Three bad and three good responses to suffering
As Easter approaches, we all look forward to Resurrection Sunday. We love to celebrate Christ's power and victory over death. Let us also remember, however, that before Easter Sunday comes Good Friday. Before resurrection, comes suffering and death.
How do you respond to your own suffering? Usually, most of us want to escape suffering as quickly as possible.
How do you respond to another person's suffering? If it's someone we know, we want to help them and get them out of that place of suffering. If it's someone we don't know, it may not affect us too deeply and we can quickly forget about it.
Flee, fix, and ignore. All these responses are common responses to suffering.
None of them are the right one.
Let's start with our own personal suffering. The human response is to flee. Imagine for a moment if Jesus responded to his own suffering like most of humanity responds to ours, and fled from it.
Or how about the suffering of a friend? The human response is to fix. Imagine for a moment if Jesus responded to Lazarus' suffering like most of humanity responds to the suffering of friends, and rushed to his side to fix it right away.
Or how about the suffering of a stranger? The human response is to ignore. Imagine for a moment if Jesus responded to the suffering of strangers in the gospels like most humanity responds to the suffering of strangers, and didn't really let their pain affect him.
We would have a very different gospel.
Instead, we have...
Jesus walked on a little way. Then he knelt with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, don't make me suffer by drinking from this cup. But do what you want, and not what I want.”
~ Matthew 26:39
Jesus dearly loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. However, after receiving this news [of Lazarus' illness], He waited two more days where He was... Then Jesus arrived...and wept.
~ John 11:5-6, 17, 35
Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!”
~ Mark 1:41
What are we to make of this?
First, it is normal to not want to suffer. Even Jesus said he didn't want to suffer. But he was willing to suffer. Interestingly, we too are willing to suffer for the things we want - we suffer exercise for a healthy body, we suffer labour for a newborn life, we suffer dieting to lose weight, we suffer not buying everything we want now for the hope of a better retirement later. These are all worth suffering to us.
Are we also willing to suffer for the things God wants for our wellness, or for the benefit of others? For example, many important and Christlike character traits are formed only in the crucible of suffering. Healthy relationships require the sacrifice of ego, the process of which is a source of suffering. The wellbeing of people in developing nations will require people in developed nations consuming less and changing their lifestyle (this isn't really suffering, but we selfishly see it as that).
Second, when a friend suffers, let us acknowledge one selfish reason we want to alleviate their suffering so quickly is because watching them suffer makes us uncomfortable.
A while ago I wrote a devotional about finding the ashes and working for beauty in those broken places. However, thanks to a discussion we had one Sunday morning in church, I've come to realize I missed a step: find the ashes, sit in the ashes, then work for beauty. Let us not rush to fixing before acknowledging (and maybe even sharing) the pain and suffering being endured by others.
Finally, it's easy to feel disconnected from the suffering of a stranger or the suffering on the other side of the world. This is a tough one to address, because compassion is a heart issue, which means it's a God issue (we cannot change our own heart).
There was a time in my 20s when I realized I lacked compassion for the suffering of others, and took it to prayer. One of the first things God did is show me where my hardness of heart began, and it was with my own suffering. Our hearts get hurt, so we toughen up our heart to protect us from pain. The problem is, that callous rarely stops us from feeling our own pain, but it always stops us from feeling other people's pain.
PAUSE and REFLECT: how do you respond to suffering? Do you flee, fix, or ignore? I've done all three, and if I'm honest, I still quickly move to these responses.
Perhaps, though, Easter weekend offers us both a lesson and a path forward. We will not reach Resurrection Sunday without first travelling through Good Friday. Similarly, we will not experience shalom wellness and wholeness without first suffering, because we can't get there without dying to ego, apathy, and cowardice.
In our personal suffering, let us persevere without giving up.
In our friend-neighbours' suffering, let us first "be with" before we "go do" to fix.
In our stranger-neighbour's suffering (even those on the other side of the world), let us imagine how it might feel like to be them, and allow ourselves to feel their pain.
These three Good Friday responses are crucial if we want to experience the Easter Sunday resurrection of life and hope. In fact, we may find that if we follow this path, we can experience life and hope while we're still in the valley, because even in the valley of suffering, God prepares a table for us to experience his goodness. If you flee that valley, you will miss that table.
This Easter weekend, how might God be inviting you to walk the path of Jesus?
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Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash