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Previous | Next A spiritual response to suffering
Randall Schmidt
What is suffering? This is a question that may at first seem to have an obvious answer. Suffering is an experience almost as old as humankind itself, and one of the first effects of Adam’s fall.
Suffer: Undergo, be subjected to (pain, defeat, change, etc.); suffer pain or damage or the like; be executed; put up with, endure.
– Pocket Oxford Dictionary
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As the dictionary makes clear, suffering is about pain, damage and defeat – and all the negative emotions that go with them. Indeed, for many of us, bondage to the fear of suffering runs our lives. The constant anxiety about what might happen has become a kind of ongoing suffering in itself, tainting our happiness and robbing us of joy even when things are going well. We tend to go through life in a constant mode of “suffering avoidance”, in which every thought and action is consciously or subconsciously geared towards avoiding things that may cause discomfort.
Yet, we live in a dangerous world with no guarantees. At birth, we enter into a world of suffering and pain. In fact, if God were to show us the “whole deal” at the outset of our lives, none of us, I suppose, would ever choose to “play the game”! But God has given us life, whether we like it or not, and, what is even more difficult, He has instructed us to be happy about it. No matter what happens, we are expected by God to always affirm life with all its suffering.
The passive suffering of Job
The ancient biblical story of Job raises the issue of suffering and why it exists in a world created by a loving God. Suffering, especially the random kind that Job encountered, seems meaningless and wasteful. In fact, it raises the question of why we were created at all. Were we created simply to suffer? What role does suffering play in the grand scheme of things?
I have come to see suffering as consisting of two basic kinds. On the one hand, there is “passive” suffering – that which is thrust upon us in a seemingly random fashion “out of nowhere”. The writer of Ecclesiastes sums up the frustration and despair this causes: “The race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.
“Every tear from every eye becomes a babe in eternity.”
– William Blake
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Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come. As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them” (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12). These are not reassuring words for those of us who are seeking a life of comfort and security in a sheltered walk with God.
One of the strangest truths we encounter in Scripture is that God takes full responsibility for the presence of suffering and pain in the world: “I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things. . . . Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker. . . . Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’” (Isaiah 45:7,9). A close reading of the book of Job reveals that it is not Satan but God who withholds or allows suffering to come upon anyone He chooses. Job, who is not an atheist but God’s most faithful servant, is treated to worse suffering than almost anyone else in the Bible. In fact, it is Job’s faithfulness and righteousness that centre him out for such horrible pain. Is this what we are in for as followers of God? Better to belong to the masses of unbelieving heathen, one might argue, than to be in Job’s position and risk gaining God’s attention! Job cries out in agony to his Maker, “Does it please You to oppress me, to spurn the work of Your hands, while You smile on the schemes of the wicked?” (Job 10:3).
But it is Job’s response at the beginning of his trial that is more interesting. In spite of enormous catastrophe, he concludes, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:21) and “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10).
As the story of Job implies, there are two possible responses to suffering – despair and faith. If one reads the text of Job carefully, it turns out that Job’s suffering was by no means arbitrary and meaningless. If there is any message for us in this story, it is precisely that apparently random suffering is in no way purposeless, but part of God’s continual working upon our lives. It only appears to be meaningless to our limited perspective. As God tells Job, it is beyond the ability of humankind to know the “why” of suffering. We are only expected to deal with the “how” and leave the “why” up to God. Job’s victory was that he remained faithful to God through suffering.
All things in this material realm have a beginning and an end (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). If we have it good today, we may have it bad tomorrow, and if things are bad today, they may take a turn for the better soon. There is nothing we can do about it, and perhaps there is no real purpose or explanation for passive suffering other than the answer that God has allowed it and who are we as “clay pots” to question our Maker?
This highlights an important fact – we are all divine “works in progress”, “clay pots” that are being fashioned by God, the Master Artisan. As anyone familiar with the artistic process will know, a work of art must be put through a tortuous process of development under the artist’s hands before it can ultimately become a completed object of beauty. C.S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, observes that we are “not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character”.
So then, suffering is a “growth opportunity” – but this raises a rather odd situation. C.S. Lewis further reasons, “If suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided?” Lewis responds to this question by pointing to two important aspects of suffering. The first is that suffering is not good in itself, but what is good in the experience of pain is our submission to the will of God. Second, for those who are spectators to the suffering of another person, the good is that the emotions of love and compassion are aroused, leading to acts of mercy.
Suffering, even when encountered in its most random and meaningless form, still has a purpose, and this purpose is spiritual. It is first and foremost about our relationship to God our Maker, who is fashioning out of us a thing of great and enduring beauty. We all seek out comfort and security here on earth, but suffering and pain are the means to real spiritual growth; only suffering can build one’s integrity and character over time, not a life of comfort and relaxation.
The fact is that we must endure trials and this will reap for us dividends in eternity through a process only God knows. Trials are “learning experiences”, God’s “teachable moments”. Thus, suffering becomes the key component of our spiritual journey. As C.S. Lewis once again explains, “All their earthly past will have been heaven to those who are saved. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it’, not knowing that Heaven will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the Sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell’, and both will speak truly” (The Great Divorce).
Our common understanding of the Christian walk seems to be an obsession with controlling all the many variables in our chaotic lives. Yet the exact opposite should be true. We are not to try to use God to master the unexpected things in life, but in total faith to open ourselves to God – which means nothing less than the high risk of gaining His attention as did Job, possibly in ways we don’t want. Our avoidance of suffering is due to our inherent self-love and fear. Fear leads us to ask in our prayers to avoid all suffering. Rather than praying for constant relief from calamity, we should more aptly pray for the strength and faith to guide us through pain and suffering.
In hindsight, as the philosopher Schopenhauer observed, life’s seeming accidents and tragedies somehow end up being those events of greatest importance to our lives, as if having been orchestrated from behind the scenes. The inherent suffering of life may seem meaningless on an earthly level, but it is no doubt directed and controlled by God. Perhaps there is no meaning to suffering at all, except that which we give to it through steadfast faith in God. Job’s suffering would have been all for nothing if he had not faithfully endured and overcome in the end. Our steadfast faith will ultimately redeem the mindlessness of suffering into something glorified by God. But if we choose despair, then the suffering we have been forced to endure will for us remain a series of random and meaningless events – just “stuff that happened”.
In terms of passive suffering, that becomes the “end of the matter”. We are left with only two responses to life’s suffering and pain – either we choose the negative path of despair, depression and ultimate self-destruction, or we choose the positive path of acceptance, endurance and a learning attitude in those “teachable moments” that God sends our way.
Suffering, like life itself, is what we make of it. No matter what happens, we have the power in every situation to say that we will, in spite of all, choose happiness over misery. Happiness, in the end, is not something that “happens” to us, but something that we choose to have under any circumstances.
The active suffering of Christ
If we began this article by asking “What is suffering?” and subsequently identified two forms of suffering – passive and active – we must likewise ask ourselves as would-be followers of Christ, “What is Christianity?” Christianity, as anyone who has ever tried it can attest, is a path of difficulty and not comfort. As someone once speculated, “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and not tried.” A Christian is not, as writer Ambrose Bierce sarcastically defined it, “one who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin”. Christianity is not merely a belief system but also an action system. We are to be active in the world, following Christ’s example – and Christ’s example involved self-sacrifice (that is, suffering) on the highest level.
Christ’s legacy to the world is not that He spoke His now famous words, but that He lived them in humility and love. He became the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53, bearing the extreme punishment of crucifixion as an act of willful obedience to God for the sake of all humankind. He lost His life so that we all might find life. In this act of love, we are presented with the ultimate model that we are to follow as Christ’s suffering servants.
Christ’s call to “follow Me” was directed at the disciples, who were common people like you and me. Yet, out of such common stock, Christ was able to fashion heroes, people who had the potential for incredible suffering and devotion on His behalf and who in all likelihood did not know that they had it in them. This is a testament to the power of God that all of us can become active believers, true heroes for the cause of Christ in the here and now.
It is not a safe, comfortable “eternal life insurance policy” that Christ offers to us, but a challenge to “take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mark 10:21) – a challenge not merely to pay lip-service, but to actually become, as C.S. Lewis says, “little Christs” who die to self and the world every day. The Christian walk is one of hardship, and, although we need not pray for suffering to come upon us, we should be concerned if there is no discomfort in our lives. A feeling of comfort and ease may be not a “blessing” to thank God for, but a “red flag” that we are not worthy of God’s attention as was Job. Rather than the “pursuit of happiness”, as followers of Christ we are called to the “pursuit of suffering”. We participate in a life of adventure, looking for opportunities to become servants for others’ sake.
We will never perhaps pray to God and request suffering, but let us at least embrace it in the spirit that God intends. After all, can clay become a pot without going through the tortured process of its creation? Can iron become steel without going through the refining fire of the furnace? Can we become “sons of God” in the image of Christ without going through the refining process of suffering? It is Satan who calls us to a life of comfort – for comfort is a kind of death. Suffering, in effect, gives us a “pinch” that rouses us from spiritual slumber into a life of action. Most of us would never welcome God having us prove ourselves like Job through removing our health and possessions. We just expect God to take us at our word, hoping never to be called upon to actually demonstrate our faith. We only want to proclaim it!
“As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34) is the only commandment Jesus really gave to humankind. And how did Christ love us? By enduring the supreme act of suffering, sacrificing Himself for all of humanity. Does this sound like a call to a sedentary spiritual life after a “neat and tidy” conversion experience? I think not.
Yet, many of us are only paying lip service to Christ’s example, while worshipping the god of consumer materialism. Most of us do not seek opportunities for acting as suffering servants, but rather seek fervently for money and comfort. Many of us are like the spiritually secure religious people in the story of the Good Samaritan, who walked by in fear or disgust of the person in need, while the Samaritan stopped to help. The Good Samaritan gives us an example of what I call “dirty Christianity” – getting our hands dirty with acts of real charity and kindness that require personal suffering or loss in order to fulfill the needs of others. It goes far beyond simply giving money away without ever having any physical contact with those in need.
How did Christ accomplish His mission from God? Very simply, He went about doing good – to the extreme of dying on the cross. “This is my body, which is for you,” Jesus said in establishing the Lord’s Supper. “Do this (acts of a similar nature) in remembrance of Me.” Philippians 2:4-11 says, “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!”
Following Christ can be likened to the practice of pilgrimage in Medieval Christianity, a quest for perfection through the great suffering encountered along a difficult journey. The route itself was typically so fraught with danger that the pilgrims were forced to trust God as their only hope and source of protection. As followers of Christ, we embark upon a similar journey of danger and suffering. Becoming a follower of Christ is not an “arrival” but the beginning of a spiritual pilgrimage.
Suffering can indeed be a holy, sacrificial offering to God – if approached with a mindset like that of Job, who endured passive suffering, and like that of Christ, who sought out opportunities for active suffering on behalf of others. Suffering will remain as only pain, defeat and despair unless we choose to make it more than that, giving it spiritual purpose and meaning.
“For men are not cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though He brings grief, He will show compassion,
so great is His unfailing love.
For He does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to the children of men. . . .
Who can speak and have it happen
if the Lord has not decreed it?
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
that both calamities and good things come?
Why should any living man complain
when punished for his sins?”
– Lamentations 3:31-33,37-39
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Randall Schmidt is a member of Fairview MB Church in St. Catharines, Ont.
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Last modified March 30, 2001.
© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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