There’s nothing like sitting with a friend over a great cup of coffee.
But what if that friend was named “Suffering”?
(I think I’d have my coffee to go, thank you very much.)
Even though the West avoids much of the suffering of the rest of the world, we still experience disappointments, sickness, attacks, bullies, letdowns, inner heartaches, and grief…I’ve felt the sting of suffering, and you likely have, too.
We’ve also seen suffering in cancer wards, the lonely eyes of orphans, the devastation of war, and the inhumanity of abject poverty.
So, how do we process suffering?
Suffering is human. It is a universal and common human experience. C.S. Lewis stated, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”[1] Suffering and life go hand-in-hand. If you have not suffered, hang in there; you will. That’s not pessimism; it’s just reality.
Suffering is human. It is a universal and common human experience.
Suffering is personal. It has the uniqueness of snowflakes, comes in all shapes and sizes, and impacts us personally. Whether physical, emotional, or spiritual pain, suffering is and will always be a normal part of the human experience.
Suffering connects to love. It has a straight line to our affections. When we lose things we love deeply—health, security, peace, dreams, money, relationships, and people—we suffer. Real love opens the doors to real living, and the possibility of real suffering.
But the real question is, “What do we do with suffering?” As men, we may not know how to process pain. On the one hand, we can be tempted to try and “fix it,” or, on the other hand, to “take it like a man” and try and ignore it. Neither is particularly helpful.
There are two common ways Christians typically approach suffering:
Over-spiritualizing suffering. When we cherry-pick and misapply Scripture or assign grand motives to God for allowing suffering, we do more harm than good. One-liners and clichés are not particularly helpful for the person in pain. God’s ways are higher than our low-flying opinions.
Under-spiritualize suffering. We can fail to see any good or opportunity in the struggle and experience frustration, deconstruction, anger, or bitterness. Pulling away from God will not make suffering go away.
The Scriptures are not some sanitized storybook. From the expulsion from the Garden to the closing scenes of Revelation, we see the untold suffering of Creation and God’s people.
Look at the rejection, wrongful accusations, and unjust imprisonment of Joseph (Genesis 37-40).
Reread the classic story of Job (Job 1-2), who lost family, wealth, and health and faced the ridicule of his detractors.
Then, there is the ultimate example of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah captured it in poetic and powerful language:
He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. (Isaiah 53:3-5, NLT)
Christ’s sufferings remind us that He has provided hope, healing, and grace for our circumstances and power for His mission to be accomplished through us. Peter, who knew suffering well, unpacks the importance of attitude: “So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin.” (1 Peter 4:1, NLT)
The apostle Paul also invites us to see suffering through a new lens and offers us a new way to sit with our suffering and be present in our pain.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5, NLT)
Suffering is to be expected, but it is not pointless. Pain can produce endurance, character, and hope. It provides an opportunity to sit in the presence of a loving God who pours His lovingkindness into our hearts through the Spirit of God.
The late Tim Keller said it well: “While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy.”[2] Suffering is a foretaste and reminder of the joy that will come to the child of God.
In my late teens, I watched my grandfather, my spiritual hero, a lifelong pastor and church planter, experience the dreaded “C” word. For a man who had been so healthy and so devoted to God’s purposes, cancer took him fast and hard.
Why would God allow the agony of His faithful servant?
My questions, sadness, and fears fell silent in the face of a peaceful demeanor and joy that defied logic. There was no complaining, bitterness, or anger from him. My grandfather sat with a profound sense of hope and peace, leaving an indelible impression on everyone around him, including me.
Pain was superseded by purpose. Affliction was replaced with anticipation. Suffering was surpassed by a loving Saviour.
C.S. Lewis declared, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[3]
Could we be that megaphone to the world that suffering is not evidence of an absent God? It is the sound of the Spirit infusing His people with hope as they anticipate a new world to come. It is the sound of people who have learned to sit with suffering and have found a friend in Jesus, the Suffering Servant.
[1] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 22.
[2] Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, 31.
[3] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 91.
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