The Jagged Journey: Suffering—God’s Heart and Our Calling

We Wish It Were Otherwise, But It Isn’t!

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. . . . Don’t blame fate when things go wrong—trouble doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s human! Mortals are born and breed for trouble as certainly as sparks fly upward.

Job 14:1-2; 5:7

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

The Princess Bride (1987)

This is a book I would have chosen not to write, but somehow there was no choice. It’s an unavoidable subject, God and human suffering. What a difficult and troubling combination of words! For those who believe in an all-powerful God, the suffering of anyone, and especially of those who love and serve God, is troubling. Even more troubling is the thought that God suffers because we sin.

A best seller was Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen To Good People.¹ Why should that ever happen to good people? And how could it possibly be that God suffers when we do? Well, biblical revelation makes clear that suffering resides at the center of God’s heart and also is key to our calling as followers of Jesus. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

Does God Cause or Just Help Our Suffering?

I confess. Like Harold Kushner, I don’t want to treat suffering like a crossword puzzle, making every piece fit together neatly and thus not reaching people where they are—hurting! Suffering people want an answer to the question, Why? They don’t want a graduate class in technical theology. But what if any satisfying and responsible answer to the Why? question requires clarifying some basic theological assumptions? Sorry, but it does. That’s what chapters two and three of this book are about.

Suffering haunts all humans sooner or later. When it does, it raises difficult questions, even for a devoted Christian.

Those suffering often tend to assume that God controls everything and must have a reason for having brought the suffering. Presumably God caused it, or at least allowed it because of what the sufferer did to deserve it. So the questions come. Did I do something wrong or does God have reasons beyond my comprehension? Either way, the answer leaves sufferers hating themselves for being at fault or feeling badly toward God who brought the pain, won’t explain why, and makes things worse by not stopping it.

There’s got to be a better answer to Why? than we all get what we deserve. Our experience tells us that many people don’t get what they deserve, despite Isaiah 3:10–11 and Proverbs 12:21. This world isn’t as neat a place as Psalm 92:6–8, 13, 16 describes. Therefore, we’re left with pushing off until the judgment of eternity the straightening out of all the earthly injustices. Or we come to another insight that frees us to think again. Maybe the Bible reports our many human thoughts on the matter of suffering but doesn’t necessarily teach as truth all that it reports.

If Psalm 92 is too neat a picture of the world we know—the righteous, in fact, don’t always flourish like a palm tree, then Psalm 121 might help. It says that relief from our suffering comes from the Lord. This implies that our help and not necessarily our suffering comes from God. We must be careful what we decide to lay at the feet of God.

Suffering haunts all humans sooner or later. When it does, it raises the most difficult of questions, even for the devoted Christian. We cry in pain and reach out in desperation and confusion. We believe, and then we’re not sure we can believe. We want healing and death comes. The best we can say then is that death is the ultimate healing. Yes, in a sense it is, but why the substantial suffering on the way?

It’s Always with Us

Recent history has made doubting very tempting. The twentieth century witnessed two world wars, the Holocaust, and the dropping of two atomic bombs with the development of much more terrible ones we’re now so afraid may be used at any time. Ours is the age of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. There have been recent genocides in the Soviet Union, China, and Rwanda, devastating famines in Africa, the killing fields of Cambodia, the emergence of the AIDS pandemic, and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. That’s just a partial list.

And the twenty-first century hasn’t started any better. There already have been 9/11 in the United States, unspeakable horrors in Syria, thousands dying in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe, cancer and divorce becoming so common, and on and on. Will my grandchildren have to endure a nuclear winter? The blockbuster movies are full of the most shocking images of what might soon be. Jesus said we always would have suffering in this world (John 16:33). We sure do!

My friend Phil Meadows addressed the Wesleyan Theological Society in 2017 from his vantage point of today’s British Isles—although the trend is the same across Europe and in the United States. Governments, he said, are trying to stop radicalization that leads to violence. While understandable, and likely those nervous governments are aiming mostly at Muslims, it’s a new challenge to be a serious Christian in a post-Christendom society. It threatens anyone who believes that obedience belongs to the kingdom of God before the rule of law in any modern country. Protesting this secularizing and nation-protecting trend that could soon target Christians in England, Meadows reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury announced that he was a religious extremist!

Being persecuted for holding the dangerous position that the state is not ultimate is an old problem. Meadows noted that Methodism in eighteenth-century England was little understood and easily suspected of being unpatriotic. He insisted that authentic discipleship will give continual offence that leads to persecution. Even so, the true follower of Jesus must pursue a life of radical discipleship in a world of unbelief.² Might your church be the next target of government? If you will recall, that’s basically why Jesus was murdered!

Injustice at the hands of powerful non-church leaders is an evil that often haunts the faithful. Why doesn’t God stop it? Why did God cause or at least allow his own Son to die? If God really is almighty, how can suffering persist and God be good? It’s a question so basic that it can’t be avoided, and there’s no quick and easy answer. Don’t look for a simplistic one in these pages. That’s my first confession, my limited ability to solve a subject of such massive dimensions with some superior reasoning that only I have. Even so, I can’t ignore it, nor can you, and there’s much to be gained from addressing this hard subject aggressively—although not arrogantly.

The chapters of this book will follow what Paul pictures in 2 Corinthians 12 as the usual path taken by the Christian sufferer—from maybe God can’t even be to God is always with us, even in our pain. Getting from the beginning to the end of this precarious path can be—will be—a jagged journey. The Bible is full of testimonies and helpful trail-markers, to be sure, and I will point them out in chapter two. I also will identify biblical signposts, mixed messages, and at least a few sure truth anchors.

Since our world and our personal lives are full of tragic happenings, we long for any help we can find and trust. But we must be careful not to make the bottom line the first Bible verse we come to. There are many of them and they don’t all seem to point in the same direction. I’ll do my best to be a dependable guide.

Grabbing at Answers

Here’s another confession. I confess some bewilderment at all the questions, as do most people who are suffering. Why is this world so full of pain? Why do Christians fall ill? We are betrayed. We go broke. A child goes astray. We’re told by a doctor that the tests show that we’re dying. Another war breaks out and demands our young as grist for its relentless mill. Maybe in your case the pain is something smaller, private, trivial, but still truly annoying. A little book of devotions for high school students is titled If God Loves Me, Why Can’t I Get My Locker Open? Events may seem small and even amusing to others, but faith can be pulled apart by them.

Is God really with us? Why don’t things go more smoothly? Does our faith get buried with our bones? Does God even exist? Is new life really waiting around the corner, or am I just kidding myself? It’s easy to be quite unsure when we’re hurting, frustrated, lost. And that’s much of the time for many who find themselves grabbing for answers.

How does hurting relate to being holy? Are there real answers to the pressing questions raised by suffering? Shouldn’t believing put some wall of protection around us? Does suffering defy apparent reason if God supposedly is good and all-powerful? Is our faith being mocked just when we need it most? Isn’t God’s reputation suffering when those dedicated to the divine are bleeding, grieving, persecuted, and dying despite their faith?

We believe sincerely and hurt anyway. Why? Does the persecution of God’s saints cancel the high claims of God’s dearest children? Does pain prove that God either is not or cannot? On the other hand, can pain bring new possibilities? Does true faith in Jesus bring with it the ability to use suffering for good? Can we flourish despite suffering? Is there any end to these questions?

Wisdom is found in these words, although it’s hardly welcome: The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.³ While this is right according to orthodox Christianity, being right doesn’t settle everything. I want my faith to shield me from suffering and not lead me into it like it did Christ.

Can it really be that God suffers and gives us the privilege of joining in the divine misery? We hope not. Who wants to suffer unto death and do it voluntarily? Can we worship a God who also is caught in suffering? Doesn’t God’s sovereignty trump the possibility of divine suffering? These are hard questions that haunt our fragile faith. Looking the other way and believing blindly surely isn’t the answer. Hard questions are there and must be faced.

Does God suffer, even to the point of death? How can God suffer, even die, and still be God? If God has done whatever is necessary to address the problem of our suffering, why must we still suffer, and how can we feel privileged to do so? Is God’s healing arm too short to reach us? If we believers are now called to endure pain like Jesus, what’s the nature and purpose of his suffering that we must share? If we can’t avoid it, can we bear it?

The questions fly at us, and sometimes bits of answers also sail by and are grabbed quickly or they’re gone. For instance, this flew by me once. William Faulkner was asked how he went about writing a book. His answer: It’s like building a chicken coop in a high wind. You grab any board or shingle flying by or loose on the ground and nail it down fast. That’s exactly how I’ve had to do things over the years. I’ve written books while busy about other responsibilities, grabbing quiet minutes and nailing down thoughts that were flying by me.

And that’s how it worked with this book on suffering. There was a word someone spoke, a line I happened to read, and a momentary inspiration surely from God. I grabbed, then nailed it down, and finally polished and published. I heartily subscribe to this wisdom of Eugene Peterson: "Time, but not just time in general, abstracted to a geometric grid on a calendar or numbers on a clock face, but what the Greeks named kairos, pregnancy time, being present to the Presence. I never know what is coming next; ‘Watch therefore’."⁴

Of all subjects, suffering demands being very present to the Presence, kneeling before the throne of God. If the sufferer will just watch therefore, sometimes it just happens. God is there. An insight sustains. Strength comes. Despite everything, life wins!

What Do I Know?

I have yet another confession. I haven’t learned all there is to know about suffering with and for Jesus. Yes, I’ve had cancer and lost a wife to cancer. Yes, I’ve had all of the childhood diseases and the usual complaints of growing older. I once was told that I was on the hit list of a foreign despot in Africa because of a Christian ministry in which I am involved there. An academic program in which I was enrolled in the turbulent 1960s required that I survive on the streets of Chicago for five days with only five dollars in my pocket.⁵ But I’ve been healthy and safe for the most part, and privileged to live in a prosperous country free of any severe persecution for my faith.

Why, then, am I qualified to write about suffering, holiness, the nature of God, and victory over suffering? It’s because I’ve delved deeply into biblical revelation and found some answers. What wisdom I have comes somewhat from personal experience, somewhat from the testimonies of a few wonderful saints of God I’ve known well, but mostly from the gracious gifting of the self-revealing and voluntarily suffering God who speaks through the Bible. I take no credit for what I share, but rejoice that I have something truly important to report.

Here’s a further word about the Bible as my key source. Suffering is one of the Bible’s main themes, maybe its largest theme. It begins with an account of how evil and death came into the world. The major Exodus story recounts Israel’s forty years of intense trials in the wilderness after the terrible slavery experienced in Egypt. The Exile is the story of a deep shadow cast over a large portion of the journey of God’s people. Exodus-Exile loom over the whole Old Testament. In addition, the Wisdom literature is largely dedicated to the problem of suffering. Ecclesiastes ponders the perplexing questions of evil and our human mortality. Job cries out. The Psalms sing out, often in pain.

There’s no end to this biblical recounting and grabbing for help in the face of suffering. The New Testament books of Hebrews and 1 Peter are almost entirely devoted to helping people face relentless sorrows and troubles, while Revelation screams of persecution faced by God’s faithful people across the ages. Towering over all, of course, is the Bible’s central figure, Jesus Christ, who comes to us as a man of sorrows crucified for the sins of the world. The biblical writers knew the depths of the human experience and point to the possible heights of the way through it. See chapter two for some key biblical signposts and truth anchors.

How I Got Started

Being steeped in biblical revelation was clearly one reason I began exploring and writing about the jagged faith journey through suffering. Another reason was having a wife and then two dear friends die after years of battling cancer, while two more were still in the fight and my sister almost lost her battle. Then came my reading of a series of sermons on suffering by one of the Scottish greats, James Stewart.⁶ Finally, I had the privilege of editing and publishing Larry Walkemeyer’s A Good Walk Home, an extended parable about the often painful tensions of living and dying well.

The unusual Walkemeyer work is about the art of dying. It acknowledges the classic work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross on the stages of the standard journey people travel through the grief process.⁷ This seasoned pastor then turns to the sayings of Jesus on the cross to get a little road map for the treacherous trip taken by the Master and later by his disciples. What constitutes a healthy, holy journey home? We’re all on this trek whether we think much about it or not. What Jesus said and did shows us how to die and, maybe more importantly, how to live on the way to our eventual home.

Observes Walkemeyer at one point, When one is wisely and well-prepared for death, then all the best of life lies ahead.⁸ C. S. Lewis once added: God whispers to us in our pleasures . . . and shouts in our pain.⁹ So, careful attention to suffering may be the best way to the needed wisdom about dying and living.

Walking toward God’s fullness of life is the best way to survive the jolts along the jagged faith journey. And jolts there will be. In Walkemeyer’s book we encounter a satisfaction spring and a reunion river, but also a shadow valley, confusion cave, and reconciliation rocks. A smooth road is not promised for the traveling of the disciples of Jesus. What is promised are signposts along the way that say 8 and 9 and 10 (see chapters two and three). Follow them and the way becomes a sure road enabling a successful faith journey. It leads finally to the open arms of the loving Shepherd.

Along the way, however, being afflicted and blessing the Lord can and will