Mistakes About Suffering

There are a number of ways in which Christians tend to deal with suffering which are inadequate at best and erroneous or faithless at worst.  These responses are somewhat influenced by personality - our natural tendencies - but foundationally they spring from our system of beliefs.

The first two I'll address are about subverting the genuine pain and difficult emotions that accompany suffering.

We've all known, and maybe we've even been, that Pollyanna-minded Christian who believes the only proper response to life's most difficult situations is to smile and pretend that it's really not so bad afterall.  If we trust the Lord then everything's gonna be just fine and therefore we having nothing to be sad about!  Tell that to Shawn Hornbeck's parents.  Remember him?  He's the young man who was kidnapped at age 12 and held captive by a sexual predator until age 16.  There is simply no way to sugar-coat that tragedy or the long-term suffering that child and his family have endured. 

All too often, this rosy view of life is nothing more than public posturing anyway.  We think it's what others expect, we don't want our faith questioned, and we don't want to be judged as unspiritual.  In the face of real hardship, though, this approach is difficult to maintain outside the public eye.

We Stoics are motivated by some of the same factors as Pollyanna, namely the avoidance of intense pain, but instead of putting a happy face on it, we ignore it in an effort to rise above it.  We pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and move on by sheer strength of will.  We must never be perceived as weak or vulnerable.  Our pride won't allow it.  Again, this approach is fueled largely by other's perception of us...or our perception of ourselves.  We dare not demonstrate a lack of faith, so we shut ourselves off to the problems of suffering.

These next two responses tend to be more intellectual or rational in nature.

We tell ourselves - or others...this one is much easier to apply to someone else's suffering than our own - that God has sent this to "teach us something."  We turn the suffering into nothing more than an object lesson and if we (or they) can only learn our lesson, the suffering will subside.

A fourth tendency, often in reaction against the previous one, is to assign all suffering to The Fall and original sin and thereby diminish or remove providential involvement.   This isn't sent by God to teach me something, it is simply the way things are in a broken world.  In this way, we avoid some of the hard questions that arise about God's goodness and the seeming removal of His favor.  But we are also left with a feeling of senselessness and hopelessness.  Since I can find no Divine purpose in it, this cannot produce anything good for me or for others and I must simply wait for the end of history when it will be set right.

In this next option, we neither avoid the hard questions nor stifle the painful emotions.  Instead we immerse ourselves in the questions and emotions.  This response usually results in any number of strong reactions.  As we wallow in the suffering, we often end up full of anger, resentment, pride, doubt, or self-pity, which all lead to despair, a sinful questioning of God, and sometimes ultimate rebellion.

So.  If I believe all of these are wrong responses, do I believe there is actually a right way to respond to suffering?  I do.  

Let me first point out that each of the responses I've described above contain nuggets of truth from which we can extract wisdom, but alone, each proves inadequate and doesn't represent a fully human and Christian response.  So what does?

Next time...