Psalm 37:1-18; Psalm 37:19-42
Deuteronomy 7:6-11; Titus 1:1-16; John 1:29-34
Luke 9:22 “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
"The greatest joy as well as the greatest pain of living not only from what we live but even more from how we think and feel about what we are living" page 26 Nouwen, Henri. Can You Drink the Cup?. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1996.
My experience of suffering is shaped by what I believe before I enter a period of pain. Once I'm in the experience the promising words of scripture and friends like: God is present; God provides; God suffered too; God redeems are likely to fall on deaf ears in the approach to my hardened head and heart.
In 2001 I entered a year of Christian service believing God led me to it. Quickly, I was baffled by the way in which people tore into each other choosing to believe malice over charity. I was unsure what to do as each member of our community moved toward depression. As I served the poor, I was surprised by Tuberculosis and then the liver contaminating, sickening drugs required to treat it which demanded bi-weekly doctor's visits. I cried each week at church as the church too was crumbling under the weight of 50 years of suffering. It seemed that all I could see was despair. I doubted my discernment. I questioned the suffering, was it judgment? I could not see God at work.
At that time I had no category by which to interpret the level of pain I saw and personally experienced. Yet, the promises of God have retroactively helped me reinterpret the suffering I saw. I found this harshest of experiences in a Christian community was part of God's plan to equip me for the suffering that often is brought into and happens at churches. What I initially desired only to run from became a place I cherish as Holy because I was in the place where God was redeeming.
God turned my suffering from seeming senselessness into a place where thankfulness flows as I rest in the fact that my salvation was wrought by suffering that brought Jesus to the point of death on a cross.
Please pick at least one question to comment on:
A bigger question for comment: What experience of suffering/pain has God redeemed in you?
A medium question for comment: What suffering confuses you or raises questions in you?
A smaller question for comment: Where do you see suffering that causes you to pray?
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Joy and Suffering
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7 comments:
The short question: Libya
"What experience of suffering/pain has God redeemed in you?"
I was more or less sick for about two years while treating some tick-borne diseases. My burden was easier than that of most people with chronic illness, because I did not have the frustration that comes with an unknown cause or the shame that comes with lack of doctor cooperation. I had hope for getting better. Still, it was a major experience of suffering in my life. It was also different from prior experience because the suffering was physical instead of emotional.
I learned a lot from that time: how to live aware of and compassionate toward my body, how to value health, how to prioritize rest, how to communicate to others that I wasn't feeling well and needed extra grace. But the best thing I learned was how suffering does not separate us from God.
Rather, it is one more way in which we live the life of Christ. Caryll Houselander writes, "'I am the Way,' [Christ] said. And when we read the Gospels we begin to recognise what this means... For everywhere, in everyone, there is some moment or experience of His going on, all through time. On earth He was little, joyful, afraid, sorrowful, tempted, loving, a failure, a king - everything that we can be, excepting a sinner; and even in sinners He is there in the Tomb, lying dead, awaiting and desiring resurrection."
It matters how we think and feel about life. To be Christians, little Christs, we place our dust-lives in Christ and he places his sanctified life in ours. We bind ourselves to Christ as to a mast, and he takes us with him through death into life.
Short question: Congo.
The short question: trafficked women and children. Abortion.
The medium question: toxic religion. WHY does God let the people who claim His name be such jerks so much of the time?
"What suffering confuses you or raises questions in you?"
Writing it out, this comment has gotten very long, as often happens when I get confused. But it is relevant and I don't know of a better place to post it. So, feel free to skip it, anyone.
I am confused by a certain view of suffering I've read about occasionally: the implication that our sacrifices (acceptance of suffering, self-discipline, etc.) add to or help out Christ's sacrifice on the cross. That seems to go too far, because I don't see a logic for how it would work or much Scripture to support it.
Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was sinless, substitutionary, and sufficient. Being like Jesus - even being his mystical body on earth - does not mean our sacrifices take on those crucial attributes. Our union with him is connected to our salvation, desired by God, and an essential part of Jesus' continuing action in the world nowadays, but it does not assist him in what he did 2000 years ago, including the one-time event of his atoning sacrifice.
And it was one-time, not continuing: "Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him." (Heb. 9:26-28).
And yet, there's this single other verse: "Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church" (Col. 1:24).
Confusing!
One opposing view, which some dear people I know hold strongly, says that suffering can never be the will of God, because our mission is to spread the Kingdom of God, which is free of all sickness and pain. But I maintain that Scripture lets us know that it's not all signs and wonders, that we preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:22-23).
That answer reveals a premise, though, that is worth questioning: are we to identify the Church more with Jesus' life of everyday trials on earth, which I've been discussing here, or Jesus' life of victory in heaven, which those friends focus on? I say that, like most things, the simple answer is both. I think the fact that suffering exists in our lives willy-nilly is sufficient reason to cultivate the former - who better than Jesus to show us how to respond? And in faith that Jesus is the firstborn of the new creation for which we also are made, we pray and act boldly in the hope that that God's Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
Zanshin, great comment. 'The simple answer is both' which is of course difficult to do. Expecting victory as in heaven why hold onto pain that will be no more in heaven. Facing life here, there is suffering still to be redeemed.
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