" (and sometimes big ones) that suffering brings.

A wonderful, and very down to earth, friend of mine has suffered a lot in recent years. Recently she said to me: "You know I realise that something in me has died - that old part of me that was always saying 'What about me?''I've had enough' 'I'm not putting up with this any more'. Somehow that's gone and I'm bigger inside. I can't explain it - and I certainly didn't make it happen, but yes, it's as if I am bigger inside. God has carved out a place in me that wasn't there before."

Ernest Hemingway wrote: "Life breaks us all and afterwards many are strong at the broken places."[iv]  A realistic, yet hopeful statement. Suffering sometimes does break us. The breaking is real and agonising. Yet the gospel hope is that by God's grace it is at the very points of brokenness that new life and strength can emerge. Jesus demonstrated it, Paul proved it in his experience[v] and so have countless others through the centuries. The same hope is ours to grasp.

Suffering is a problem for most of us. We don't yet "consider it nothing but joy" along with James.[vi] We find it hard to join Paul in saying we are "content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamaties for the sake of Christ".[vii] But we can inch closer to what they hold out to us as we take a firmer grasp of the three things which abide:
         * faith in a God we can trust even when we can't understand;
         * love surrounding us from Jesus who is vulnerable with us;
         * hope that even the most painful "death" carries within it the seeds of resurrection life.

The God who is Love has made such careful provision for even the hardest aspects of our human journey. Supported by such a God we can look forward to becoming strong at the broken places.



[i] 1 Cor 13:13

[ii] Peter Kreeft Making Sense Out of Suffering (Servant, 1986)
[iii] Antionette Bosco The Pummeled Heart (23rd Publications, 1994) p 38
[iv] Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (Scribners, 1987)
[v] 2 Cor 12:10
[vi] James 1:2

[vii] 2 Cor 12:10