As we reflect upon "the problem of pain," there begins to emerge our of all the questions, and discussion regarding human pain and suffering 2 basic issues, or 2 basic points of focus.
The FIRST POINT upon which we can focus and upon which we have focused is the question of CAUSE. What causes human pain? Why do I suffer? Two weeks ago we looked specifically at the relationship between suffering and punishment by God for our sin and came up short on that as an explanation for all human suffering. Last week we ask the classic question of the suffer, "Why?" and came away feeling presumptuous for even thinking we could understand the reason even if God would tell us. Both weeks Scripture has sidestepped our questions regarding the cause of human suffering.
That leads to a SECOND ISSUE that emerges which is very different from the first. It is not the question of cause but of MY RESPONSE. Rather than looking back, we look forward and say, "Now how will I respond to what has happened to me?"
In our text for today, Jesus very explicitly teaches us the difference between these 2 approaches. The disciples come to him with all kinds of questions about the cause of this man's blindness: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" It was the impulse to understand, to figure out why, and to even do that on the basis of who sinned. But Jesus very clearly diverts their focus from looking back to looking ahead. "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him." Jesus says, "Don't focus upon the cause; look ahead to the purpose. What are the works of God to which your pain and suffering might be pointing you? Consider the direction in which you are looking."
I recently read an interview with a doctor who works with people who have Hansens disease, or leprosy, one of the cruelest diseases there is, in that people can not even feel their pain, and so go about mutilating their bodies because their bodies' warning system, namely pain, does not function for them. The problems for these people are immense. Dr. Paul Brand was asked in this interview to give examples of people who had undergone tremendous suffering.
After he had cited some examples in detail, he was asked whether the suffering of these people had, in general, turned them toward God or away from God. After some hesitation he said that there was no common reaction. Some, he said, grew closer to God, and others bitterly drifted away from Him.
But the difference, he said, depended upon THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD CAUSE AND RESPONSE. Those who kept looking back, asking "Why did this happen? What did I do to deserve this? Am I being punished? Where is the justice in life?" usually were the ones to bitterly turn away from God and resign themselves to fatalistic despair.
The sufferers who grew closer to God in their suffering were those who could put the question of cause behind them and focus on their response. They were the ones who could say to themselves, "OK, this suffering is terrible, and it hurts, and it isn't fair, there is no justice, OK!! But now I face a challenge: Can I look ahead and with God's help, seek to find His work, His glory, His goodness, in every moment of my life, both moments of pleasure and pain?"
A famous preacher regularly inspires his people to a positive attitude with this statement: "When faced with a mountain, I will not quit, however difficult, however painful. I will keep on striving until I climb over, find a pass-through tunnel underneath -- or, maybe simply stay and turn the mountain into a gold mine, with God's help." We've got to be able to look ahead and climb the mountain, or turn our mountain into a gold mine.
This morning I'd like to share with you 2 fundamental truths of the Christian faith which can enable you to have a positive, forward-looking attitude toward pain and suffering.
The first fact of Christianity that gives us the potential to get beyond the past and beyond our questions and to positively build upon our pain and trials is that everything in our lives is purposeful. Nothing happens to us by accident. Your life is the unfolding of the plan of God for you. Everything has a meaning.
Now, as I've said before, just because everything that happens to us is controlled by God and fits into an eternal plan of God for our lives, that doesn't mean that God likes our pain and suffering. And I don't want to get into that whole relationship between what God wills and what God permits because of the freedom He has given to us despite our sin.
But even leaving all those questions open, the fact is that God is still in ultimate control of every moment and event of our lives. And His plan is purposeful and meaningful. God can take what is as foreign to His love as our pain and suffering and give it meaning and purpose. If we can have the courage to believe that, we are on the way to climbing the mountain of our pain, or of turning our mountain into gold -- for it is a mountain placed there by God.
If this world is not controlled by a loving God, and if life is simply a series of accidents that happen with no plan or design of a higher being, then the floodgates are opened to our questions of "Why? Where's the justice? What's the use of continuing?"
But to believe FROM THE START that life does have meaning, that God is working out in every detail, His perfect plan for us, even in an imperfect world, to believe that is to have within us the potential for turning the corner on the past; for shutting off the questions that haunt and kill; it is to have within us the potential for looking ahead, determined to live positively and grow, NOT ONLY IN SPITE of OUR PAIN, but EVEN BECAUSE OF IT.
And that leads to a SECOND TRUTH of Scripture that we must remember if we are to be the victors over, and not the victims of, OUR PAIN. Not only does God have a purpose for our pain, but our pain itself can be positive and creative.. Pain has a value of its own.
That's the assumption behind the words of James, "Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James says that our pain is reason for joy.
Now James is either morbidly deranged, or he understands something very deep about pain, namely that PAIN IS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF BECOMING A WHOLE PERSON. How does a person really become whole and mature and complete? -- with age? with success? with power? with money? James says, "It's the trials of life that produce the patience, which, when it has had its full effect, makes you perfect and complete and whole and mature.
Maturity and wholeness in life are the by-products of dealing courageously with all of life's circumstances, the joys and the pains, the successes and failures, the dreams realized and the dreams shattered. The price of maturity is pain. The depth of a person is in direct correlation to the pain he has courageously and positively endured.
This whole notion is very foreign to our contemporary world. We live in a pain-fleeing world, a world that puts the highest premium on doing what ever we have to do to avoid pain. The assumption is that pain and discomfort are inherently bad. Our medicine cabinets are miniature drug stores, with Murine for tired eyes and Bengay for tired muscles. Our cars must have head room for Wilt Chamberlain, our mattresses can be firm, extra firm, royally firm, or supremely firm. But those are only superficial examples.
There are more subtle symptoms of our fundamental misunderstanding of pain: For example, it's virtually an unchallenged assumption today that the best way to raise your children is to keep them from as many painful experiences as possible.
Keep them from anything that might harm them, emotionally, physically, socially. And then you will have a healthy child. Health equals a positive, supportive, loving, painfree environment. But a generation of children who have grown up now in affluence and relatively little pain appears to be the worse for it, not the better.
Modern prophets of personality development would do well to listen to James as he teaches us THERE IS NO PAINLESS WAY TO WHOLENESS. The price of becoming a whole person is experiencing the whole range of human joy and sorrow, and being deepened by it, not defeated, being a victor, not a victim.
And when we understand that -- that pain itself is indispensable in the forming of our character, then we have a new light upon the way God deals with us. C.S. Lewis talks in his book, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, about the difference between love and kindness in God. He says,
"Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness ...Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering ... It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: but with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes."
He goes on and speaks of people who are constantly challenging God's love. He says, what often lies behind their challenge is their wish that God be "not so much a Father in Heaven as a grand-father in heaven -- a person of senile benevolence, who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves," and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all."
Life is deeper than that! And God's love for us has more backbone than that! The question is: do we have the courage to dig deep into our pain and deal with it and accept it and move beyond it and be deepened by it? ...to the point that we can "count it all joy" that we live in a world ruled by God so totally that even our suffering can be creative and positive and growth producing?
We could easily end here. But it's not enough to simply know in our heads these 2 great truths that God is in control of our lives, and that (2) suffering can be inherently good and creative. That in itself will not make us forward looking, mountain climbing Christians. We have to decide on how we will approach life.
We have to decide whether we want to go thru life looking back or looking forward, whether to cripple ourself with bitterness and anger, or with guilt and regret, or with resentment at the injustice of life; or whether to let go of our questions, and turn the corner on our feelings, and positively set out to climb the mountains of our pain, knowing that even they are the works of God.
That's a decision each of us has to make. Some of you have decided to deal with your pain. You are the beautiful people of this world. And you have grown closer to God and to other people, and life is good, in spite of and sometimes even because of your pain.
Others of you are dying a slow death because you have succumb to life's pain and sorrow. You have let it defeat you, instead of deepen you. And you have become afraid of life. It has become your enemy.
The word of James is that nothing in life need defeat us. It's how we choose to react to the events of life, not the events themselves, that determines our feelings and our reactions and our attitudes.
Paul says, "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me." Do you have the courage to look ahead this morning? the poise to turn from the questions of cause, and from the futility of dwelling on the past, to positively look for purpose that only a loving God in heaven could have for our lives?
The choice is yours. May God grant you the courage to climb the mountain, or the wisdom to turn it into gold.
