The Doorway of Suffering

“It was certainly our sickness that he carried, and our sufferings that he bore, but we thought him afflicted, struck down by God and tormented.” Isaiah 53:4

Suffering is one of those issues that makes it difficult to accept a loving God. The conundrum goes: If God is all-powerful, but He does not relieve suffering, then He cannot be all-loving. If He is all-loving, but cannot relieve suffering, then He cannot be all-powerful. But what if there is a different way to look at suffering and God’s involvement with pain?

First, it should be observed that we live in a world where suffering is possible. I just finished taking a walk. If I trip over a boulder and sprain my ankle, I will be in pain. God could have created a world without gravity, or boulders, or pain receptors. And, next universe, if you want to create one, give that some thought. But this is the universe in which we dwell.

My sprained ankle will heal, and the immediate pain tells me something is wrong and to tend to it. But what about meaningless pain? What about suffering that appears to have no purpose?

That, I believe, is the real question when we deal with suffering and God. For over ten years I have endured a daily headache that averages a pain level of six or seven out of 10. After numerous doctor’s appointments, tests and medications, I was diagnosed with a rare malady called New Daily Persistent Headache. You wake up one day with a headache that never goes away. Experts have little idea what causes it and it is extremely rare. So, I have wrestled with God over this “meaningless” pain.

Not only does it appear meaningless, it also has stripped significance and purpose from my life. I recently retired from active ministry nearly 10 years before I had planned. I simply could not continue conducting the duties of a pastor, manage the pain, and, well, remain somewhat sane.

What do we do when our suffering has no answer? How do we deal with afflictions that seem to have no purpose? I can reason that my suffering is still the result of a world where suffering is possible. My parents’ DNA combined in such a way to make me susceptible to this particular illness. I am not the only one to have a body that doesn’t work at its optimal level.

What if God, instead of relieving our pain, actually enters into it personally with us? How is this possible? The prophet Isaiah hints at it when, envisioning Jesus’ suffering, he says that He carried our sicknesses and bore our sufferings. Here we have a God who, no matter how else He deals with suffering, is not absent in it.

He does not come to us as if on a mission trip, visits our poor country of pain, holds a Vacation Bible School, bandages our scrapes, and then goes back home. He is not even a missionary from a privileged country going to live among the poor in another land. No, He becomes the poor, He carries the suffering of this world in His own being.

This is portrayed for us in the cross. Jesus was not some stoic that marched resolutely toward his destiny without thought or emotion. The night before his crucifixion he prayed three times that the cruelty of the cross would be taken from him. His distaste for the bitter cup caused him to sweat “drops of blood”. His agony began before the first whip sliced his back, the thorns pierced his head, the beam scraped across his open wounds or the first nail was driven into his hands and feet.

The desire to withdraw from taking our pain was so intense he invited his three closest friends to be with him in those final hours. “Please, stay with me, guys. Stay here. Stay awake. Pray for me.” Today he might have left them behind in the living room while he went to wrestle alone in the den. Solitary there, pleading with Father God, he asked that the awful moment could be taken away. And yet, because of the love between Jesus and the Father, he acquiesced, saying, “But, your will be done.” And, because of His love for all who suffer, he said, “Your will be done.”

His sorrow must have only increased when he went back to the living room to see his three friends snoring away on the couch and recliner. Three times he asked them, he needed them, he wanted the companionship of those who would simply wait with him in his darkest hour; and they took a nap.

Over the next twenty-four hours Jesus would suffer excruciating pain, emotional abandonment and a true spiritual suffering so intense that he would quote the Psalms, “My God, My God, why have you left me all alone?” Though the Father never left him, the intensity of suffering caused him to experience the same black void that pain creates for every human.

I do not understand all of this mystery, believe me. And, it needs to be said that “suffering” and “sin” are not meant to be equated. People suffer for a myriad of reasons, and one should never assume it is the result of some lack of faith, wrongdoing, or curse.

But I do know that Jesus is in this suffering with me. He has not alleviated it. Being a Jesus-follower has not lowered my pain level. But it has heightened my empathy level. When Jesus took the suffering of the world on himself, that became the entryway into every individual’s pain. So, what if my pain is meant to be an entry into other people’s pain?

Notice that the Scripture says he took our suffering upon himself. If I only find solace for myself in this truth, then I think I am missing the entire point. Jesus did not simply take my pain; he took the world’s pain as his own.

So, as his follower, as part of what is called the “Body of Christ”, my pain calls me to use it as an entryway into the suffering of others. Once Jesus took the suffering of “us”, he eliminated “them”.

To be like him, my suffering should allow me to enter the pain of a refugee family at a foreign country’s border. It should be the door into the suffering of a friend fighting cancer, a homeless woman on the street, a gay high schooler who feels rejected by peers and perhaps by his own family. To be like Jesus means I feel the affliction when three Louisiana Black Churches are burned. I feel the sorrow of those who want to follow Jesus but have been hurt by those who carry his name. To be like Jesus means I run that chance of being misunderstood.

Suffering is hard enough. But, to allow yourself to empathize, to feel the pain of any and all groups, no matter who they are, may cause people to question who you are. It made them question Jesus’ identity, didn’t it? Isaiah says that we though “he was afflicted by God”!

I may not understand suffering. And, I get depressed plenty of times, feeling the hope drain from my being. I yell at God; I tell Him he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But, in the small, quiet corners when my brain is not on fire, I know suffering is a door. It is the very entryway for God’s love to me in Christ, and it is the passageway for my empathy toward others as his follower.