About a month ago, in women’s bible study, we were talking about the persecution of the Hebrew Christians and someone said, “They really suffered. People being martyred today, they suffer. We just don’t suffer here in America.” After the usual “mmm-hmmms” of response that general statements in such studies always get, I piped up. “We suffer. We may not suffer like the martyrs and the starving, but we suffer. Loneliness is suffering. There are people in this room that want desperately to have children and they can’t, that is suffering. Our children get sick, sometimes very sick. We suffer.” Then I got the “mmm-hmmms.”
The more I think about it, the more I think that denying our suffering is dangerous. To deny our suffering in some ways is to deny the fall. Our lives aren’t perfect. Sin has broken our world, our relationships, our bodies and our minds. If we think that we have a great family and a great home, wonderful friends and community, no pain, no suffering and no anguish, what do we have to hope for?
I think you’re right on.
Suffering is an important component of the theology of our union with Christ. We are united with him in his suffering, in his death, in his resurrection. And it it only by this union that we can be called God’s children.
Precisely.
An important distinction I’ve been meditating on is how our suffering is not a punishment for our actions, but a general consequence of sin in our world.
There is a professor (who has experience true physical suffering multiple times in his life) here who will be teaching a class called Sickness and Suffering next semester that I’m keeping my eye on…
Sure the suffering looks different, but we experience it.
We absolutely suffer. Thanks for posting this.
Rob and I have been in the middle of an ongoing conversation about this for about three weeks now.
It is truly comforting to know that we can be honest about how miserable we are, and how hopeless our lives are. Then only to receive the promise that there was One who carried all our suffering for us, and that He will deliver us on That Day.
I think an important distinction might be between suffering and persecution. We are not particularly persecuted in America, although there is suffering because of sin, as you said. I was thinking about this this morning: the “persecution” in the US is more of cultural pressures to fit in. Do you think that’s why American Christians are sometimes so apathetic? Are we really just not standing up under “persecution”? I still don’t think it can compare to the man facing a death sentence for conversion in Afghanastan, but…
I’ve often wondered, like Laura, whether suffering from illness (even chronic, debilitating illness) is really the same thing referred to in 1 Peter as suffering for doing right or even the same as sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Those both seem to me to be the result of a choice to follow Him, not just the unavoidable consequences of sin in the world. Any thoughts?
Good post. (I don’t have any insights to add. Just thought I’d tell you that!)
I agree, great post. I have a family member who is not walking with the Lord, and every time I would spend enough time thinking about him to really pray, it would cause me terrible grief and sadness, so I often avoided prayer. One day I realized that God was calling me to suffer with Christ by entering into more frequent intercessory prayer, that this was one way I could “take up my cross” daily. Somehow realizing this helped me to embrace this call with joy (even though it still makes me weep). Suffering with Jesus has the power to transform us in ways that nothing else can, I think.