2 Suffering Is Never Neutral
2
I wish I could say that my experience of suffering was neutral, but it wasn’t, and it isn’t for anybody else either. Here’s what every sufferer needs to understand: you never just suffer the thing that you’re suffering, but you always also suffer the way that you’re suffering that thing. You and I never come to our suffering empty-handed. We always drag a bag full of experiences, expectations, assumptions, perspectives, desires, intentions, and decisions into our suffering. So our lives are shaped not just by what we suffer but by what we bring to our suffering. What you think about yourself, life, God, and others will profoundly affect the way you think about, interact with, and respond to the difficulty that comes your way.
This is humbling to admit, but there were two things I didn’t know I was carrying into my physical travail that shaped how I walked my way through the experience. First was pride. I was unaware that there was a lot of pride in me—pride in physical health and in accomplishment. About three years before I got sick, I lost 40 pounds, changed my whole relationship to food, and began to exercise more aggressively. It worked. I kept the weight off and felt younger and more energetic than I had for years. I was proud of my physical fitness and confident in the healthiness of my body. I was proud too that because I was physically strong, I was able to be productive. I traveled every weekend to conferences around the world and wrote book after book in between. I look back and now see that I lived with assessments of invincibility. I was not a young man, but I felt like I was at the top of my game. Health and success are intoxicating but also vulnerable.
When I realized I was very ill and that weakness and fatigue would be with me for the rest of my life, the blow was not just physical, but emotional and spiritual as well. Honestly, I didn’t suffer just physical pain, but also the even more profound pain of the death of my delusion of invincibility and the pride of productivity. These are subtle but deeply ingrained identity issues. I would’ve told you that my identity was firmly rooted in Christ, and there are significant ways in which it was, but underneath were artifacts of self-reliance.
Now, here’s what happens in times of suffering. When the thing you have been trusting (whether you knew it or not) is laid to waste, you don’t suffer just the loss of that thing; you also suffer the loss of the identity and security that it provided. This may not make sense to you if right now you are going through something that you wouldn’t have planned for yourself, but the weakness that is now a part of my regular life has been a huge instrument of God’s grace (see 2 Cor. 12:9.) It has done two things for me. First, it has exposed an idol of self I did not know was there. Pride in my physical heath and my ability to produce made me take credit for what I couldn’t have produced on my own. God created and controls my physical body, and God has given me the gifts that I employ every day. Physical health and productivity should produce deeper gratitude and worship, not self-reliance and pride in productivity. I am thankful for what my weakness has exposed and for being freed by grace from having to prove any longer that I am what I think I am.
But there’s a second thing that has been wonderful to understand. Perhaps we curse physical weakness because we are uncomfortable with placing our trust in God. Let me explain. Weakness simply demonstrates what has been true all along: we are completely dependent on God for life and breath and everything else. Weakness was not the end for me, but a new beginning, because weakness provides the context in which true strength is found. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that he’ll boast in his weakness. It sounds weird and crazy when you first read it, but it’s not. He has come to know that God’s “power is made perfect” in his weakness. You see, weakness is not what you and I should be afraid of. We should fear our delusion of strength. Strong people tend not to reach out for help, because they think they don’t need it. When you have been proven weak, you tap into the endless resources of divine power that are yours in Christ. In my weakness I have known strength that I never knew before.
The second thing that shaped the way I suffered physically was unrealistic expectations. Suffering shouldn’t surprise us, but it almost always does, and it surely surprised me. Now, this is humbling to admit because I wrote a book about living with the reality of the fall in view.1 I did go into my sickness with my theology in the right place. I did believe that I lived in a groaning world crying out for redemption, but it was battling with something else inside me. There was this expectation that I would always be as I had been, that is, that I would always be strong and healthy. There was little room in my life, family, and ministry plans for weakness within or trouble without. In fact, there was no room for any disruption at all. So much of the way I thought about myself and planned was based on the unrealistic expectation that I would continue to escape the regular disruption of one’s life and plans that happens in a world that doesn’t operate as God designed it to operate.
I wasn’t singled out; God hadn’t forgotten me or turned his back. I wasn’t being punished for my choices, and I wasn’t receiving the expected consequences for poor decisions. My story is about the regular things that happen to us all because we live in a world that has been dramatically damaged by sin. In this world sickness and disease live, and our bodies break down or don’t function properly. In this world pain, sometimes chronic and sometimes acute, assaults us and makes life nearly unlivable. We live in a broken world where people die, food decays, wars rage, governments are corrupt, people take what isn’t theirs and inflict violence on one another, spouses act hatefully toward each another, children are abused instead of protected, people slowly die of starvation or die suddenly from disease, sexual and gender confusion lives, drugs addict and destroy, gossip destroys reputations, lust and greed control hearts, bitterness grows like a cancer, and the list could go on and on.
The Bible doesn’t pull any punches. At every turn, it informs and warns us about the nature of the world, which is the address where we all live. Whether it’s a dramatic narrative of life, or a doctrine that informs, or a wisdom principle about how to live well, Scripture works to prepare us, not so we would live in fear, but so we will be ready for the things we will all face. God gives us everything we need so that we will live with realistic expectations and so that moments of difficulty will not be full of shock, fear, and panic, but experienced with faith, calm, and confident choices.
Although I had right theology in place, somehow, at street level, my expectations were unrealistic, and unrealistic expectations always make suffering harder. My point is that I am a living example of the truth that you and I never suffer just the thing that we’re suffering, but we also suffer the way that we’re suffering it. Each of us brings to our suffering things that shape the way that we suffer. We all suffer, but we don’t suffer the same way, because our suffering is shaped by what we carry into the difficulties that come our way.
Here’s what is so important to understand, and what may be the principal contribution of this book: your suffering is more powerfully shaped by what’s in your heart than by what’s in your body or in the world around you. Now, don’t misunderstand what I am saying. My suffering was real, the dysfunction in my body was real, the damage to my kidneys is real, the pain I went through was horribly real, and the weakness that is now my normal life is real. But the way that I experienced all those harsh realities was shaped by the thoughts, desires, dreams, expectations, cravings, fears, and assumptions of my heart. The same is true for you. Your responses to the situations in your life, whether physical, relational, or circumstantial, are always more determined by what is inside you (your heart) than by the things you are facing. This is why people have dramatically different responses to the same situations of difficulty. This is why the writer of Proverbs says:
Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life. (Prov. 4:23)
Like a stream, your attitudes, choices, reactions, decisions, and responses to whatever you are facing flow out of your heart. The heart is the center of your personhood. The heart is your causal core, as dry soil soaks in the liquid of a stream. Suffering draws out the true thoughts, attitudes, assumptions, and desires of your heart. So it’s helpful to consider the kinds of things we bring to our suffering that cause us to trouble our own trouble.
What Do You Bring to Your Suffering?
Following is a suggestive, not exhaustive, list of the kinds of things that we bring to moments of suffering that deepen the pain of the painful thing we are facing.
1. Poor Theology
Remember that every human being thinks and lives theologically. Whether you’re aware of it or not, you carry around a well-developed personal worldview that shapes the way you interpret and deal with everything that comes your way. That worldview gives some kind of answer to questions like: Who is God? What is he doing? Why is he doing what he’s doing? Who am I? What is the reason for my life? What does it look like to live a successful life? What is right and wrong? Why do certain things happen? Where are hope, purpose, and motivation to be found? Again, this is not an exhaustive list but representative of the kinds of questions that everybody asks and somehow answers.
Since your thoughts always precede and determine your actions, the theology you carry into times of suffering and trial are very, very important. Let me give you two examples of how bad theology worsens your experience of suffering. The first goes like this: I am suffering because God is punishing me for my sin.
Sue had to deal not only with a very serious disease that had invaded her body, but also with paralyzing guilt and shame. Why, you may ask? Because Sue was convinced that her disease was God’s punishment for bad choices and decisions she had made. In a time when she needed to run to God, she did her best to hide from him and to hide from his people. She reasoned that her job was to endure the punishment she deserved.
Clearly, thinking like Sue’s is rooted in very bad theology. The message of Scripture is that every piece of the guilt, shame, and punishment for our sin was completely and once for all carried by Christ. This means there is no more condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (see Rom. 8:1–4). So our suffering is not punitive, that is, not a direct punishment for sins we have committed.
How discouraging not only to go through hard and maybe even life-altering circumstances but also to think you are going through those things because you’ve fallen short of God’s standard. It’s hard to run to God for help, to rest in his care, to be assured of his love, and to believe that his mercies are constantly available and new every day when you’re convinced you’re being punished by him. And it’s hard to reach out for God’s grace when you think he’s giving you what you deserve. The Bible never interprets our suffering this way; in fact, it teaches the opposite. Rather than suffering being connected to the bad things we have done, Scripture connects trials and difficulty to the good things God wants for us and is working to produce in us (see James 1:2–4).
The second example flows out of a poor understanding of Romans 8:28, which says, “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Sadly, this verse has been interpreted by many to promise that everything you go through will turn out all right in the end. This interpretation leads people to harbor unrealistic expectations of a happy ending to something they are suffering, and in so doing, causes them to think that God has failed to deliver what he has promised when suffering continues or leaves them with lives that are forever altered.
Jim was sure, because of what he had been taught that Romans 8:28 promised, that what he had lost would surely be returned. Because of the fraud of someone he trusted, Jim had lost everything he’d worked for. He went from being a wealthy executive to an hourly laborer, and during the first few years he was motivated by the thought that it would all turn out for the best. But as year lapped upon year, Jim got more discouraged and angry. He drifted away from his small group and eventually quit going to church altogether. Bitterness with God came from wrongly understood expectations, and those expectations in the end had a much greater impact on Jim’s life than the terrible loss he’d suffered.
When people lift Romans 8:28 out of its immediate context, they understand it to mean what it does not mean. The way to understand any single Bible passage is to remember that Scripture interprets Scripture. The key to understanding the true hope of this passage is to understand the “good” that Paul is writing about. Verses 29 and 30 tell us. The “good” that is guaranteed in this passage is our redemption. Even before he made the world, God made the decision that his work in us would be completed no matter what. This means that the grace you and I reach out for in our times of trouble is never shaky or at risk; it is a present expression of a plan that was settled before this world began. It is so good to know that when things in you and around you have been damaged or compromised, nothing can damage, interrupt, or stop your true security, which is found in God and his grace poured out for you. This proper understanding of this wonderful passage gives hope even when you look around and have no hope.
I have given you just two examples of the powerful influence that poor theology will have on the way you suffer through what is already hard on its own. Sue and Jim not only were suffering but were victims of the bad theology that they brought to that difficulty.
2. Doubt of God
Suffering doesn’t so much change your heart as expose what has been in your heart all along. Difficulty has an amazing ability to reveal what’s inside us. Trials reveal your true thoughts and desires, where you have been looking for life, where you have sought meaning, and where you have looked to give you hope. Suffering will always expose the true nature of your relationship to and communion with God. I won’t say much here, because a later chapter is dedicated to this topic, but your suffering will be all the more painful if you question the presence, promises, goodness, or faithfulness of God.
3. Unrealistic Expectations of Life
I wrote in this first chapter of my unrealistic expectations, but I want to put this topic of unrealistic expectations into two categories that I think linger unrecognized and unaddressed by many. First is the expectation that what is will always be. In Romans 8:21 we read that the world we now live in is in “bondage to corruption.” Paul means that decay is an ever-present reality. Nothing remains the same. Bodies grow old, friendships sour, marriages grow distant, churches fall into difficulty, government lurches into corruption. Somehow, someway, all the good things around us are under constant attack. Change is a constant reality. But we all tend to get lulled into thinking that what we have today will be with us tomorrow and the tomorrows that follow.
The second thing concerning expectations is that we tend not to take seriously the dramatic brokenness of the world we live in. Romans 8:22 tells us that we live in a “groaning” world. You groan when you feel weak. You groan when you are in pain. You groan when something has been damaged. You groan when you are discouraged. You groan when you wonder if what has caused you to groan will ever end. You groan when you can’t find words to express your cries. If you don’t take seriously the groaning condition of our world, you will live with naive expectations of what your life will be, you will be unprepared for the trouble that comes your way, and you will be susceptible to the myriad of temptations that come your way.
4. Unrealistic Expectations of Others
We do forget that everyone around us is a sinner, that no one has consistently correct thoughts, completely pure desires, or regularly pure motives. Even if you’re surrounded by believers, it’s important to remember that although the dominating power of sin has been broken in them, the presence of sin still remains, even though it is being progressively rooted out by God’s grace. That means we are all sinned against, and we all sin against others. All of us deal with relational misunderstanding, conflict, hurt, misjudgment, and rejection.
It never works to turn a person into your personal messiah. It never works to look to another for your identity. It never works to ask people to give you meaning and purpose. It is unrealistic to look to someone for inner peace. It never goes well when you ask another flawed human being to be the source of your happiness. There is an ever-faithful Messiah, and no one around you is capable of taking his place and doing for you what he alone can do.
Suffering is intensified when we elevate people too high in our hearts and then they fail us.
5. Pride
By pride here, I mean not the pride of arrogance but rather the pride of self-reliance. There are many people who, like me, mistake self-confidence for faith in Christ. We’re proud of our physical strength and health, our sharp minds, our social abilities, our ability to lead and control, and our successes. In this way we tend to take credit for things we could never produce or achieve on our own. We forget that every cell in our body and every neuron in our brain is dependent on God. We forget that every success we’ve achieved has depended on forces we could never control, and we forget that all our natural abilities are gifts from God. Taking too much credit always leads to placing too much trust in yourself.
When you live self-reliantly, and the unexpected, the unplanned, the unwanted, or the painful comes your way, you panic. You panic because suddenly you’re faced with your smallness, weakness, and vulnerability. You panic because you feel unprepared and unable. You panic because things are out of your control. You panic because you can’t understand or make sense of what is going on. You panic because the way out is unclear. You panic because you just don’t know what to do.
Suffering exposes the danger of self-reliance. It reminds us that we were not designed to live independently but in dependence on God and others. This is true not just because sin has entered the world; it was true of Adam and Eve in a perfect world, because it’s how God designed people to live.
6. Materialism
This word begs definition. By materialism, I don’t mean that you’re chasing after the idol of material things, that you’re always craving the next physical thing. I’m thinking here of our tendency to place too much of our security and hope in physical things, in our house and possessions or the health of our body or in our job, bank account, or retirement plan.
Every human being looks to something for security. When you’ve looked to physical things for your security, and those things fail you or are taken away, you lose that fundamental sense of well-being that everyone longs for. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve counseled who lost themselves when they lost their job.
The only safe place to look for a sturdy well-being of heart is the Creator. The material things God created can never do for you what only God can do. When you’ve been asking material things to give you what they were never meant to give, the loss of those things will be an even more crushing blow than the physical loss.
7. Selfism
As I’ve said and written before, the DNA of sin is selfishness (see 2 Cor. 5:15). Sin causes us to stick ourselves in the center of our world and make life all about us. It causes us to reduce the field of our daily concerns to the small agenda of our wants, our needs, and our feelings. Sin causes us to be driven by selfish desires, a spirit of entitlement, and a silent list of demands. Sin causes us to want our own way, to want sovereignty over things we weren’t designed to control, and to want to coerce others into the service of our agenda. None of us, this side of eternity, is able to completely escape the self-ism of sin. This heart tendency toward functional me-ism always makes suffering more difficult.
Suffering confronts us with the fact that life is not about us but about God. It is not about our glory but his. It’s not first about our pleasure but about his. It’s not about our plans for us but about his will for us. It’s not about our control but his. It’s not about our little kingdoms but about his. It’s not about our successes but about the display of his majesty.
If life were about us and controlled by us, we would see to it that we never suffer. The crisis of faith that often accompanies suffering is the result of a collision between our will and God’s will and our glory and his glory. In our selfishness we can’t see suffering of any kind as good, so we begin to question whether God, who has allowed it into our lives, is good. Putting yourself in the center will make the trouble you face all the more troublesome.
Sarah was facing very hard things. She had been plotted against and abandoned by her husband, she had lost custody of her children, and she had been left financially destitute. What had been done to her was horribly wrong, but her emotional and spiritual devastation was the result not only of the terrible wrongs that had been done to her but also of critical beliefs that she had carried into those wrongs. Sarah was a believer, but at street level, God was neither the source of her security nor her hope. She had married into wealth and luxury; she had a beautiful house and a great circle of friends. It was the good life, not the gospel, that got her up every morning. It was all the things around her and all the things she experienced that made her happy. The gospel of Jesus Christ was her theology but didn’t provide security for her heart or drive the way that she lived. She understood that she had been forgiven by grace and would spend an eternity with the Lord, but there was a huge gap in the middle of her grasp of the gospel. So her life became her personal messiah, giving her what it was never meant to give.
When Henry walked out never to return and took literally everything with him, Sarah didn’t lose just Henry, the house, and the kids—she lost herself. As I listened to Sarah talk, I realized that what made this horrible sin against her even more devastating was that in losing all these things, Sarah lost her functional savior, and in losing her functional savior, she lost her will to go on. And it was when Sarah got hold of this truth that her heart began to lift, her hope began to return, and she decided to live again.
It really is true that we never come empty-handed to any experience. And we surely always drag something into the suffering that enters our door. What about you? What are you carrying around that has the power to cause you to trouble your own trouble? What has the power to allow you to forget that no matter what painful thing you’re enduring, as God’s child it’s impossible for you to endure it all by yourself? The One who created this world and rules it with wisdom, righteousness, and love is in you, with you, and for you, and nothing has the power to separate you from his love.
Review and Reflect
1. How are trust and identity connected? What have you put your trust in other than God?
2. Paul Tripp writes, “We should fear our delusion of strength”. Considering the chapter as a whole, what does this mean?
3. “Scripture works to prepare us, not so we would live in fear, but so we will be ready for the things we will all face”. Identify some passages or biblical stories to cling to in moments of suffering.
4. Have you questioned God regarding your suffering because you’ve thought it was punishment? What Scripture verses refute this belief?
5. Consider the things that can be brought to your suffering (poor theology, doubt of God, unrealistic expectations of life and of others, pride, materialism, and selfism). Pray that the Lord would expose your weakness and dependency and show you his care.
Heart Reset
Romans 8:1–4
2 Corinthians 12:9
James 1:2–4
1. Paul David Tripp, Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2009).