Suffering

When managed well, suffering provides some clues about both physical and spiritual life mysteries. The reference to the suffering of prophets provides an important insight.  The genuine prophet lived in the message revealed and advanced.  If the prophecy was of warning about difficult days to come, the prophet lived with the burden of what was proclaimed – if of blessing there was anticipation that became suffering in that the blessing might be beyond his own participation and influence to fruition.  Even prophetic messages might change, and the prophet is left, perhaps to be branded a false prophet.  Circumstances change, and merciful God amends to the penitence or in patience awaits the further decline of the people that may gain even stiffer penalty.  We discover this in the story of Jonah, or even Elijah after the victory that was won against the prophets of Baal.  He fled to the juniper tree.  We do not have the whole story, but Elisha replaced him.  It all could be suffering that we might term psychological, but suffering nevertheless.  Jeremiah was the weeping prophet.  The people were going into captivity through suffering processes, and he felt it.  He submitted and went with the people through the sorrows that may have been more real to him than to any other person in the captivity.  We are instructed in the involvements of all this in such passages as Jeremiah, Chapters 41-43. (Note 42:6, 19-22)  It is one of several events from Jeremiah’s ministry.  The chapters in Jeremiah are highly instructive about a common problem – the dissembling of the people (affirming God, but not accepting his counsel).  These events become parables for us in our time.

Christians bear the standard suffering found in natural human life which is part of fairness God offers to humankind.  In this we learn that we do not serve God for the purpose of escape from nature’s demands, but for God alone.  No matter the cost or the challenge to faith the genuine Christian will stay the redemptive course that may include intensification of suffering.  When Dietrich Bonhoeffer perceived what would happen in Germany under Hitler’s oppression, he returned to his native country so to share in the suffering of his fellow German people and those who would suffer under that regime.  It cost him imprisonment and his life in the choices he made.  The story grows long and complex, but offers insight into God’s permissions.  In this sense suffering becomes a negative blessing (an oxymoron).  It is interesting to discover how spiritual we can become in suffering.  Even the news reports the words of persons who have lost all in a flood or fire: We thank God that no one was killed in the storm.  (We can also suspect that there were some who cursed God in the event.)  Suffering tends to humble us, even to taking us beyond nature to prayer, to thankfulness, even to hope.  Every doubtful person ought to visit the children’s ward in a hospital, or hospice where little children are in the course of dying because of some disease, especially cancer, and note the unusual maturity of acceptance of impending outcome.  They are often the source of comfort to grieving parents and caregivers.  There is in most of them a sense of extra-natural beauty that defies description.  There is some peace in the wonder: why me. We find answer.

We are greatly aided in understanding suffering both in mankind’s suffering, and the suffering of God focused in the cross experience of Jesus Christ.  Suffering for those who possess a genuine faith in God possesses some of the meaning of God’s redemptive gospel.  Any undeserved suffering I experience, which is to say any suffering I have not caused, is shared suffering with Jesus Christ, identified with him.  It is treated differently than the suffering for which I am responsible.  Relief from this last is in forgiveness from God, and, when possible, from persons wronged by my influence.  The right things I do will partly counter the negatives, and in not dissembling I accept God’s counsel to forgiveness and improved life thought and conduct.  In a beautiful passage, often referred to in the history of Bible exposition, Jeremiah wrote: A voice was heard . . . Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted. For they were not.  Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thine eyes from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded . . . the children shall come again to their own border.  (Jeremiah 31:18-17)