Category Archives: Theology of Suffering

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Hauerwas on Suffering (Again)

I’ve posted this quote before, but have since started reading the book it’s drawn from. Republished as “Naming the Silences,” here’s the quote again:

There is no hope for us if our only hope in the face of suffering is that ‘we can learn from it,’ or that we can use what we learn from the treatment of that suffering to overcome eventually what has caused it (e.g., many children in the future will be helped by what we have learned by using experimental drugs on children like Carol), or that we can use suffering to organize our energies to mount effective protests against oppression. Rather, our only hope lies in whether we can place alongside the story of the pointless suffering of a child like Carol a story of suffering that helps us know we are not thereby abandoned. This, I think, is to get the question of ‘theodicy’ right. (34)

Hauerwas, I think too, gets this question exactly right.

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Hauerwas and Suffering

Hauerwas has had the most influence on my thinking in the last year. I was trying to remember where I first ran into his writings. Well, this is it, a quote from his God, Medicine and Suffering:

There is no hope for us if our only hope in the face of suffering is that we can “learn from it,” or that we can use what we learn from the treatment of that suffering to overcome eventually what has caused it … or that we can use suffering to organize our energies to mount effective protests against oppression. Rather, our only hope lies in whether we can place alongside the story of the pointless suffering of a child a story of suffering that helps us know we are not thereby abandoned. This, I think, is to get the question of “theodicy” right. (34)

Amen. Thankfully, in Easter we have passed through just such a story.

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Theology of Suffering

I think developing a theology of suffering is what sits at the center of my passion. I feel strongly that beginning to think, read, reflect and pray about the suffering of the world—and God’s long work of ridding the world of it—is one of the church’s most important tasks today. Of course, this is deeply tied to the problem of evil, although NT Wright’s work, Evil and the Justice of God, has convinced me that it is best not to attempt to answer, “Why is there evil?” but rather, “What is God doing about it?” And I think we must both begin and end here, with the Lamb “looking as if it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6) making all things new:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself with be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:1-5)

Only the God who will wipe every tear from our eyes has a Word to speak to a world filled with suffering—a world with horrible names like Rwanda and Auschwitz.

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Creating Space for the Sufferer

A significant barrier to developing healthy community within the Church is the degree of “fakeness” at work—putting on a happy face to keep up appearances. Christians ought to be happy, we figure—after all, we have that joy, joy, joy, joy down in our hearts! As the saying goes, “Appearances can be deceiving.” The problem not only arises from the bottom up, however. Often, church gatherings and services are organized in a way that does not allow for the healthy exposure of brokenness and depression. This top-down repression of emotional expression secludes the individual with his thoughts and feelings and forces them to stew unhealthily, below the surface.

Jesus, as usual, operates differently:

As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus [meaning, ironically, “son of honour”], was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”

So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.

The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. (Mark 10:46-52; cf. Matthew 20:29-34; Luke 18:35-43).

From the context of this passage (in all three gospels), we discover that Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem as a kind of symbolic prophetic act, proclaiming His kingship and evoking certain Old Testament prophecies. This event draws worship from hundreds (if not thousands), arouses the attention of the Roman guards and Pharisees and begins the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. Few things could be more important at this point. Understanding this, the crowds around Jesus tell Bartimaeus to can it—“Jesus is about to make a key political move; he doesn’t have time for you.” Jesus Himself, however, has different priorities. Fully understanding the type of kingdom that He is inaugurating through His crucifixion and resurrection, “Jesus stopped” (Mark 10:49). Because the kingdom of God is a kingdom that seeks justice for the poor and oppressed, frees the political prisoner, and restores sight to the blind, Jesus stops. He creatively opens space for the suffering of Bartimaeus, and further, He alleviates it.

Returning to the original problem, the repression of suffering in the Church, we ought to learn two things from this event: first, we should cry out (from the bottom-up) for the reception and alleviation of our suffering, and second, we should create space (from the top-down) for that suffering to come out into the open, in order that it can be soothed and cured.

Series:
III: Creating Space for the Sufferer
II: Suffering in Community
I: Types of Suffering

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Suffering in Community

This topic seems to be constantly resurfacing in conversations. I had a neat talk with Kim Voortman about the not-so smooth way Christians tend to respond to each other’s suffering. Christians, on the whole, tend to be dismissive of the pain and fail to acknowledge its impact. We need to learn to suffer in community—to give our suffering to one another. We need to find in each other the comfort of Christ; to recognize that just as we share in the sufferings of Christ, we share in each other’s sufferings; and to offer one another a first glimpse of hope.

One of my favourite passages in all of Scripture begins Paul’s third longest letter:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).

Notice the number of times that Paul uses the word “comfort” in three short verses: five times. The emphasis is clear enough.1 The community which the sufferer inhabits is called to comfort her. In all the ways comfort is shown—embrace, silent presence, sympathy, shared tears—the community embodies Christ’s love for her, because it has first shared in Christ’s comfort. What absolutely does not constitute comfort is the diminishing or dismissal of her pain. She really has experienced loss and brokenness; the bigger picture is not in view, her pain is intimate and immediate—the community ought to be as well. Otherwise, the complaint of Job is well deserved: “I have heard many things like these; miserable comforters are you all!” (16:2).

This embrace of the Christian community is grounded in their real unity in and among themselves. “In Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:5). Though we are many, we are one, and we belong to one another. Jesus expressed this truth heartbreakingly at the death of Lazarus: “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled … Jesus wept” (John 11:33-35). The tears of Mary and Martha over their dead brother are Jesus’ tears. He enters into and shares their suffering, because they are one with Him and He is one with them. So too we share in each other’s suffering because we are one in Christ: “There should be no division in the body, but … its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Corinthians 12:25-26).

Suffering is often enveloping, consuming and crippling. It is difficult for the sufferer to see beyond the bounds of his own difficulties; he feels surrounded by thick darkness. This is why it is particularly difficult for him to accept remarks that point to the “grander plan of God.”2 What he needs instead is that first, faint glimpse of hope. This comes from the embrace of a friend, bitter weeping together or an unassuming listener willing to hear the beating of a broken heart. This first taste of hope—this first ray of light—is what is needed to begin to restore the sufferer. To speak from my own recent experience, the best comfort I have ever received is simply: “It will heal.” Such a word acknowledges the present darkness, but offers hope that it is not the last word. The sufferer cannot make the ascent from his hell in one leap, but that first small step toward the light ought not to be underestimated.

1Particularly jarring is the absence of the community in Lamentations, Jeremiah’s expression of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem. Notice the multiple uses of “comfort,” especially in the first chapter.
2References to God’s greater purpose can actually be (and often are) quite devastating to the faith of the sufferer. The idea that God could have a use for his present incomprehensible difficulties seems to lay the blame for them squarely on the shoulders of God Himself. I speak from experience.

Series:
III: Creating Space for the Sufferer
II: Suffering in Community
I: Types of Suffering

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Types of Suffering

What is suffering? Are there different kinds of suffering? Why do we suffer at all? Can we eliminate suffering? What about the kind of suffering Jesus talks about? These kinds of questions have been running through my mind recently. It started with a discussion I had with a good friend—Mike Ayotte—about the terrible way Christians deal with suffering. Christians tend to either passively endure suffering, dismiss its impact or chalk it up to the grander plan of God—or some combination of all three. I think as Christians, we have a basic deficiency in the categories we use to think about suffering, by which I mean that there is more than one kind of suffering—four, actually. They ought not to be treated the same way.

1. Suffering as punishment for our own evil. Any serious reading of the Bible will notice that every once in a while God uses suffering to punish people for their sin.1 A clear example is the forty years of wandering in the desert:

Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert. For forty years—one year for each of the forty days you explored the land—you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you (Numbers 14:33-34).

As well, there is Nadab and Abihu’s death by fire (Leviticus 10), the leprosy of Miriam (Numbers 12), Achan’s death by stoning (Joshua 7), the drought in Ahab’s reign (1 Kings 16:29—17:1), and very prominently, the exile of Israel to Assyria (2 Kings 17) and Judah to Babylon (2 Kings 24—25). Most potent is the entire book of Lamentations. For New Testament examples, there are the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), the death of Herod (Acts 12:19-23), and the blindness of Elymas the sorcerer (Acts 13:6-12). However, not all suffering is for our own evil—this cannot be emphasized enough. At the same time, the possibility ought not to be entirely excluded.

2. Suffering at the hands of another. Perhaps the most potent biblical example of this kind of suffering is the story of Joseph and his brothers, who sell him into slavery (Genesis 37). Joseph is subsequently sold to the Egyptians, falsely accused of rape and imprisoned for a period of years.2 More generally, this category encompasses all sorts of oppression and injustice. It has nothing to do with the character of the sufferer (as do the first and last categories) but with the evil character of the one causing suffering.

Examples of oppression include Israel under slavery in Egypt (Exodus 1:8-16; 3:7), David in conflict with his enemies (Psalm 42:9-10; 55), and many instances of the unjust actions of the rulers of Israel against orphans, widows, and the poor (Psalm 94:4-7; Isaiah 1:15-17; Ezekiel 22:6-7). The entire prophetic work of Amos was calling Judah back to social justice:

You who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground … you hate the one who reproves in court and despise him who tells the truth. You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine. For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins. You oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts (Amos 5:7-12).

It is in this context that Amos speaks the phrase famously used by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24). This is the sort of suffering that Christians should fiercely oppose and ardently work to overcome.

3. Suffering because life just sucks like that. There isn’t a plethora of biblical examples for this kind of suffering, which is alright, because not everything can be brought back to the Bible. What I’m thinking of here is the sort of suffering that is the unavoidable, everyday, part of life kind—things like accidentally hitting your head or sweating in the sun to finish your daily work. There are larger things, too, like being swept up by a river current or stepping out onto the road at the wrong time.3 It is often these events that are so difficult to come to grips with, precisely because of their senseless and meaningless nature. They are, however, simply part and parcel of the physical world we inhabit.4

4. Suffering for doing good. This is the kind of suffering that the New Testament talks about almost to the exclusion of the other three. This kind ought to be endured, and, though not sought, welcomed with “pure joy … because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance” (James 1:2-3). There is a key verse in the teaching of Jesus that represents this: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). When we side with the oppressed, the poor, the underprivileged, the immigrant, the orphan, the elderly—it is then that we suffer for the sake of righteousness. When we proclaim the love of Christ that alone can repair the brokenness of the world, and are mocked and ridiculed—it is then that we suffer for the sake of righteousness.

This sort of other-worldly behaviour invites suffering because this world is “under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). When the life of heaven is invited to earth through our words and actions, the thief who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10) seeks us out. We have caused an interruption of his usurped dominion, and have irked the “rulers … the authorities … the powers of this dark world and … spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:12). “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood…” This is the true meaning of spiritual warfare. Therefore, when you encounter this type of suffering, endure it “like a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). And take heart, your suffering will end and you will be vindicated, because Christ has “overcome the world” (John 16:33).

1Sin, by the way, tends to fall into two categories: idolatry, or hatred toward God; and injustice, or hatred toward people. There is a way in which self-hatred is also sin, but it doesn’t seem to come up as much in Scripture.
2The story of Joseph, importantly, is also one of the earliest places where we find that God desires to save us from our suffering. “The second son he named Ephraim and said, ‘It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering’” (Genesis 41:52).
3One might also make the case that contracting cancer or AIDS is a similarly serious and tragic example of the same category, though potentially—yet definitely not always—these are examples of the first category. Similarly, I would argue that rejection by a love interest should be included in this category. There are ways that this belongs in the second category as well, but certainly God has created us, through the evolutionary process, with certain biological, emotional and psychological predispositions toward certain types of people—predispositions that are sadly not always mutual.
4This is to raise the larger question of whether Adam and Eve hit their heads accidentally prior to the Fall and whether we will still hit our heads on the new earth. In other words, this raises questions about our doctrines of creation and the eschaton.

Series:
III: Creating Space for the Sufferer
II: Suffering in Community
I: Types of Suffering