A large amount of people I know right now are going through some difficulty or burden recently. Almost every day for the past two weeks, I've had a couple people ask me to keep their loved ones in my prayers as they struggle through illness, or mourn the death of someone close to them. I'm thankful that this week has been relatively free for me, as that has given me more time to pray for these people.
As I've been praying, I've also been thinking of the nature of suffering and pain. I'm not the first one to wonder why suffering exists, and I am no closer to uncovering an answer, for the Lord Himself tells us: my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. (Is 55:8) While I cannot know the Lord's motives in this life, it has struck me that suffering and pain affects both non-believers and believers, but its effects are different for each group.
Non-believers often times lack belief because they find no need for God in their lives. Their logic makes perfect sense from a utilitarian point of view: why would I spend time in praise and make sacrifices of my own pleasure if it is not going to add any value to my life. In other words, the non-believer who lacks faith thinks that his or her life is not broke, so why bother with God to fix it?
Then disaster strikes these people's lives like a thief in the night. There's a truism that says "there are no atheists in foxholes." I would say that very few non-believers can deny God whenever suffering occurs, whether it is on a battlefield or the waiting area of an emergency room. Suffering and pain draw the non-believer into God's redemptive and protective embrace. It makes he or she realize just how fragile his or her earthly life is, how it is built on the shifting sands if it is not built on the rock that is our Heavenly Father. The pain of grief and despair is not just useful for the salvation of the non-believer, indeed it is essential. For it is only in humbling ourselves and falling to our knees in vulnerability that can we reconcile ourselves to God, or, rather, God can reconcile us to Himself.
If that is the usefulness of pain and suffering for the non-believer, then what can be gained from the trials of the devout? If disaster for the denier is akin to surgery, then for the Christian it is more analogous to a checkup. We need to be constantly reminded just how weak we are without the Lord. If everything was always wonderful, would our love for God be unconditional, like His is for us, or would it begin to grow conditional on the goodness in our lives? After a while, would we even give thanks to God anymore at all, or might we begin to reason that we've created our own fortunes of our own accord?
As humans, we are conditioned to see the good as a blessing and the bad as a curse. Is it not true, however, that sometimes the opposite is the case? The bad keeps us humble, while the good makes us prideful. The bad makes us temperate, while the good makes us gluttonous. The bad nurtures our virtues, while the good grows our vices.
That is not to say that we ought to reject and run from the good things of our life. Good provides us with goodness because He wants our joy to be complete. (Jn 16:24) That complete joy, however, comes not from ourselves or even from the things He provides. It comes from God and being one in God. We can only be in God when we offer up our sufferings and pain as a testament to our complete dependence on His Providence. Suffering does not necessarily mean that we are being punished. In the Book of Job, God allows the devil to test the righteous Job with all manner of disasters to him and his family in order to prove that his love for God is not a product of the things God provides but rather an unconditional love. Like Job, we too can sometimes be weak in the face of adversity and wonder whether God is just and loving. But just as Job repents and trusts in the Lord, we too can come to see that our suffering is purposeful in that it bring us closer to God!
Even Jesus asked, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Father that He remove His suffering. (Lk 22:42) In Jesus, we have our most clear example of the necessity and power of pain and suffering. Ultimately, Christ offered us His pain to the Lord, and, in so doing, opened the gates of Heaven to us. May we strive to accept our suffering with as much thanks to God that we accept our happiness.
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