THE GIFT OF PAIN

Our way of life seems to be based on a kind of pleasure-pain philosophy. We seek those pleasures that are the most intense and the most enduring, and we avoid even a semblance of pain. The pleasure-pain principle must be instinctive, closely akin to the instinct of self-preservation. If our Creator had not made eating a pleasure, we’d all be suffering from malnutrition; and if there was no connection between sex and pleasure, the human race would have ceased to exist long ago. We usually view pain, especially severe pain, as evil, and we applaud anesthetics as among the greatest of all discoveries. We now view as unthinkable such an ordeal as surgery without a deadening drug. Even mental or emotional discomfort is eased by the tranquilizer. The ideal is that we live from the cradle to the grave painlessly and with maximum pleasure. Of the two experiences, pain has the stronger motivation. We will make greater effort to avoid pain than to achieve pleasure.

The idea that pain is a precious gift of God is foreign to our thinking, and yet the fact is that life would be almost impossible if there were no pain. Diseases would do us in and take their toll if pain did not warn us of their presence. Accidents would plague us if pain did not tip us off when the water is too hot or the weather too cold. It is pain that puts us in bed when we need to be there.

We cannot reject pain without rejecting pleasure or even life itself. Pleasure would have no meaning except for pain. Joy and sorrow, health and disease, wealth and poverty, peace and war, education and ignorance are not as much opposites as they are the stuff of life, with one giving meaning to the other. To overcome hardships is wonderfully satisfying, but this can happen only to those in the throes of difficulty.

Pleasure and pain are thus intertwined, and they are sometimes indistinguishable, such as when an excruciating pain dissipates into a lesser pain, which is pleasure by contrast. Much of the drama of life is a strange mixture of pleasure and pain. A mother watching her daughter get married will cry and smile at the same time and she experiences both pleasure and pain. A football player experiences both emotions strangely blended when he scores a touchdown while being bruised and battered by his opponents.

Pain a gift of God? Indeed, perhaps as much as pleasure. Or to put it another way, we have one only because we have the other. He who cannot feel pain is terribly deprived. This is what makes leprosy such a dreaded disease. The leper cannot feel pain, which endangers him to serious accidents. The moral leper, one who feels no guilt for his. depraved life and who is insensitive to the feelings of others is also terribly diseased.

The Scriptures recognize pain and adversity as productive of perseverance in the life of the believer. “Count it all joy,” says Jas. 1:2, “when you meet with various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” It goes on to say that perseverance makes one complete, lacking in nothing. This means that God’s purpose to bring us to maturity is realized only through painful trials. So we are to be joyful in the face of adversity, realizing that adversity has its special blessings.

Pain and pleasure find a mysterious blend in the sacrifice of Christ. Heb. 12:2 tells us that “it was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross.” The same writer describes the intensity of Jesus’ suffering: “In the days of his flesh, he offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his godly fear” (Heb. 5:7). The next verse says “He learned obedience from the things which he suffered.”

If Jesus had to suffer to learn the meaning of submission to God, are we to learn obedience through a painless life? The writer of Hebrews also assures us that it was through suffering that Jesus was made perfect (Heb. 2:10). He stresses the fact that God made Jesus perfect through suffering, enabling him to become the Savior of mankind (Heb. 5:8-9).

Our Lord was of course always morally perfect, but he was not perfect (complete) in what the Father purposed for him until he suffered and died. He thus learned obedience. And so he faced the cross with joy as well as anguish, for he realized this would fulfill God’s intentions and place him in glory at the right hand of the Father. Pain and suffering, and yet joy and glory. “It was for the joy set before him …” is one of the most revealing lines in the New Testament. It is a summary of Jesus’ pilgrimage in this world. He was eternally rich in heaven but for our sake he became poor so that we might be rich (see 2 Cor. 8:9). It was a painful, agonizing ordeal and yet it was a pilgrimage of joy. “It was for the joy set before him …” That is also our rule as his followers. Rather than avoiding the adversities that come upon the believer in this world, we are to accept them in faith and with joy. For the Christian there are blessings in adversity.

We learn this from the story of Lazarus and Dives. The rich man lived “sumptuously” all his days, and he could not feel the pain of the poor man who lay at his gate. In hades Dives pled for mercy but was reminded of his life of ease while his neighbor suffered. The story shows that suffering in this world may mean comfort in the next, while comfort in this world may mean pain in the next.

So-called good luck (health and prosperity) and bad luck (pain and hardship) are fallacies, for there really is no such thing as luck. Life has a way of being what we make it. It is not so much whether good or ill befalls us but how we respond to what happens to us. We can all recall things that we considered “bad luck” at the time, but they turned out to be blessings in disguise. And “good luck” often leads to one’s ruin. If we follow the Scriptures and “count it all joy” when adversities come, we will eventually see that even painful experiences are gifts of God, for he uses them to our perfection.

This is why Paul could find contentment even in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, for, as he put it in 2 Cor. 12:10, “when I am weak, then I am strong.” Peter likewise points to a fellowship with suffering: “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same thought, for whosoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” (1 Pet. 4:1). That strange passage is at least saying that if we profess to follow the suffering Christ we should accept suffering, but it may also say that suffering with Christ is the surest way of contending with sin. The Scriptures clearly teach that pain for the believer has its blessings both in this world and the next. We all know that beatitude that tells us to “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”

This does not mean that we are to be morbid about pain or to out looking for persecution. We can share C.S. Lewis’ desire to free mankind of its pain and suffering. He said he would crawl through sewers if he could find an escape for suffering humanity. This rather means that we are to be Christian realists and accept what Jesus has told us, that in this world we will suffer adversity (Jn. 16:33), but “Be of good cheer,” he adds, “for I have overcome the world.” Pain and pleasure are again strangely mixed. Even amidst our trials we can be of good cheer, which is something different from being giddy or slaphappy, for we believe that we share the victory with Jesus. This is what joy means, which can be ours even when we are brutalized by what life sometimes lays on us. —the Editor

 

When people start trying to get out of this country instead of forming lines to get in —then we’ll worry about the capitalistic system. —Wall Street Journal