Tag Archives: suffering

  • 1107_poverty

    “Me Too”

    Featured

    Late last year, I read an amazing article about a pastor who became friends with the notoriously disgraced Ted Haggard. (For those of you who don’t keep up with such things, Ted Haggard was a prominent conservative Evangelical pastor who had been caught hiring a male prostitute to join him at hotels for “massages” and crystal meth.) After his scandal broke, Haggard had gotten counseling and then restarted his ministry. Most of us watching from the outside scoffed at the idea of him as a legitimate minister at that point. But in that article, his reluctant friend described Haggard as “excited that the only people who would talk to him now were the truly broken and hurt”. Think about that. Jesus said, “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” And that’s what those of us who are following in his footsteps are supposed to be doing as well. Prior to his scandal, Haggard was the leader of the National Association of Evangelical Churches. He was a founder of a large church in Colorado Springs. This was a man who was surrounded by and ministering almost entirely to the righteous (or at least the outwardly righteous). It was only after he was disgraced and lost everything that he found himself walking in the steps of Christ serving those who, like himself, were too broken to even hide their sin and sickness.

    Now, I certainly don’t mean to imply that hiring prostitutes and using drugs is a great way to put yourself on the road to serving Christ. But I do think that the story of Ted Haggard has something to teach us. Most Christians want nothing more than to live safe, respectable and prosperous lives. And we are loathe to do anything which would imperil that. To the extent that this allows us to avoid sin, that is fine. But too often, the result is that we are also avoiding becoming the sort of people who can really reach out and serve those who are not righteous but broken.

    Of course, life is not always so kind as to only send you troubles which you have chosen to set yourself up for. Accidents, injuries, sickness, loss and other human beings often intrude on even the most carefully constructed lives. And when they do, the nearly universal response is to ask the basically useless question, “why me?” We feel that somehow life has been unfair to us. We line up all the reasons we don’t deserve our injuries or the scandal of failure as evidence of how unfair life is being to us. But as the saying famously goes, life isn’t about us.

    Ritu Ghatourey has said, “some of the most comforting words that can be heard are me too. That moment when you find out that your struggle is also someone else’s struggle and that you’re not alone fighting that same battle.” One of the things which I have come to suspect as I’ve walked through my own struggles is that so far as there is a reason for the bad things which happen, it may be for just this reason. If I, like Christ, am supposed to be serving and tending to the broken, what can I offer if have never been broken myself?

    If our primary goal is to be comfortable and safe and we eschew following God or life into places where scandal, poverty and suffering may result, we may well find ourselves too comfortable and clueless to help the broken. And how might the knowledge that we are gaining insight, empathy and understanding which will allow us to minister to others in need change our attitudes about our own suffering? If we understand our primary work to be loving, serving and healing ourselves and each other, then no suffering is pointless. No loss is irredeemable. Whatever we are going through, it can be used by God and by us in the ongoing process of redeeming this world.

    After all, this is exactly what God did for us. He became as one of us – he shared in our suffering. He emptied himself and took on our reality as his own. We have a savior who knows what tempts us, what hurts us, what we struggle with and how dark and confusing this life can be. Rather than viewing suffering, scandal and loss as terrible things to be avoided, part of following Jesus and sharing in his suffering may mean doing the same for each other.

  • god-watches-over-us

    Psalm 73 ~ A Meditation for the Weary, Bitter, Stumbling Soul

    Featured

    These were the words I needed this week:

    Psalm 73

    Surely God is good to Israel,
    To those who are pure in heart!

    But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling,
    My steps had almost slipped.

    For I was envious of the arrogant
    As I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

    For there are no pains in their death,
    And their body is fat.

    They are not in trouble as other men,
    Nor are they plagued like mankind. . .

    They mock and wickedly speak of oppression;
    They speak from on high.

    They have set their mouth against the heavens,
    And their tongue parades through the earth.

    Therefore his people return to this place,
    And waters of abundance are drunk by them.

    They say, “How does God know?
    And is there knowledge with the Most High?”

    Behold, these are the wicked;
    And always at ease, they have increased in wealth.

    Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
    And washed my hands in innocence;

    For I have been stricken all day long
    And chastened every morning.

    I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I’ve been on a wretched and miserable path for a long time now. But what I’ve been a bit more reticent in sharing is that seemingly at every turn, there have been people just waiting to condemn me for my wretchedness. Those who did evil to me would criticize me for walking down paths they had helped to push me onto. Those who turned me out when I was weak would point to my homelessness to condemn me. Those who cut refused to have me around would express shock at the company I was able to keep. Those whose actions crippled me complained bitterly that I was lame and slow no matter how good my work was or how remarkable my healing had been. When I would point to God as the northern star I was following, the response was just like in this psalm: “what does God know? Is he going to pay your bills or fix your car or mend your relationships? Forget God – look at the mess you’re in!”

    And over and over, I fell for it. I was convicted because they had comfort, they had wealth, they had homes, jobs and respectability and security and friendships and I so often did not. I’ve made mistakes to be sure. But as I’ve said before, each time I would look back over my life to figure out where it all went so wrong, the spots where I could say, “if only I had done this differently” were either places where others made choices for me or where I had chosen to follow a clear leading from God. Often I wanted to look at those moments with regret, but regret for what? For not being invincible? For following God?

    Like the psalmist, I’ve struggled mightily not to become bitter that “in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence”.

    If I had said, “I will speak thus,”
    Behold, I would have betrayed the generation of Your children.

    When I pondered to understand this,
    It was troublesome in my sight

    Until I came into the sanctuary of God;
    Then I perceived their end.

    Surely You set them in slippery places;
    You cast them down to destruction.

    How they are destroyed in a moment!
    They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors!

    Like a dream when one awakes,
    O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.

    When my heart was embittered
    And I was pierced within,

    Then I was senseless and ignorant;
    I was a brute beast before you.

    I have sometimes walked right up to the line of saying that following God is a fool’s errand. That he will set you on paths towards misery and never show up to redeem them. Tell you to seek his kingdom and allow you to figure out later that he’s only promised not to allow you to die of starvation or exposure if you do. But we live in unsettled times. Other Christians who are struggling on the edge as I have been read the things I write. If I had taken that last step and embraced the condemnation which so many people in their high and comfortable places were heaping onto me, “I would have betrayed the generation of Your children.” I did know that. We’re one body – I cannot speak against God without betraying the body and sometimes just for that reason I bit my bitter tongue.

    I’d read a psalm like this and try to reconcile myself to its message that I’m getting the better part. That it’s worth it to go through so much suffering. But I really was like “a brute beast” before God. In fact, just three weeks ago, I told a friend in an email: “Sometimes I think I’m becoming like the animals – just chewing my cud and moving about without any of it meaning anything or having any larger purpose. I don’t understand it, but that’s where I am.”

    But everything changes for the psalmist when at last he “came into the sanctuary of God”. Over the last few weeks, I have experienced something of a ground swell of affirmation which has watered and nourished my dry, battered heart. I got a lovely 5 star review on my first book. And the next day, I got another 5 star review on one of my other books from a man who is far more accomplished than myself. I reached out in a moment of insecurity for support and had people come forward to fight those demons off for me. I put up my video and the first person who watched it – someone who had never heard of me before – was so moved he sent an email to tell me about it. I’ve had several deep conversations lately which people told me ministered to them. People on facebook have been amazing lately. Just this week, several people have made donations to me and encouraged me to continue doing what I’ve been doing. The sanctuary of God came and found me. And it is good for the pure of heart who have innocent hands in God’s dwelling place.

    I hadn’t made the connection until reading this psalm yesterday, but as this has happened, I’ve finally started to grasp the end of those who I have felt so convicted by. The psalmist calls them wicked, and yes, some of their actions can only be described as wicked. But believe it or not, these are people who I have and will always love dearly and deeply. They’ve been lost and hurt themselves and have chosen things other than to follow the path of love to cope – at least when it’s too hard and demanding for them to manage. It’s what people become when they embrace the things and ways of this world over God and love. They were made pure and loving as their creator but do not know it or understand it and therefor have not acted it.

    In the last couple of weeks, I’ve stood up under what felt like some rather fierce assaults from some of these folks. And for the first time I could clearly see their end. That one day, they will realize that what they called love was often cruelty and self-interest. That what they condemned me for was what they created. That when another soul was weak and vulnerable, they attacked and piled on and harshly turned me away. That rather than repenting at the site of the pain they caused, they felt unfairly treated by any expression of it. There will come a day when God will wake them up from the dream they’ve been living in and it will be like a sudden terror to be confronted with what they have done. It’s not something I wish for them – not in a million years. But there are none so blind as those who refuse to see. If they continue to refuse to open their own eyes, God will one day open them for them.

    Now finally, in the sanctuary of the Lord, I can see that however much I’ve suffered, following God has not been in vain. Because I would rather go through what I have gone through than live with what the “wicked” will have to live with when God tears away their delusions.

    Nevertheless I am continually with You;
    You have taken hold of my right hand.

    With Your counsel You will guide me,
    And afterward receive me to glory.

    Whom have I in heaven but You?
    And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.

    My flesh and my heart may fail,
    But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

    For, behold, those who are far from You will perish;
    You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.

    But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
    I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,
    That I may tell of all Your works.

    Brothers and sisters, some of you have told me recently that you are on the verge of failing. That your faith is in danger of becoming bitterness. I’ve heard of hopes dashed, family and friends become bitter enemies, sickness with no hope of cure and fears that hope is foolishness. Dear hearts, come into the sanctuary of God with me. Don’t be convicted by the wicked around you. Even if you’re a brute animal, God does have you by the hand. Even if you were once among the wicked dreaming, he will destroy that unfaithfulness for you. Perhaps you are in darkness because God has closed his palm around you – you are in his hand, after all. Let me tell you of all his works . . .

  • statue-with-tears

    Suffering as Service

    July 9, 2012

    3 Comments

    I don’t know why, but from the time I was a kid, I have had this idea that there is a certain amount of pain and suffering in the world that gets distributed across humanity. Like suffering was an actual thing with quantity that could be measured in cups and miles. Or maybe tears and hours of agony. Some people are dealt a larger portion of this suffering than others. The way to reduce the amount of suffering in the world is to process what comes to you and let it go. Pain and suffering that doesn’t get dealt with, gets passed on to those around us. It can even be multiplied in this process. The ability to suffer without passing it on to those around us is part of how we can serve the world. A person who can endure a lot of suffering without passing it on is performing a real service to humanity.

    Like a lot of highly sensitive people, I have spent my share of time crying over people, circumstances and suffering that I do not know, have not encountered and can do nothing about. (I wrote about how I learned to stop doing this so much here.) Even as a kid when I would find myself crying over people and events that affect me not one whit, I would pray, “please let every tear I cry be one less that those going through it have to cry.” It doesn’t make much sense and I have no reason to think that it works that way, but I hope it does. The burden of grief should be shared, not multiplied after all. Continue reading »

  • your-life-story

    Suffering and Stories

    June 4, 2012

    2 Comments

    “Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”

    “It was I.”

    “But what for?”

    “Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

    ~ The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis

    This will probably sound absurd, but there have been times that I have found myself seriously affected by the suffering of people I have never met and could do little or nothing to help – sometimes to the point of sitting up at night crying. War crimes victims, tsunami survivors, women in Afghanistan, parents of starving children. Such are the perils of being ridiculously sensitive. What finally helped me to avoid being emotionally overrun by the terrible suffering which plagues this world was the passage above. The Christ character of the Narnia Chronicles, Aslan, is explaining to the young Shasta a series of difficult, frightening and seemingly unfair events that had occurred. When Shasta asks about his friend, Aravis, he is informed that’s part of her story. I love that concept. We all have a story to live. ”I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.” Those people who live on the other side of the world and are suffering sometimes unspeakable things? They have stories to live as well. Continue reading »

  • Bibledude.net has a series of posts on the issue of fatherlessness that you can check out by clicking this picture I cribbed from him.

    Why Christians Have a Moral Obligation Not to Have Sex Outside of Marriage

    February 10, 2012

    11 Comments

    Bibledude.net has a series of posts on the issue of fatherlessness that you can check out by clicking this picture I cribbed from him.

    Everyone has a theory to explain the breakdown of the family: culture, government policy, the sexual revolution, poverty, racism, global trade, etc, etc.  A few days back, I shared my theory: unresolved trauma from often horrific life experiences.  I said I was going to write about what I think Christians have a moral obligation to do in response and that is what this post is about. Now, before you snort and click away, allow me to explain myself . . .

    A few years ago, the ex told me about a woman he knew who lived in a high poverty area and had put her 14 year old daughter on birth control pills.  The girl was an honor student, insisted that she wasn’t sexually active and didn’t intend to become sexually active, and didn’t really want to be on the pills but the mother insisted.  I told my husband that I thought it was probably a good idea.  Not necessarily because the pills themselves would keep her from getting pregnant, but because the discipline of having to remember to take one at the same time everyday would serve her well. 

    Many of us grew up in homes with bedtimes, we sat down for meals with our families, got handed a vitamin with breakfast by mom and could always find a quiet spot to do homework.  Often we don’t appreciate the way these simple routines and disciplines shape and prepare us to manage our lives in the real world.  Including using birth control methods effectively.  

    A fellow RA in college went to the local county health department and came back with a bag that looked like this. Flavored! Colored! Many sizes! The bounty overfloweth.

    I was a poor single mom.  I have known a lot of much more stereotypical poor single moms (ie not just the black sheep of an intact, well-educated, upper-middle class family).  I can personally attest to the fact that is not hard to get condoms or birth control pills.  People practically throw them at you when you’re a college student or a single mom.  The problem is I have known more than one person who became a parent while a bag of condoms from the local clinic sat on a dresser across the room.  Continue reading »

  • despair

    Christians and despair

    October 19, 2011

    3 Comments

    I posted this in response to a comment on my post “Does the Body Have Faith to Share?” in which I expressed despair.  I want to use it as its own post because we Christians are not good at dealing with people who have reach the point of despairing.  In fact, I have heard it said that the one thing that Christians are not allowed to do is despair.  And yet . . .

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – Jesus

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” – David (Psalm 22)

    How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? – Habakkuk 1:2

    Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame? – Jeremiah 20:18

    But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” – Isaiah 49:14

    Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? – Psalm 88:14

    There is a reason these sorts of passages are found throughout scriptures. Christians need to encourage each other, but we have GOT to stop shaming people for those times when pain and suffering brings them to the point of despair. Jesus himself knew what it was like to be so overwhelmed by his suffering that he accused God of leaving him alone and unprotected. When we do not allow each other to express these sentiments, we do not stop people from feeling them; we just make them suffer in silence. Sometimes life is truly too much for us. Sometimes God seems to be failing us and although in our heads we know that God is faithful, our hearts see no evidence of it and break. The body has been told to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Sometimes a person really does need to be told to buck up and stop feeling sorry for themselves, but more often we need to resist the urge to deny or minimize a person’s trouble and pain and do like Job’s friends after God chastised them: “They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him” – Job 42:11.

  • Our Suffering and the Cross

    June 26, 2008

    5 Comments

    Over at Jesus Creed, a regular comment box writer who goes by RJS has been doing a series of posts on a book called The Reason for God.  It has been a great series, but for whatever reason, today’s installment particularly struck me.  It discusses Chapter 13 of the book, which is The (True) Story of the Cross.  IMO, there is a tendency on the part of evangelical Christians to view the cross as simply a matter of forgiven sins and little else.  OTOH, there is a tendency in some progressive circles to see the cross as foolishness – almost an embarrassingly outdated myth.  While of course, I agree much more with the evangelical view of the cross, it seems to me that it actually reduces the cross to frame it as simply a quid pro quo for our sins.  In the discussion at Jesus Creed, RJS presents part of what the book has to say in regards to the issue of sacrificial/substitutional nature of Jesus’ death on the cross:

    The Gospel of Christ – the good news – is wrapped up in the story of the cross. This story however causes a great deal of consternation in our western world. Why was sacrifice required? Why did Jesus die? Isn’t the appeasement of the wrath of God best classed as divine child abuse — a remnant of an older more primitive society? . . . Forgiveness always requires sacrifice. When we forgive we bear the consequence, the suffering, ourselves rather than demanding retribution. No one “just forgives” any grievous wrong. How much more then for God? God did not, then, inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself.”

    That last part is probably the best explanation of the sacrificial nature of the cross which I have read.  RJS, goes on to talk about how death on the cross also helped us to understand that God can identify with our pain, injustice and oppression.  In conclusion he asks: Continue reading »

  • Book of Job Chapter 3: Ever Wanted to Die?

    June 4, 2008

    4 Comments

    Chapter 1 here

    Chapter 2 here

    At the start of Chapter 3 of The Book of Job, we find Job, having sat in silence with his 3 friends for 7 days, ready to talk. (Text of Chapter 3 here.) What comes out of his mouth is one of the more heartbreaking of the laments found in scriptures. Job does not curse God or Satan or even his misfortune. Rather, it is his very existence which is the subject of his lament.

    One of the notable things about Chapter 3 is that it is where the Book of Job ceases to be a narrative story and becomes an extended series of poems. We are of course reading a translation which can make it hard for us to appreciate the poetry involved. In addition, Hebrew poetry uses something called parallelism where an idea is stated and then restated. This can happen between lines, within lines, between stanzas or withing stanzas. For example, verse 17: “There the wicked cease from troubling, there the weary are at rest” is an example of parallelism within a line. We can see it in the repetition of the sentence structure and the repetition of the first word of each phrase. There is also a pairing relationship between the wicked and the weary and ceasing from trouble and being at rest (ceasing to be troubled).

    People with more patience and attention to detail than I have/can spend oodles of time teasing out these structures and themes. For the rest of us, however, the result is often that the text becomes repetative and we can get so caught up in the flow that we lose track of what is going on. Like I said, I am not a good detail person, so having to wade through a bunch of lines which repeat themselves with variations over and over again is not my cup of tea. I have found it helpful to look at these sections as what they are: poems. I try to break the poem into thematic sections which are usually composed of the same or similar number of lines. For this chapter, it looks like this: Continue reading »

  • Book of Job Chapter 2: Lowering the Boom

    June 2, 2008

    4 Comments

    Well, I figured I would pick up my slow-mo study of the Book of Job again tonight. (Here’s my take on Chapter 1.) Tonight we’ll look at Chapter 2. (Text of Chapter 2 here.)

    Chapter 2 starts with a repeat of the scene from Chapter 1 with a gathering before God at which Satan appears. Once again, God points out Job’s integrity – this time in the face of enormous suffering.

    One of the challenges of the Book of Job is God’s complicity in Job’s suffering. As I said in my comments on Chapter 1, God not only allows Satan to visit tragedy on Job, but He actually offers Job up as a target for this treatment. This doesn’t sit well at all with our understanding of God as a protective force for His people. This difficult state of affairs continues in Chapter 2. Here we find an oddly worded sentence which points both to the fact that God is manipulating Satan and that He is willing to take responsibility for causing Job’s suffering. Verse 3 says, “you incited me against him to ruin him without cause”. The Netbible translates “incite me” as “stirred me up”. This is a rather odd thing to say as it was God who actually provoked Satan’s desire to ruin (lit “swallow up”) Job. But, like a manager who allows an employee to think their new assignment was their own idea, God allows Satan to think that he rather than God is in control of this situation. The other odd thing about the sentence is the imprecise pronouns which obscure who is bringing about ruin. God does not say, “you incited me against him so that you could ruin him without cause.” Rather, by simply saying “to ruin him”, God leaves open the possibility that it is not Satan, but God who has brought Job to ruin. In which case, Satan is merely the tool by which God has done this work. Satan, of course misses this distinction (as do most of us, come to think of it).

    Now, I do know that I am treading in some ugly territory here. Continue reading »