Years ago someone said to me: ‘The trouble with being a biblio-junkie is that you accumulate a lot of junk.’ There’s no doubt about that. The number of times I have bought books not knowing when I would actually read them but convinced that the time would come. And anyway who knows when they might go out of print? The result is a pile of stuff unread for years and the scary thing is probably will remain unread after my days are done!
I have made some inroads into that pile recently. I came across an unread book by Martin Israel entitled The Pain That Heals: The Place Of Suffering In The Growth Of The Person. The date of publication is given as 1983 and it is probably around that time that I bought it. Even my dodgy arithmetic tells me that this was 36 years ago. Just waiting for this moment to be read? Possibly but this was a time when I was reading a lot about the place of suffering in the Christian life. I suppose I still had a notion of the Christian life being if not problem free then certainly free enough to enable an effective Christian witness. I was surprised therefore to find a large body of Christian writing that testified to a challenging truth that brokenness in body, mind and spirit undergirded with faith in Christ actually enhanced Christian witness.
A book by Harry Blamires, a friend of C.S. Lewis, was especially challenging and ultimately comforting. It was called A God Who Acts and was promoted as an exploration of ‘the hand of God in suffering and failure.‘ At the heart of the book is the conviction that the pattern of Jesus’ earthly life could never be considered to be pain-free or ‘successful’ by human standards. Only by seeing things through to the bitter end did He know the sweetness of triumph over sin and death.
My copy is heavily underlined and I’m pleased to say my scribbled comments in the margins are not uncritical. ‘Your opinion!’ appears more than once and at one point ‘I think you are going too far.‘ Nevertheless, I had never read anything quite like it and it would always appear in my top five of influential books.
The trouble with this line of thought is that it could lead to an unreasonable glorification of suffering. Blamires is aware of this:
‘ . . . I fear the complaint will be raised that we are making Christianity a religion of tragedy, perhaps even of despair. But we are not. Our immediate aim is to put suffering where it belongs, near to the human heart, because it is near to the Divine Heart; at the centre of man’s realizations, because it is there at the centre of God’s. And suffering is not all sadness: still less is it despair. Are the invalids amongst our friends the least inclined to smile? Have we not sensed a deeper peace, even a deeper joy, on the bed of pain than on the bed of sloth or the bed of lust? This alone is sufficient to prove that a faith which embraces suffering is not necessarily a religion of sadness or tragedy.’
Martin Israel takes this further in his conviction that suffering is essential in the growth of an individual towards Christ-likeness. Does this mean that the only life that is truly blessed is that which is obviously in pain? I think Israel would argue that despite appearances we all know what he calls ‘the dark side of reality’ if not outwardly then certainly inwardly. When we recognise this and seek the strength of God to overcome then we are led to greater Christian maturity.
This rubs us up against the thinking in the Letter To The Hebrews where we are told that suffering is in fact God’s ‘discipline’ designed to lead us into a deeper relationship with Him and a greater motivation to serve others in need. It’s there in Hebrews 12: 7-12. It might sound a jarring note to some but it makes sense of those times when we are most aware of our weakness as times when we appreciate and rely on the strength that only God can provide. The Apostle Paul saw it that way:
‘ . . . I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.‘ (2 Corinthians 12: 9-10)
This is something that we need to use more in our pastoral care of one another. The notion that if we are going through times of pain and disturbance then in some way we must have deserved it is still alive in the minds of many. But as Wayne Grudem points out in his Systematic Theology if Jesus died so that we might be forgiven our sins God cannot be punishing us by sickness and suffering. We should rather view the dark shadow times in our lives as God’s opportunities to draw us closer to Himself and to make available His resources so that we emerge more fit to be the witnesses He wants us to be.
That is certainly the way the Apostle Peter looked upon the persecutions that fell upon the Church in her early days:
‘These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.’ (1 Peter 1: 7)
Their suffering was an opportunity to grow as Christian believers and activists as they learned to trust more fully in God and His strength. So when days of sickness and disturbance fall upon us the question is not ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ so much as ‘How can I use this time to walk closer with Christ and to serve those He loves?’ When Paul was preparing himself for a difficult visit to the Christians in Corinth many of whom had negative feelings towards him he took encouragement from the pattern of Jesus’ life:
‘For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you.’ (2 Corinthians 13: 4).
Paul’s faith is a call to us to accept the pattern of Jesus’ life in ours so that we might experience the power of God that is our strength to reach out to those in need.
