Suffering gets a bad rap. People refuse to trust in God because there is suffering, and this leaves them without any hope of a life lived outside the confining walls that suffering erects around them. They react to the view that suffering is unjust and unfair and in doing so they confine themselves to no other alternative. Whereas the person who understands that suffering is simply a reality of being human — a condition like that of the lungs requiring it to breath, a condition of the heart that requires it to beat, or a condition of the body that requires it to age — this person simply accepts the reality of suffering and looks for its redemption.
Another condition of life is the one that requires — even demands — that we associate with other humans in community. We are a species that runs in packs. It is natural for us to gather our friends around us and move through life in association in family groups. We are drawn to others. It is inherent in our sexuality. It is a dominate need. Emotionally we want connections. We are compelled to parent. We are created for love.
Have you ever thought about the connection between the condition of suffering and the capability to love? The Bible makes this connection but often it communicates this truth by means of a theme. A theme tells its story over pages and chapters and larger divisions. With themes we link what we read in the brief episodes back to the huge reams of the context of the grand narrative. These episodes put the flesh on the mega-narrative. This grand story puts suffering in its context. Suffering must be located in the human story the same way breathing is — the same way love is.
One of these episodes in Scripture is in 2 Corinthians. The early chapters of this brief letter flow together and the language that keep its context connected is the language of comfort and suffering. It begins with a message about comfort. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Comfort is essential to the context of suffering — how Christ fits into this context and how we fit into this context. Comfort comes in the form of a symptom — a symptom of love.
One reality inherent in this context is that the capacity to receive comfort is contingent on the suffering in our circumstances. If you think about it, without suffering we would not be receptive to love. We would not think we need it! Our self-sufficiency would rely on ambition — survival of the fittest — rather than the social instinct. We would give ourselves to trampling over the bodies on the way to being king of the hill and we would hoard love-counterfeits to bring us pleasure and replace the love instinct. But the lessons of vulnerability, frailty, and need taught by the stern teacher whose name is “Suffering” conditions us to receive comfort and comfort is the sister of love. The curriculum of suffering accumulates into the competency of love.
This is true on the local level — the level of the human condition — and it is true on the heavenly level which is why Jesus came suffering. He could not come and be human without it. And he could not come and be the Savior for humans without it.
W. Stephen Williams © July 9, 2024