(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.
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.
