Pain and Suffering

(The following is an excerpt from a longer paper responding to the book Living the Sabbath, by Norman Wirzba.)

As Christians we are servants of a dying world, a world ravaged by the fall, ravaged by sin. A world that is full of injustice, pain, misery, suffering, and despair. Real life is hard. Real living is difficult. However, what we fail to see is that, though the pain is real, and not to be made light of, the despair is of our own making. The problem lies in how we understand the world: the presuppositions we carry concerning ourselves, our ‘natural and inalienable rights’ that we feel should naturally be a consequence of all the good we do in this world where there are so many worse sinners than us. Wirzba is quick to point this out, and reduce the problem to its core:

Especially in an era of individualism, we are readily tempted to reduce suffering to whatever impedes our freedom or brings us displeasure and discomfort. Think here of the common complaint that life does not go as we planned or expected. It is easy to interpret events as evil or to claim that the world we live in is rigged against our personal success. But is it really? The problem with this anthropocentric, even egocentric approach is that it assumes that the whole of reality should be geared to the satisfaction of our narrow wishes. This assumption is deeply at odds with the creation narrative that proclaims God’s [Sabbath rest] as creation’s ultimate goal, and with the experience of Job, who learns through his pain and suffering that the goods of this world are not tailored to his interests and that the scope of God’s concern extends far beyond humanity to include all of creation. Our best efforts to establish an accountant’s ledger of good and evil will often miss the mark. (79)

As Christians, we are servants of a dying world. Our purpose is to be a light, a city on a hill, leading the way for people who are fallen, broken and full of despair, bringing them to a place where pain and suffering are given meaning, and context. As Christians, we offer the only way of understanding pain and suffering that leads to hope and peace. It is simple. If there is no God, there is no final justice, where all that is evil and bad will be punished. More than that, if there is no God, there is no such thing as “evil and bad”. There is no fixed, absolute standard upon which to base any system of morality. Again, if the individual is king, and the independent mind is the final authority, you have simple chaos. If self and self’s desires are the standard upon which we build our moralities, our ethics, the basis for whether we do this or that where it regards others, then all is relative, and whether I shoot you in the head or bring you flowers doesn’t matter. They are potentially both equally valid actions consistent with the standards established by the reigning authorities: me, myself, and I. In this system, there is no hope for utter and final judgment, and all past atrocities simply become meaningless instances of the individual’s right to choose. If Darwin was right, why was Hitler wrong? In this system the death camps of 1940’s Poland become no better or worse than Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood. Both are equally valid expressions of the individual’s right to choose. And the freedom of the individual to choose as he or she desires, is, as we know, a “natural and inalienable right”. Pain and suffering therefore become meaningless adjectives, unable to hold any real significance.

There are, obviously, major problems with this way of thinking. First, it simply isn’t true. There is a God and He laughs at those who think and act otherwise. Second, it is inconsistent with how the natural mind works. Even pagans understand that what Hitler did was wrong. They understand pain to be painful, and suffering to be difficult. They are real experiences, the meaning of which transcends culture and language and time. This is so because all human beings bear the image of God, and in so doing know, deep down, the difference between good and evil. We know instinctually that shooting your neighbor deserves judgment and some form of justice. And so the disconnect becomes clearer. We want justice and desire punishment for the breaking of moral and civil law. We want the standards that make it possible to determine what is right and what is wrong. These are necessary for any civilization to endure and achieve peace. We want standards that apply across the board, and are a higher authority than our individual freedom to choose. We want the standards, but we don’t want the One who gives the standards, because He Himself is the Standard. So we are left with an inconsistent and dysfunctional society, heading inevitably toward dissolution. A house that is built on sand, no matter how stable it looks, and how close the builders copied the blueprints of the house built on rock, that house will fall. It may take longer for the siding to deteriorate because it borrowed materials from the other house, but it will, and must fall.

As Christians, we are servants to a dying world, a world whose foundation is sand; a society whose moral fiber is borrowed; a people who are blind to the ridiculousness of a Standardless-standard. But their blindness is self-inflicted. They suppress what they know to be true. A real problem arises, though, when the Church, who is not suppressing what she believes, acts in such a way as to offer no hope and no peace. We, as the Church, do this when we minimize the reality of pain and suffering. We know that our God is a God of love, and believe that He has created a world full of joy and delight, and trust that He desires our good in giving us Sabbath rest. But when we minimize pain and suffering, or define the offending events as random, meaningless acts, we betray a heart that does not trust God. We minimize pain by defining it as every instance in which we don’t get what we want. It is at these times that life becomes “hard”. Things are not going are way, and so we bring out our sheets of sanctimonious sackcloth. But this understanding of pain rests on the conviction that our needs, our desires, our wills and choices are the standard to which life must obediently play out. If this is our hermeneutic to interpreting life, then there is no room left for serving others. We need therefore to recover a biblical definition of pain.

The problem in the Church arises from our wanting to protect the holiness of God. There are two available options. Either God is a bystander, watching random and unfortunate acts occur, or He is sovereign, and the author of life, the difficult parts as well as the joyful ones. In the first instance, He is not really God at all, and so therefore if pain is the result of randomness, who cares. What does it matter, for there is no real god able to redeem or give meaning to the pain? But in the second, there is a Father who has created us for a reason. He has fashioned us and breathed life into us, so that we may glorify Him, and share His love with others. It is with this interpretive key that we unlock the meaning of pain and suffering in our lives. When we truly experience hardships, not the disappointments that come from our desires not being fulfilled, but from physical or emotional trials, we are being equipped for communal living. If the whole focus of life is outward, and not inward, every circumstance, and every experience is imbedded with an outward trajectory. The question should not be, “Why am I going through this?” Rather our inquiries should sound like, “What does this trial equip me to do as I live in fellowship with other people who will eventually face similar situations?” And more importantly, “How does this trial create in me and in my life an ability or opportunity to bring glory to the Author of all things, even this trial?” The real problem with pain is not that we experience it, but that we do nothing with it. In attributing it to blind forces of chance, we surround ourselves with purposelessness, and continue to feed the lie that what matters is our own comfort and security. As such pain and suffering become forces that need to be combated, like enemies. We must work hard to fend off the antagonistic attacks of hardships. But, as Wirzba notes:

Pain and suffering should not be cast as “problems” that need to be “explained” or “solved,” eliminated because they represent an affront to the world we would choose or make for ourselves. In fact, it is a mistake to look for a “solution,” since this becomes an excuse to avoid the communal disciplines of care and constancy that enable us together to bear, absorb, and grow through each other’s hurt. (79)

It is at this point that we see the connection between pain and suffering, and Sabbath rest. At first these two might seem to be at odds with one another. If all things in our life are meant to have an outward teleology, then certainly the Sabbath rest God has created for us must be seen in the same way. If Sabbath rest is Gods intention for all of creation, then our pain and our suffering play a part in achieving that end. This is true because the foundation for Sabbath Rest is the Cross of Jesus. Ultimate Pain and Ultimate Suffering was endured for the joy of Sabbath Rest. This act of the God-Man Jesus at once gave meaning to pain and gave purpose to suffering. In the cross of Jesus, and in the daily crosses we ourselves bear, we see Sabbath rest being brought to others. We see Him serving the dying world.

The dying world we inhabit is a system based on violence and death. A world in which the wills of every citizen compete for supremacy can have no other outcome. Wirzba comments,

Christ’s resurrection, as the revelation and overcoming of our death-wielding ways, makes possible a new kind of life, restoring creation to its original intent of participating in God’s own life of joy, peace, and [Sabbath rest]. The resurrection, in short helps us know what Creations is ultimately about as a forgiven and reconciled existence formed in grateful acceptance of gift upon gift. (83)

All of life is a gift from the hand of a Father who knows far more about ‘what is good for us’, and ‘what we really need’ than we ever could. As Christians, we are servants of a dying world. In picking up our cross daily, we are given the tools to appropriately understand the pain we experience, and are given the grace to come along side others and bear their burdens as well. Wirzba continues,

This humbling realization enables authentic thanksgiving and praise. It is also the basis upon which to build practices of forgiveness and reconciliation. Once we learn to appreciate our own lives and those around us as gifts from God, we do not need to enter into bitter struggle and inflict various forms of pain and suffering upon each other. The many relations that feed into our being and literally constitute it can now be embraced and celebrated as so many forms of manna from heaven. (83)

Our natural, unredeemed instinct is to find fault in others for our suffering. The Cross breaks this cycle by exposing the fact that true fault lies in ourselves. We are the fallen race of God-haters, worthy of the flood waters of judgment. But God in His grace has given Sabbath rest to us, His adopted children, through the sacrifice of Jesus. This means two things: first, “we have no right to expect a painless life, because Christ Himself did not” (83). “If the world hated me, they will also hate you.” Secondly, we have been lavished with rest, and when we least deserved it. In this we too have been given the ability, and the responsibility to give rest to others. This is done primarily when they need rest, or in other words, when they are suffering. Sabbath rest, again, does not mean escapism, or relaxation. It means a full awareness of who God is, what it is exactly that He has done for you, and a willingness “to be transformed by the suffering of God Himself, and then from the perspective of this transformation welcome the whole creation with humility, care, gratitude, and the overall aim of celebration” (88).

We must not minimize the reality or the depth of pain that suffering brings. We must understand its full weight. Therefore we must not see it outside the context of a God who Himself endured the full weight of suffering and loss, and in so doing gave rest, peace, wholeness, and joy to the very people whose suffering He bore. To minimize pain and suffering is to minimize the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is to remove completely the hope that we have; hope that was given to us so that we might bring it to a dying world.