Suffering

During my more than seventy years of experience related to Christian ministry and human life interests – those taken and understood in Christian context, there have been questions raised, brought forward and faded while others arose to take their place.  They keep coming back.  There were many questions in earlier years about poverty and God during the years of the Great Depression, of warfare and brutality in the 1940s, of family decay and the rise of power brokers, of the decline in wholesomeness in life and culture, in decades following – and the list grows long.  There has been some repetitive concern about suffering in persons, families, cultures and the world – suffering from anything – from terrorism on various scales of viciousness to the cancer to death in a child, hairless and pallid from radiation treatments.  Why does God permit this suffering if God there be?  We are concerned here with suffering of any kind, but physical suffering defined in ill health is a major point of much of discussion about suffering.

We begin at the beginning.  When our first parents failed to follow instructions in God’s creative program the consequence was suffering both in the deliberateness of Adam leading to a condition of depravity; and the presumption of Eve that introduced physical suffering (such as pain in childbirth).  We accept such matters as hair color, eye color and skin color and other factors as visited to us from our parentage, why would we not inherit from their spiritual orientation?  Scripture is consistent in the details even to the point of the generation of Jesus possible to a virgin, not acceptable of generation from human male sperm.  Jesus lived at the level intended for Adam at the beginning (good DNA).  Jesus especially addressed the matter of suffering and God’s compassion to the point of physical healing – a matter related to major emphases Jesus brought to his ministry.  Varieties of suffering were addressed, even while he was taken primarily in addressing that which is necessary for persons to qualify for the kingdom of God.  Suffering in the wounded creation infects much in our lives – weariness belongs to it.  It ultimately leads to the aging process in all living things, a condition that qualifies for a definition of suffering – as does anything that registers negatively in the conclusion of death.  In this broad context of suffering, both spiritual and physical, Christ shared in living, ministering to suffering people, suffering himself to death, and risen to offer solution to human beings as antidote to all suffering.  There is, in the kingdom of God, no suffering of any kind – not even the pain of regret for what may have been our offenses to the point of suffering, or suffering from the offenses of others including our first parents.  Our inheritance in wounded creation is vital to humanity.  It relates to spiritual life.  We note the process in the human context – 1 Peter 4:11-19.

Christians do suffer.  Fanny Crosby and Ira Sankey, devoted sacred musicians, became blind.  Beethoven suffered complete deafness, putting his head to the piano so to sense the vibrations as creators of sound, (I shall hear in heaven, he said.)  Charles Spurgeon suffered deep depressions (as did my devoted wife).  In my own sufferings I took great comfort by relating them to the sufferings of Christ, and felt his hand as surely as if I were Lazarus shuffling from the grave with Jesus yonder talking to Lazarus’ sisters.

In this concept Christians suffer for purpose, the first of which is to relate their sufferings to Christ for his purpose in our lives.  It is a maturing process pointing to wellness (-to be made perfect), a foundational process (to stablish us), a reinforcement process (to strengthen us), and an enduring process (to settle us).

Suffering will end.  It will remain for a while.  That informs us that suffering is one of the issues of earth.  Evil and its Effects will die for faith persons.  Seeing children ill to death, I have been taken by a spiritual aura resting on them.  Many of them have been told they are dying: but we are working hard trying to gain healing.  Yesterday (8/24/2014) a secular TV station concentrated on the story: there was a community praying for the healing of a little girl deeply weakened by radiation, with no hope for life without a miracle.  She knew.  With serenity and love, she inspired a football team she asked to visit, with family and friends. All I can think of in the recall of the story: A little child shall lead them.  (And that without fear.)