The door to the room was open. From the doorway I could see the patient sitting by the window, sun streaming in, his head tilted up, eyes closed, sunlight shining on his face. There was an IV pole at his side with several drip bags hanging, tubes connected to his arm, PCA pump button in his hand, thumb at the ready. Knocking and introducing myself, the patient motioned to a nearby chair as an invitation to sit. After a few moments of silence the patient said, “Chaplain, what do you know about pain, about suffering?“
His question stopped me in my tracks. My memory flashed back to when I was going through my Chaplain internship. Working toward certification, one of the exercises was articulating my own theology of suffering. Since then, having worked as a Chaplain in a children’s hospital, in trauma centers, in palliative care and hospice, I’ve witnessed my share of suffering over the years, physical and spiritual. Yet, witnessing is not enduring – how can anyone truly understand someone else’s pain and suffering?
Trying to relate, I presume suffering includes having to endure physical, emotional, or spiritual pain, anxiety, separation, loss, grief, or distress. At some point in my life, I have experienced each of these is some form to varying degrees; but I still felt ill equipped to answer his straight-forward question.
Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
– C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
Viewed theologically, for me, God’s nature is pure and perfect knowledge, intelligence, goodness, beauty and love. As such, things like suffering and pain, sin and evil, are not products of God’s creation or will, but rather a consequence of our way of interacting with creation, i.e. a result of our humanity and free will that’s been disconnected from God’s plan and our created purpose. Through Jesus’ own example we are shown that human suffering is a necessary and inevitable part of the Christian life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, someone who knew about suffering and paid the ultimate price for his faith, said it well in his book The Cost of Discipleship. When speaking of our suffering as disciples of Christ, he wrote: “To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance with Jesus Christ. When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity. It is not the sort of suffering which is inseparable from this mortal life, but the suffering which is an essential part of the specifically Christian life.”
What that means for me as a Christian, to make sense out of suffering, is that I need look no further than the person and works of Jesus Christ and the Gospel.
My personal belief can then be summarized as follows:
1.) God’s will is a desire for healing; to overcome and remove any alienation and separation that results from our free will taking us astray of God’s plan, moving us toward redemption through the kingdom-building efforts of humanity, i.e. to participate in the ongoing development of creation as co-creators with God.
2.) We are a product of our choices and when human beings make destructive moral choices, we should not blame God for the consequences or expect that He will save us from ourselves.
3.) A greater good can and often does come from suffering; pain can purify and humanize the heart such that deep personal loss, if we open ourselves up to God’s loving presence in our lives, can be redemptive and lead us to empathy, a deeper compassion and a richer humanity.
It is not the sort of suffering which is inseparable from this mortal life, but the suffering which is an essential part of the specifically Christian life.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)
Working as a Chaplain I have heard the plea many times “Why is God doing this?” It sometimes seems like a reflex reaction in order to deem sickness, suffering and personal disaster as God’s punishment for our human failings. Jesus’ teaching informs my perspective on this when His disciples ask about a blind man they encounter (John 9:2): “Rabbi, was it his sin or that of his parents that caused him to be born blind?” Jesus’ words cut to the quick and set us straight: “It was no sin, neither his nor his parents. Rather, it was to let God’s works show forth in him.”
God is not about inflicting blindness, cancer, or devastation upon us, but rather through the prayerful mitigation of physical or spiritual burdens we see the glory of God revealed.
Likewise, the Gospel enlightens and gives us the courage to trust that death does not have the final say, it’s not the end of the story, stay tuned, there’s more to come: “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
Pain, suffering and even death may never make total sense to us humans, but we cope with it most sensibly through active participation in the healing process and through ministry by providing a compassionate presence to others walking through their own dark valleys.
Thus informed, I sat down and listened as the patient walked me through his unique experience of pain, suffering and personal struggle with understanding faith, forgiveness given and received, and redemption.
Reflection questions:
1.) How would you have responded to the patient’s question, “What do you know about pain and suffering?”
2.) It’s not uncommon to hear people say, “I feel your pain.” Do/can they really? Is there a better way to say what you think they mean and might be trying to say?
3.) Check out this article from the C.S. Lewis Institute: https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/c-s-lewis-on-the-problem-of-pain/
Consider Lewis’ assertion in his book The Problem of Pain: “The problem of pain, in its simplest form … If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.” How do you reconcile this with the oft-repeated question, “Why is God doing this?”
Scripture References
John 9:2 John 12:24
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