Suffering Saints: Is There Profit in Our Pain?
by Shelley Curtis Weaver | 21 March 2024 |
Has anyone ever given you a jar of dough starter—the kind of thing you have to use to make more bread every few weeks or it dies? It has crossed my mind, in unkind moments, that the sharer isn’t nearly as interested in blessing me with bread, as hoping to have someone else share their ordeal!
We human creatures, endowed with emotions and the mental tools to process them, still have a complex time sorting through all our feelings. One English language saying that describes the bread conundrum: Misery loves company. Just as yeast spreads, humans have a tendency to spread suffering. Hurting people hurt others.
And in a more indirect and complex response, humans may also change the packaging and labeling of suffering and normalize things that aren’t healthy.
Tales of woe
As I child I heard the following sermon illustration:
A train is racing fatefully towards a bridge that’s damaged or fallen. Some preachers added sound effects and dramatic dialogue for impact— the sound of the oncoming train whistle, the pleas of the bridge keeper’s son, begging for rescue. The tension of the tale is whether the switchman will rescue his son stranded on the tracks, or throw the switch that will channel the train to safety but sacrifice his child.
In some versions the railroad worker is in peril himself. But always, the choice must be made as to whether to sacrifice one person to save a trainload of others hurtling to certain doom. The goal of the story is to move an audience to feel gratitude for the sacrifice of Jesus.
When I heard it, I remember clutching the edge of my pew, trying to find any scenario by which everyone could be saved, and how ashamed I felt when my love for my parents and brother compelled me to decide I would save the son and let the trainload perish.
It’s a cruel illustration to inflict upon a child—or on a congregant of any age, for that matter. When I remember those sermons I wonder whether the point was less about the value of sacrifice, and more about our inclination to glorify and embrace suffering.
The point of pain
Pain is an unavoidable, even helpful, part of life. Dr. Paul Brand’s research to treat and cure leprosy shows that pain is an essential defense mechanism. Brand found that it wasn’t the leprosy virus that caused physical deterioration in his patients; the virus damaged the nerves and nervous system, meaning sufferers injured themselves—burned reaching into a fire, for example—without realizing it. Being pain-free meant the destruction of their bodies.
It turns out there is a protective benefit from our pain response: it is a signal to warn us of danger.
But within our religious beliefs and practice we see an embrace of suffering that extends beyond its value to warn and protect. We have emphasized the value of pain beyond its immediate usefulness.
The result is a narrative in which suffering is a desirable “refining fire,” a positive and helpful experience for spiritual growth. While our official beliefs have rejected the concept of an ever-burning hell to punish the wicked, we are pleased to promote suffering as a way to perfect and polish the living.
So why do we find it so necessary to champion and emphasize the experience of suffering? Why do our prayers and worship songs dwell on our brokenness and elevate our struggles? Did the Great Disappointment set our barometer as Adventists to pain as the new normal?
Do we glorify suffering as a hallmark of faith to disguise our embarrassment?
A harvest of suffering
The “no pain/no gain” gospel is apparent in our Sabbath School lessons, sermons, and even in our hymns. More often than not, the walk of faith is described as rejecting “the comforts of this world.” Being spiritually uncommitted is seen as wishing for pleasure and ease. We warn folks about “cheap grace” and burden our belief in righteousness by faith with James’ cautions that “faith without works is dead.”
Even Jesus’s injunction to take up a cross is quoted out of context, and cited more often than his reminder “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The text in Philippians urging us to “suffer for” Christ is quoted without the details of the story, or how members of the church in Philippi supported each other and kept community as a shield against persecution.
While Jesus reminds us that poverty and suffering will always be a human reality, he does not glorify it. In fact, Jesus discourages the false humility of highlighting our sacrifices, and exaggerated displays of our suffering.
When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full (Matthew 6:16 NIV).
Details matter
So what’s the happy middle ground in processing suffering? I struggled with this when I read the book Burnout, by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Their research on stress and burnout (more formal words for suffering and its consequences) revealed that people who managed suffering and loss the best were those who found small “wins” within the struggle.
This troubled me. It felt like embracing denial, or worse: the toxic positivity of having to wrestle each pain and try to find a way to turn it into good. That obligation has been the warped application of Romans 8:28 for as long as I can remember.
Much of our suffering isn’t beneficial—it’s just pain. Things that don’t kill us may not come even close to making us stronger.
The nuance of the research proves important. The size of the “win” didn’t matter; even small wins were effective. And wins didn’t typically make things all better again. Instead, wins were grounded in reality and growth. A win could be learning to set boundaries next time. A win could be learning to ask for help, or to recognize a dangerous pattern in order to avoid it. Wins might also be more radical changes— the rejection of a bias, the renouncing of bigotry, or the impulse to inflict hurt on others.
The goal of the win wasn’t to praise the pain process. It was to reclaim ourselves and move past the suffering.
Lightening the burden
The “win” that struck me most was when people decided to ask for and accept help. Jesus modeled the importance of this particular win: a yoke must be taken up, but the yoke was easy and the burden was light because he bore the weight of it.
The world was full of trouble, but he had suffered too, and had overcome it and offered us his strength. Jesus never denied the pain or reality of suffering; he simply leaned into the balm of relationship.
Jesus entered a world where death at the hands of violent human beings was a distinct possibility. Yet in his own suffering he asked his sometimes-angry-and-violent friends to stay awake and pray with him. When they failed, he prayed for them, and asked that they be protected from the trouble they would also be facing. He knew he would leave them physically, but he promised to send the Comforter, and in so doing, to stay with us to the end of the age.
As a church, we break this essential relationship with those suffering when we pelt them with answers and interpretations. This is standing over and above their suffering, and it misrepresents the terrain of suffering as well.
We’ve too often insisted that the hard way must always be the best way. We imagine that the narrow road to salvation must necessarily be treacherous, when it may just have been infrequently-trod. Relationships are more demanding than advice-giving, and the relationship path has been left narrow from its lack of use.
We might instead yoke hope with some frank reality. Of course we wish to give people hope, but we must not diminish what it is like to process pain. Our resilience might best be paired with compassion because we have suffered too.
The point is not to say “Look how much this benefited me!” or to paint something harmful as good or “God-sent.” We must be real about pain. What doesn’t kill us does not necessarily make us stronger. In fact, that’s an unusual result. The traditional narrative has done much damage by insisting that God punishes and troubles us to hammer us into shape.
Perhaps we can try a different response to pain. When we see people holding their belljar of suffering, we can resist saying “This will be good spiritual discipline for you.” Instead, we might try to sit beside them, and hold the weight of it in our own hands for a while.
We might choose to speak honestly: “This stinks. Who knows if it will even make good bread? If you want to toss it out, that’s okay. If not—I’m here to share the work and the heat of the oven.”
Shelley Curtis Weaver lives in coastal Washington state. She is a clay-artist, writer, wife, mother, grandmother, and a frequenter of Columbia River crossings. She has edited and contributed to The Journey to Wholeness addiction recovery curriculum from AdventSource.