Take this suffering ...

In light of the horrific events in Boston this week, I thought I would write (still again) about the darkness that popped up again. Two (or three) bombers at the end of a great running of the Boston Marathon leaves us with dead and with suffering. The question over and over again is why? Why would these idiots do something like this?

Ever felt you were wandering in the dark? Peace is hard to find. We call out to the one source of light we can see, and our hands flail in the darkness looking for a hand up or a hand out.

Be thou my vision, the writer penned, and we concur.

In several places in the book Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering by Eleonore Stump, looks at four Biblical narratives about suffering -- the stories of Job, Samson, Abraham and Isaac, and Mary of Bethany.

 

Stump asks the question of why does God cause or allow me to suffer in the world ? Stump's answer can be boiled down to the following four (increasingly large) explanatory steps. (1) God loves me and so desires to be united in love with me. (2) Such union is impossible even for God in my current psychically fragmented condition. To make union possible, I need to be internally integrated around the good and (3) to achieve such integration, I need to undergo a process of justification and sanctification. Unfortunately, (4) the best means available to God to promote that process is to cause or allow me to suffer. So ironically, God's love for me ultimately leads to God's desiring (in his consequent will) that I suffer.

 

Truthfully, as I watch video of the suffering that went on in Boston, I have difficulty with the notion of the one who loves me most being thrilled about my suffering. I believe that good comes from suffering, but I don't latch onto the idea that God revels in it.

 

What say you readers? Where does the idea of suffering being "good" for us come from, and where do we sit with it?

 

The writer of Job quotes him this way: “What did I do to deserve this? Did I ever hit anyone who was calling for help? Haven’t I wept for those who live a hard life, been heartsick over the lot of the poor? But where did it get me? I expected good but evil showed up. I looked for light but darkness fell. My stomach’s in a constant churning, never settles down. Each day confronts me with more  suffering."

 

In the Message rendering of Matthew's Gospel, we read, "Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?"

 

Don't run from suffering; embrace it.

 

The idea is powerful; it is defeating; it is perhaps the hardest of hard teaching by the Messiah.

 

I acknowledge, for example, that exercising and watching what I eat is the only way I'm going to lose weight. I acknowledge that I hate exercising.

 

The fact is, in our culture we strive to avoid pain, make work easier and pursue pleasure, and I'm down with all that. We have appliances and tools to make every job effortless, and that's what I want. We make boundaries to limit relationships that cause pain.  The problem comes when we don't recognize that, some difficulty or having to work at something, makes us better. Spiritual life is like exercise. You have to exercise a long time to see results. It's not always fun and it sometimes hurts, but we end up stronger.

 

Suffering is the broccoli of the world. Do I want it? Absolutely not. Can it help me to grow in the best meaning of the world? Absolutely so.

 

Follow Jesus and he'll show us how. I would love to write that there is an easier way, but I think of Jesus in the Garden praying for the Father to take the cup of suffering away, and the answer placed on the heart and mind of the Christ was, "Your will, not my own."

 

Can't take the cup? He'll help. Can't suffer a minute longer? He'll suffer with us. Can't hold on? He'll hold on for us. He's there at the beginning; he'll be there, scabs over the cuts, dried sacrifical blood over the thorn-marks and the nail-holes.

 

That's not just the best way; it's the only way. It's what God the Father came up before he came up with the idea of time. That time thing turned out to be a pretty good idea, so I guess this means of redemption will work out, too.

 

The storms can't hold a wavering candle to Jesus.