especially in the Western world, has become infused with constant thoughts of comfort, wellness, and peace with the surrounding society. There has been so much said by television preachers about a “prosperity gospel”—if I’m faithful to Jesus he will be faithful to me by giving me my fair share of health and wealth. Surely, it’s wrongly argued, the Master doesn’t want to be represented in an advanced culture by second-class citizens deeply disliked by the general public.
If that kind of thinking is yours, and you’re satisfied with such “worldly” wisdom parading as the Christian gospel, please don’t read on. You won’t like what you find. You’ll encounter unwelcome straight talk about suffering being central to God’s own experience with the fallen creation and Christians very calling to be God’s representatives. Assumed everywhere in what follows are two central truths which I understand to be at the heart of biblical revelation: (1) Suffering lies at the core of God’s very being because of the divine love; and (2) Suffering is central to who Christians are supposed to be in this fallen world because of their imitating the ways of Jesus.
These central truths are hardly welcome in rich and self-seeking cultures, sometimes not even in the church that supposedly represents the loving God who self-sacrificed in Jesus Christ. They just don’t fit and will never be popular, but there will be no compromise here. Truth is what it is, and we are supposed to be the disciples we are supposed to be, pain and all.
If you prefer to move through life with ease and expect God to lavish you with all good things as rewards for believing, find a different book to read—but beware. At some point, things will be very different than you think and want!
Living in Tension
If you will settle for only “clean” answers to complex questions, an approach to God and suffering free of mental tension, you won’t find those here—or in the Bible. The two constant poles of the existing tension are these. (1) Suffering is very real, basic to the fallen human condition, including to followers of Jesus. (2) Suffering is not the last word; the last word is God’s word of hope that there is the possibility of a suffering-free destiny beyond this fallen life. Christian faith stands between these poles, affirming both and seeking to serve present needs while living in the tension on the way.
Death and life form a constant continuum, the flower fading after it has bloomed beautifully. Bodies and whole societies bleed in great pain and cling to hope that soon the kingdom of God will be all in all. For Christian faith, the reality of the first must not be glossed over; and the hope of the second must somehow color all that we think and do.
What, then, is the difficult task of the faithful in the meantime, in the present time when suffering still goes on and the kingdom of rest and peace is still only an anticipation? It’s “to be entirely realistic about the actuality of human suffering and at the same time affirm that the end of existence nevertheless transcends suffering.”10
If you will settle for only “clean” answers to complex questions, know that you won’t find them here.
I have one final confession. This book was written in the United States, a place of relative comfort and safety, the place where some 5 percent of the world’s people consume about 40 percent of the world’s natural resources. In the West, the “developed” world, there is an extraordinary effort to keep the wretched out of public view. I’ve seen some of the worst in Africa with an AIDS orphan ministry I’ve served. Still, on an everyday basis, I’ve experienced and even seen little real suffering from which I wasn’t safely insulated.
It’s so easy for me, maybe the average North American, to break the tension, subtly denying suffering and focusing on the hope of heaven. However, to do so is to walk away from the compassionate God who is committed to the orphan and widow, to the starving and abused, to the spiritually empty and lost, to the suffering world that Christians are called to address in the name of Jesus. Our faith walk with the Master can be sure and heaven-bound, but being faithful to the high calling of God’s ministering children will be a “jagged journey.”
C. S. Lewis wrote The Problem of Pain, a superb treatment of suffering in the Christian life. Years later, after his wife had died of bone cancer, he wrote A Grief Observed under a pseudonym. A shattering experience had sobered and colored his perspective. He said, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”
Suffering comes. It’s the jaggedness of the faith journey for individuals and the whole body of Christ. Any denying that the church will, even needs to suffer for the gospel of Christ will only add to the indifference of today’s non-church public and the mass exodus of the young from the traditional church. Major research has revealed a few ideas on how to retain this departing generation.
One key idea is for Christian leaders to take risks, to really be the suffering church of Christ. As researcher David Kinnaman insists: “The radical shape of God’s love is found at Christianity’s pulsating core: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. . . . Radical faith is about embodying the self-giving love of Jesus Christ—a love that risks suffering and matters more than life itself. Is Christianity worth the risk? Young people are watching and waiting to find out.”11
I’ve lived a relatively conventional and “safe” faith life. Even so, I confess that I agree fully with Kinnaman. Suffering defines God’s loving and risking heart on our behalf, and it defines our calling to be God’s self-giving people in this present world. We see the people of God struggling throughout the Bible to come to terms with how suffering relates to God and the mission of God’s people. The questions raised are many and, to be frank, the Bible appears to give mixed answers to some of them. It also gives a few truth anchors. To these we now turn.
The Bible Gives Us Both Mixed Messages and Sure Anchors
God is completely sovereign, infinite in wisdom, and perfect in love. There is a dilemma related to this biblical teaching, however. It has been put this way: “God in his love always wills what is best for us. In his wisdom he always knows what is best, and in his sovereignty he has the power to bring it about.”12 But will God bring the best about, at least in the short-term? Apparently not.
We can say that all sin brings suffering, but we cannot turn the words inside out and say that all suffering comes from sin, even though this latter judgment dies a hard death.13 Both viewpoints appear in the Bible among its mixed messages. Fortunately, the Bible also presents several sure anchors of truth.
The journey of God’s people in this world has never been easy. After the tragic episode in the garden of Eden, pain, doubt, and toil have marked human life. Even so, the Bible insists that there is a path of faith that we can walk successfully and joyfully. It rises above the fear of delusion and doesn’t collapse under the weight of despair, although it doesn’t escape suffering. The path of the Christian sufferer is jagged as it tracks along the jolting terrain of life in this world.
This unfortunate circumstance of suffering is not optional. Even so, with God’s guidance and resources available, it’s a path that can be traveled successfully, yes, even joyfully. The journey is helped by a series of biblical signposts that keep us on track. Beware, however, that the road is not always clear. The messages sometimes appear mixed within the Bible itself. We do, however, find in the sacred pages a few anchors of truth that can stabilize our faith when the storms of life come.
The Biblical Pathway
Suffering is a subject that preoccupies many of the biblical writers. It comes up constantly in the Old
