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.

Sabbaths and Anthems

Sabbaths and Anthems

“Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” John 7:22-24

How do you respond when you read about the Pharisees judging Jesus because He healed someone on the Sabbath? I imagine it at least makes you roll your eyes, right? Jesus, in great compassion, heals people suffering because they are blind, deaf or even harassed by demons. I’m sure that if we were there, we would be jumping in joy when we a blind friend is able to see for the first time in his life!

But, religious people are full of criticism. They don’t like to lead with love. They cannot even take the time to think things through. No, if something offends them, they are ready to damage the person’s reputation for the sake of their own dead beliefs. So, Jesus heals on the Sabbath and the Pharisees are after Jesus with their fangs bared and saliva foaming at their mouths.

Jesus, with only one goal; to honor His Father, is attacked by those who considered themselves the religious guardians of truth. “Keep the Sabbath” meant, “don’t do anything we think is wrong on the Sabbath.” Of course, they already hated Jesus, he had so many people following him. Now, they thought they had a foolproof way to rid themselves of this nuisance.

But the Pharisees had gotten things way out of proportion. It was more important to rigidly keep Sabbath “laws” than it was to heal someone on the Sabbath. They said Jesus was leading people astray, and would eventually hatch a plot to kill him. Don’t be too aghast, we see it happen quite often in the “Christian” world today.

A young black man becomes deeply disturbed that a greater percentage of blacks are killed by white police officers than are whites. Stop, take a breath, and put yourself in his place. The numbers bare the inequity out. Recently a large church on the East Coast invited those in their congregation who were minorities to share their experiences with Law Enforcement. To quote a friend who attended:

“We did an entire Sunday morning testimony service to blacks and other minorities sharing their feelings and negative interactions with L.E. (law enforcement). It was eye opening for some of the older white parishioners. When they saw how many testimonies there were it was hard to dismiss them as isolated incidents.”

So, a young 28-year-old second string quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers expressed his grief by kneeling when the National Anthem was played. He did not riot. He did not yell expletives. He merely knelt quietly as the anthem was sung. And so the “Sabbath rules” are broken!

Let me come at it this way. Would a first century Christian ever even consider making a vow of allegiance to the Roman Empire? It is easy to say, “Well, that was an evil entity.” Then the question would be, “at what point do we make allegiance to an empire a higher priority than allegiance to Christ, or to a cause that our devotion to Christ moves us toward?”

It is fine to stand during the National Anthem. It is wonderful to refrain from work on the Sabbath. But here’s the difference: The Pharisees’ judgement was far out of proportion. Not carrying a pallet and making clay on the Sabbath were far more important than healing someone. Jesus tries to correct them.

If you were deeply pained over an issue in your nation you deemed unjust, it would be appropriate to call attention to the injustice. That is what Kaepernick is doing. You may disagree with it. You may never choose to protest in that way. But, to castigate him, to call him names, to challenge his sincerity is also to have things far out of proportion. Which is a higher call: to bring attention to injustice in the land, or to stand during the Anthem?

But, as a follower of Jesus, those are not even my primary concerns. What has caused me to actually weep is other Christians calling him names, saying he should be forced out of the country, and one “pastor” even saying that anyone else that did that should be “lined up and shot!” There is one Facebook meme that has a picture of Bin Laden above a picture of Kaepernick with the caption: “If Bin Laden had a son.” (Oh, just to make a tiny point about “respect”, I can’t tell you the number of times people keep talking to each other when the Scripture is read.)

The brand of “Christianity” that I am seeing among in our country is growing worse each political cycle.  Next time you are ready to call a public figure names, try to exercise some empathy. You don’t even have to agree with them, but at least think about it a bit. We are men and women who have taken Jesus as our own.

Do you really think Jesus would compare Kaepernick to a demon-possessed terrorist? Do you really think Jesus would throw his name all over social media with every negative and ugly word you can imagine? Do you honestly think Jesus would spit in the man’s face before he actually listens carefully to not only his words, but his heart?

And, if Jesus did feel Kaepernick needed to be dealt with, I wonder how He would approach him? Of course, there is Zacchaeus, a guy who sided with the occupying nation against his own people by overtaxing them and keeping it for himself. Now there is a guy to rake over the coals, right?

Go read what Jesus did…and perhaps we should do likewise.