Human Suffering
HUMAN SUFFERING
Individuals and Their Circumstances
2 Kings 17:6-11; Proverbs 22:6
The possibility of using one’s very adverse circumstances and sufferings for the furtherance of the spiritual life must not be dimmed. . . . I still maintain that the use of suffering is the privilege of the ordinary Christian.
Victorious Living
(Week 24, Saturday)
Victory through Suffering
2 Corinthians 1:7; Philippians 1:29, 3:10; 2 Thessalonians 1:4-5
We come now to the question of pain and suffering. . . . The question is, What shall we do with them, and what will they do with us?
First of all, we must note that pain has probably saved the race from physical extermination. Had there been no such thing as pain, we should probably not have survived as a race. For if we did not know that thrusting our fingers into fire would cause pain to us, we should probably let our fingers be withered by fire. If disease did not cause us pain, we should probably think little about it, and we should succumb to it, because unwarned by pain. Pain says, “There is something wrong;—attend to it.” . . . Pain is God’s preventive grace, built into the structure of our physical life, to keep us from committing individual and collective suicide.
Nevertheless, there is much needless pain; it is in the world far beyond its biological uses in survival. For we inflict it on ourselves and on others needlessly. Much of this pain is curable and should be cured by individual and collective action.
Suffering is a broader term. It may be caused by pain, but it has other and deeper causes. Suffering may be intensely mental and spiritual. Suffering too may be a part of God’s preventive grace. It may be God’s danger signal that something is wrong. . . .
Our first step, then, is to look on pain and suffering not entirely as enemies—they may become our allies in gaining fuller life.
Victorious Living
(Week 33, Sunday)
Are Christians Exempt?
1 Peter 4:1; 12-16, 19
Pain and suffering are the common lot of all. We are environed by nature, by other human beings, by our own physical bodies and through these avenues pain and suffering come to us. The fact of our being Christians will not exempt us from their coming. . . .
I grant you that real Christians are exempt from sufferings that come from within, from their own wrong moral choices. This does save them from an enormous amount of suffering that comes upon those who sin, and suffer as a consequence of those sins. But it does not save Christians from sufferings that come through nature, through other human beings, and through their physical bodies. Nor does it exempt them from the suffering that comes from the very fact that they are a new moral and spiritual creature, a departure from the world. That departure itself brings suffering.
Victorious Living
(Week 33, Monday)
What Attitudes Are We Taking?
Acts 5:41; Romans 8:12, 18; Colossians 1:24
We said yesterday that sufferings happen to us all,—the good included. But while the same things happen to all of us they do not have the same effect upon us all. The same thing happening to two different people may have an entirely different effect. It all depends upon inner attitudes. As someone has said, “What life does to us in the long run depends upon what life finds in us.” . . .
There were three crosses that day on a Judean hill. The same event was happening to three people. But it had three different effects upon them. One thief complained and railed on Jesus for not saving himself and them; another saw this tragedy as a result of his sins, repented, and through it saw an open door into paradise; the third through that cross redeemed a race. . . . So the thing that matters is not what happens to you, but what you do with it after it does happen to you. Your cross can become the bitterest of unrelieved agonies, or it may become to you the most blessed of unlimited opportunities. . . .
Suffering leaves some people writhing in helpless agony; others it leaves stronger and more capable of meeting more suffering, capable of meeting anything.
Victorious Living
(Week 33, Tuesday)
Do You Know What to Do?
Acts 8:3-8; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
In Christ and Human Suffering [New York: Abingdon, 1933], I took the position that we were not to escape suffering, or merely to bear it, but to use it. We can take suffering up into the purpose of our lives and make it contribute to the ends for which we really live. The raw materials of human life, the things that come on us day by day can be woven into garments of character. . . .
[Christians] know what to do [when suffering happens]. The Christian can say to herself or himself: “I cannot determine what happens to me, but I can determine what it shall do to me after it does happen. It shall make me a better person and more useful.” That is victory.
Victorious Living
(Week 33, Wednesday)
The Pain God Is Allowed to Guide
2 Corinthians 4:8-12; 6:4-10
The pain from which we are suffering may have come from some evil source. The question is not where it came from, but where it is going! Where it goes is determined by whether we allow it to be guided to life or guided to death. And that is determined by whether we put God into the pain, and offer it to God as we offer everything else, and make it a part of God’s redemptive purpose for us. The cross is an example of God-guided pain. It issued in salvation. So may our crosses issue in salvation, if God is allowed to guide the pain involved in them.
Victorious Living
(Week 33, Thursday)
Is Trouble God’s Punishment?
Habakkuk 3:17-19; Luke 13:1-5; Hebrews 2:10
Many feel that when trouble comes, it is God’s punishment for some sin. This attitude makes victory impossible.
We must admit that this is a world of moral consequence, and that sin does bring trouble. But Jesus repudiated the idea that calamity and sin are always connected. . . .
As someone has said, “It is wonderful what God can do with a broken heart, if God can get all the pieces.” Let God put your broken life together again, perhaps in a new glorious pattern. God had to break it to make it.
Victorious Living
(Week 34, Wednesday)
Life Strikes Away Our Crutches
John 16:7-8; Hebrews 12:8-12
We must pursue the thought that our troubles may not be God’s punishment, but God’s pruning. . . .
There are many things in your life and mine upon which we lean heavily: family, relationships, money, and position. They may not be wrong, but they can become crutches that weaken our moral fiber. We depend on them too much. Then calamity strikes them away. At first we are stunned and crushed. Our crutches are gone; what is left? Why, our feet, our own backbones, and the grace of God! That is enough upon which to begin life anew.
Victorious Living
(Week 34, Thursday)
Life Looked at through a Cross
1 Corinthians 2:1, 12; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:20
No one can look into the face of [sudden] tragedy without raising ultimate questions about the universe: Is there meaning and purpose in the universe? If there is a God, does God care? I have no answer—except as I look at life through the cross. There I see a God who comes into the very struggle and suffers all I suffer, and more. . . .
The cross means . . . that God goes with us and lets everything that falls on us fall upon God’s own heart. I can love a God like that. . . .
The cross saves us from pessimism by using that pain and sorrow and tragedy for redemptive purposes. Through it all it shows the very love of God, seeking, redeeming, healing, saving. The cross is light—the only light.
Victorious Living
(Week 43, Friday)
Abundant Living “In Spite Of”
John 15:11; 16:33; Romans 8:35-39
Abundant living is sometimes “on account of,” but perhaps more often, “in spite of.” When circumstances are against us, we must be able to set the sails of our souls and use even adverse winds. The Christian faith does not offer exemption from sorrow and pain and frustration. It offers the power to, not merely bear, but use these adversities. The secret of using pain and suffering and frustration is, in many ways, life’s greatest secret. When you have learned that, you are unbeatable and unbreakable. . . .
The Christian “can take it,” because he or she can take hold of adversity and use it. A teacher of slum children was drawing up a list of the qualities in Jesus that appealed to the youngsters. When the list was apparently completed, a grimy-handed newsboy put up his hand and said, “They hung him on a cross, and he could take it.” The boy was right, but the reason Jesus could take it was not because of a stoic attitude. The reason goes deeper: he could take it because he could use it. He bore the cross for he could use the cross. You cannot bear the cross long; it will break your spirit unless you can take that cross and make it serve higher purposes. The stoic bears the cross; the Christian makes the cross bear fruit.
Abundant Living
(Week 40, Monday)
Working with a Wound in Your Side
Matthew 14:12-21; 16:21; 1 Peter 2:21-24
So important is this power to turn the worst into the best, that we must tarry another week with it. For if we learn this secret, we know how to live. If we don’t learn it, then we fumble this business of living. It is simply impossible, in reference to suffering, always to explain why. You cannot unravel the mystery of suffering and give a logical answer. But, while you cannot explain the Why, you can learn the How—the How of victory over it and through it and around it. There is no logical answer, but there is a life answer; you can use suffering. It is much better to give a vital answer than a verbal one. Cease worrying over the Why and get to the How!
Abundant Living
(Week 41, Sunday)
Isaiah 37:3-7; 41:10, 13; 42:16
“Christians, when they get to the end of a rope, tie a knot and hang on.” For they knows that very extremity is God’s opportunity. Someone has suggested that the “silence in heaven for about half an hour,” spoken of in Revelation 8:1 (RSV), was God shifting the scenes for the next act. The silent, suffering spaces in your life may be God getting you ready for the next great act. Hold steady; the next act will come. In the meantime, take hold of your dull drab moments and make them give forth music. Speaking of a certain person, someone suggested: “Give him a laundry list, and he will set it to music.”
Abundant Living
(Week 41, Monday)
The Five Steps out of the Dungeon
Acts 26:16-18; James 4:6-10; 1 John 1:5-7
Perhaps our world as a whole will have to find grace in the dungeon. As a world, we are suffering from self-inflicted pain and self-chosen bondages. We are in dungeons of our own making. Perhaps we shall find grace in our dungeons. . . .
Christianity teaches that these [Crisis, Ordeal, Catharsis, Charisma, Resurrection] are the very steps through which the individual or society must go.
Abundant Living
(Week 49, Saturday)
Disciplined beyond Timidity
Joshua 1:5-9; Acts 4:13, 29; 5:41-42
When I was traveling in China in 1937, amid sections that were being bombed, this verse came to me again and again: “Whatever happens, be self-possessed, flinch from no suffering, do your work as an evangelist, and discharge all your duties as a minister” (2 Tim 4:5 Moffatt). Here in America, facing reconstruction [after WW II], I have to repeat it again and again.
Abundant Living
(Week 50, Saturday)
The Question of Unmerited Suffering
1 Peter 4:12-19
But what about disciplines we do not choose, things we are compelled to bear without our choices?. . .
This is one answer: take the way of refusing to recognize anything as evil. Meet suffering and pain and catastrophe with a barrage of mental affirmation of the good. This method has a very great truth in it. It is better than affirming evil as evil, suffering as suffering, and letting it go as that. You can get rid of a great deal of suffering and evil by simply affirming them away; “a great deal,” but not all. And that residue that cannot be affirmed away is the rock upon which many go to pieces, physically and spiritually. The Way must be able to answer every thing, including that residue.
The Way
(Week 34, Sunday)
You Can Use Suffering
Philippians 1:12-14; 2 Timothy 3:10-12
The Way offers this possibility for the residue that cannot now be remedied: You can use it. You can take it up into the purpose of your life and make it contribute to the rest of life. There is no pain, no suffering, no frustration, and no disappointment that cannot be cured or taken up and used for higher ends. In either case, you have a way out. You are relived of it or enriched by it. You are not nonplused; the Christian never is. Christians always have a way out. We are never stymied, for if we can’t do this, we can do that, both equally good in the final results. The Way always has a way.
The Way
(Week 34, Monday)
Buddha Would Cut the Root of Desire
Psalm 1:4-6
Desire, fastened on things that let us down and cause frustration and suffering, must be replaced by desire fastened on things that do not let us down; [desire] must be fastened on God.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 2, Monday)
To the Tune of “Suffering”
1 Peter 1:6-9
We now turn to the transformation of suffering and tragedy. Many of us are not dull; we are alive, with pain. Some of that pain is mental and spiritual, and some physical; all of it spells pain. The title of Psalm 53 in Moffatt reads: “From the Choirmaster’s collection. To the tune of ‘Suffering.’” Many of us live our lives to “the tune of “Suffering”; that is the dominant note.
What is the Christian answer? It is not merely bearing it, submitting to it as the will of God, as in Islam; nor is it escaping it, as in the Old Testament answer. The Christian faith does not promise you exemption from suffering. How could it, when at the heart of that faith is a cross where the purest heart that ever beat writhed in an agony of unmerited suffering? Then what is the answer? It is found in that very cross where Jesus took the worst thing that happen to him, namely, his crucifixion, and made it into best thing that could happen to the world, namely, its redemption. When you can take the worst and turn it into the best, then you are safe. You can stand anything, because you can use everything.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 36, Sunday)
The Kingdom’s Is God’s Total Answer
Matthew 6:33; Acts 16:25-34
The way to meet unmerited suffering and injustice is not to bear them, but to use them. When I saw that possibility years ago through this verse, “That will turn out an opportunity for you to bear witness” (Luke 21:13 Moffatt)—the unjust bringing you before judges and governors to be tried—an entirely new world opened before me. I had been trying to explain suffering, and now I saw that we are not to explain it, but to use it. Everything that happens to you—good, bad, or indifferent—can contribute to you if you know how to use it. Everything furthers those who follow Christ, provided they know how to set their sails. All winds blow you to your goal. It is the set of the soul that does it. When you know this secret, you are afraid of nothing, because you can use everything. That makes you march up to every human happening, with the possibility tucked away in your mind of plucking a blessing out of the heart of everything.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Thursday)
The Mastery of Unmerited Suffering
Hebrews 12:6-11
Many modem interpretations teach that God will save followers from the sickness and calamities that fall on others. It is a sign of divine favor.
Of course it is true that the righteous are saved from many self-inflicted pains and illnesses and troubles that befall the unrighteous. The righteous know better how to live; they are not always barking their shins on the system of things. They know their way around better among the moral laws of the universe. But while this is true, nevertheless the righteous are not exempt from the ordinary sicknesses and accidents incident to human living in a mortal world. They get their share. And rightly so. Otherwise God would be bribing us into goodness, which would not be goodness. . . .
How could a faith that has a cross at its center promise to exempt us from suffering when the center of that faith—Jesus—was not exempt?
Mastery
(Week 21, Thursday)
A Thing of Beauty Wrapped around Trouble
2 Corinthians 6:4-10
How [could] a faith with a cross at its heart . . . offer exemption from suffering when the purest heart that ever beat was not exempt? But Jesus, while not exempt, was not passive in suffering. He took hold of this injustice and made something of it—turned it into redemption. When one can take hold of the worst thing that can happen to one—the cross—and turn it into the best thing that can happen to the world—its redemption—that is mastery of the very highest type ever exhibited upon our planet.
This mastery of unjust suffering was not a lone and unique thing—a lone star in the firmament—Jesus passed this power of mastery over to his disciples and their spiritual children. It became a characteristic of the Christian movement and of the individual Christian. They seemed to have the strange power to transform everything—good, bad, and indifferent—into something else, something better.
Mastery
(Week 21, Friday)
Joy Is the Christian Word
Philippians 1:25-26
Yesterday we said that there is something deeper than happiness, and that is joy. Happiness comes from happenings, but joy may be within in spite of happenings. Happiness is the world’s word; joy is the Christian’s word. The New Testament does not use the word or promise happiness; it uses the word joy. And for a reason.
Many people are expecting happiness from following the Christian faith; “God will arrange the things that happen to me so they will all add up to happiness.” When the things that happen to them do not mean happiness, such people are dismayed and feel God has let them down. “Why should this happen to me?” They expect to be protected from happenings that make them unhappy. This is a false view and leads to a lot of disillusionment. For the Christian is not necessarily protected from things that make people unhappy. Was Jesus protected from happenings that make people unhappy? Was Paul? Their Christian faith got them into opposition, into persecution, into death. How could a faith that has a cross at its center promise exemption from happenings that ordinarily bring unhappiness? Then what is the answer? The Christian faith offers joy in the midst of happenings that make people without that faith unhappy. When the Christians don’t find joy on account of happenings, we can always find joy in spite of them. . . .
We must make our happiness not dependent upon happenings. We can make everything into something else; we can use everything.
Christian Maturity
(Week 37, Wednesday)
Granted to Suffer Is High Privilege!
“For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine” (Phil 1:29-30). . . . The word granted is used, implying that it was a privilege, an honor, to suffer for his sake. Instead of . . . asking “Why should this happen to me?” we are told to look on suffering for Christ as our highest privilege and honor. . . . When Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, the account says: “who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). He was “to accomplish” his departure, his death at Jerusalem. Usually death is looked on as an acquiescence, submission to the inevitable. Here it was an accomplishment! Jesus accomplished more in the few hours on the cross that he did in all the rest of his lifetime. He opened his heart to the world’s sin and sorrow and allowed it all to be forced through the channel, the single channel of his own broken heart. That broken heart was the healing of the world. It was granted to him to suffer, and that granted suffering became his chief glory.
Whether the suffering to be a pinprick or a stab, it is granted to us to take it and do what Jesus did with his departure: accomplish something through it.
In Christ
(Week 35, Friday)
To Be in Christ Is to Be in the Koinonia
Jesus, Lord, I do not ask to be exempt from suffering. I ask only power to use whatever comes: good, bad, or indifferent. In you I am able for anything. So I am safe, since I can use all. In your blessed name. Amen.
In Christ
(Week 41, Saturday)
The Incarnation Universalized
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Christ is incarnate on a universal scale: every person’s hunger is his hunger, every person’s sickness his sickness, every person’s bondage his bondage. To do it to them is to do it to him. To refuse to do it to them is to refuse to do it to him.
This broadens and deepens and universalizes the Incarnation. Jesus does not merely have a body that suffers as our bodies suffer; he is suffering in everyone’s body, hungry in everyone’s hunger, bound in everyone’s imprisonment. To suffer in one body—his own—is one thing; to suffer in everyone’s body is another, and different and breathtaking. It is beyond imagination.
But we could never have known this universal Incarnation if Jesus had not shown it in a particular Incarnation in a particular body. If it had been written in a book that God suffers in everyone’s suffering, is hungry in everyone’s hunger, we would have shrugged our shoulders in incredulity. But having seen it in the Word become flesh, we do not shrug our shoulders—we bend the knee. And we mention it in awe and adoration. It is beyond us, but it grips us and we say to ourselves: The God we see in Jesus would do just that.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 6, Friday)
Take Heed to Your Reactions
Luke 15:25-30
“But take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them” (Mark 13:9). Here the emphasis is upon yourselves, upon yourselves at the moment of deep, unmerited injustice and suffering; be sure that through this injustice you bear witness! This is an important word, for it clarifies the whole attitude toward unmerited suffering. It was the passage upon which my whole attitude toward unmerited suffering turned. I saw you could not merely bear it, you could use it. Every injustice was opportunity, every wrong an open door, an opportunity and an open door to witness. Not to preach at others about their wrongs but to witness by your rightness of demeanor and your deeds that the Word has become flesh in you. Don’t bear evil, use it!
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 30, Friday)
Jesus the Concrete Word
John 9:1-5
When his disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2), Jesus dismissed both hypotheses. He showed them how “the works of God might be made manifest” (v. 3), even through suffering and disability. Then Jesus proceeded to illustrate in his own life the price of using suffering, turning the worst into the best; he took the worst thing that could happen to him, namely his death, and turned it into the best thing that could happen to the world, namely its redemption.
The Word Became Flesh
Week 51, Saturday)