God Of Our Sorrows

This entry grew out of an e-mail I prepared for my NYU Bible Study group last Thursday morning. That evening we discussed suffering, and many suffering related topics. On the train ride home, I couldn't stop thinking about it because as anyone (any one of the 3 maybe 4 regular readers that I have that is) can attest, it's a subject near and dear to my heart.

Without further ado,

If we're talking about suffering, we would be remiss if we did not discuss the role perspective plays in the enduring and experiencing suffering.

Let me give an example. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, soon to be moved to my Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, I wake up at 5am to go out and do a running workout, hill sprints. It doesn't matter if it's -20 or 96 like this past Tuesday. The run must be done.

A sprint is an all-out effort. If you are keeping anything in reserve, if you are pacing yourself, if you are letting fear of death by heart failure hold you back, you are not sprinting. Hill sprints must be intense.

When I get home after this workout, I will lay on the floor and breathe heavily for 5-10 minutes, disoriented. Twice, I've vomitted after I finished running. Every single time, I feel like I should. When I finally get in the shower, I turn the water on its coldest setting and let it run over me. The cold is necessary to stop the lactic acid from burning through my muscles. It sometimes causes my body to spasm painfully.

Why am I describing in gruesome detail one of my workouts? I do it to illustrate a point. To understand suffering, we must understand its perspective and its purpose. Hill sprints are among my most painful workouts. But I plan out the previous day, sleeping at 10:30 to wake up at 5 so that I can perform this workout. As a matter of fact, I will be upset if I don't get this workout in.

Why? Because I have a goal in mind. I want to shave 3 minutes per mile off my 10k time by December. More than that, I do this because I have always been big and slow. I want to show the world, to show myself that I am no slave to genetics. It does not get to dictate to me how fast I can run. My soul and my character determine that.

Because I have that goal in mind, this pain and suffering is bearable. Enduring it becomes, dare I say? Easy.

How do we live our lives? Do not answer that question. Any spoken answer is worthless. The only answer of any value is the answer we live. Suffering is the crucible where our delusions and lies, the dross of an ethical life, beautifully lived, melts away. Suffering shows us as we are.

How do we live our lives? Or perhaps, why do we live our lives? What are our lives to us? I think for the vast portion of humanity, certainly Western and Westernized Civilization lives their lives to maximize a sensation of stupor and contentment. They don't want to live so much as they want to be sedated, to be numbed, put into a catatonic state by having things in life. What these things are makes no difference. The desire for another kilo of cocaine to snort or smoke and the desire to have a loving family and healthy children is no different here. The question is why? Most often people do these things because they believe it will make them happy. Anything that happens that upsets the future prospects of happiness is an abhorrence to them. Because it is written into the Constitution, it must be an ontological right of human beings.

No. Not really.

How, I wonder, would people, Christians, living for their own happiness read Ephesians 2:10? "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Or speaking of Christ in Colossians 1:16 "... all things were created by him and for him." Even last week in our study we read "To God's elect... chosen according to the foreknowledge of God... for the obedience to Jesus Christ..." And as it says elsewhere, we are not our own. We were bought at a price.

I think if we have this perspective on our suffering, that our lives are not centered on ourselves, it will have a profound impact on the particular way we approach the suffering, tragedies and disasters of our lives. If our ultimate concern is ourselves and the particular sensations of pain instead of its purpose, I think we will be deficient in our response to suffering. But if we understand that our life is only an instrument for God's glory, we can endure. What can the disastrous "Name it and Claim it" camp or the sickly saccarine positive thinking/ positive energy faction offer in competition with this? God has never promised a house for living, a job for earning, companions for loving or healing from dying but he has promised that he works in all things, for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. They may offer (false) promises of things to have in this life but do those hollow things compare with a God who not only knows our sorrows but is the Sovereing Lord who will use our pain and produce good; true, substantial, eternal good?


A word on feel-good pop Christianity for a moment. I hate every thing I have ever heard come out of Joel Osteen's program. I really cannot stand seeing his books in the Christian section of bookstores. The underlying premise of everything I have ever hear him say, of everything I have ever seen him write is that God wants to give you your best life now and just follow these positive principles and you can do it.

What would he say, pray tell, to a martyr of the faith? What would he say about a woman who after being brutally raped and beaten was then hacked to pieces by a mob of machetes because she would not deny Christ? What would he say about men imprisoned for decades because they had professed their faith? Positive thinking? No. There is no true, substantial similarity between the perspective of martyrs and the perspective of positivity. Martyrs have endured their suffering because I believe many of them have glimpsed the eternity that God has placed in their hearts. I have a conviction that many of them fixed their eyes on Jesus who endured much worse suffering than any of us will ever suffer and therein found comfort for their own struggles.

Perspective.

Martyrs endured beyond death. I believe they did it because they saw in their suffering God's enduring and sovereign hand moving towards the redemption of a broken world. And if I can work towards that, then any suffering I endure will be worth it.

Purpose.