Whether it’s in our personal experience, in conversations with those we cross paths with or in what we witness after five-minutes of any news broadcast, suffering is a constant blip on our radar. I can’t think of one day that I have been able to go from dusk to dawn without “suffering” coming up in some form or fashion. Of course, it typically is not as obvious as a discussion about the concept of suffering. I know for me, it’s usually someone(or myself) venting about relational problems, the stress of work, the struggles of parenting or the anxieties of personal finances that serve as a constant reminder that suffering is an inescapable part of life.
Now, if we actually stop and think about it, regardless of our personal beliefs, questions start to form. They are typically not just intellectual, but emotionally loaded inquiries that rise up in us. Why did this happen? Did I do something wrong? Why does this kind of thing always happen to me? What could I have done to stop this from happening? And the list goes on and on, right?
As a Christian, not only do I have to wrestle with my own personal questions, but also the questions posed by those around me, who don’t necessarily believe what I do. If God is truly good and in control of everything, why would he let this happen? How can you believe that everything truly happens for a reason? And so on. When I am faced with these kinds of questions, I find that I’m trapped. The person asking these questions either dismisses whatever I say, and I am unable to convince him or her because he or she dismisses the truth of scripture, or I wrongly presume to understand the reason for their suffering and therefore fail in my attempt to be comforting. In fact it will most likely come across as offensive to the afflicted person. So, for those of you who are reading this hoping for some insight in terms of how to answer those questions or counsel others in the midst of suffering, I would say, weep with those who weep, listen, pray and just be there for the person for a while. Don’t try to fix the problem immediately while emotions are running high. That’s just a little nugget of wisdom I’ve learned from a few instances of trial by fire and getting singed several times when the task of counseling people through hardships has been dropped on my lap from time to time.
However, we don’t want to leave it at that permanently and avoid addressing the issue at all. So, allow me to approach it from the perspective of the truth I see in the book of Ezekiel. When it comes to a place one would typically go to gain some perspective on suffering in the Bible, Philippians or James 1 would be a more popular place to look, but during my devotions in Ezekiel, the Lord has definitely been speaking to me on the topic of suffering.
Background: The book of Ezekiel finds Israel once again forsaking God and drifting into corruption. So, God calls the prophet Ezekiel to deliver His message of judgment upon the nation as a just discipline for their sins. Remember, this is “pre-Jesus” so the people’s obedience to the Mosaic Law was the main factor concerning how God related to them. At surface level it may seem like God is giving the people of Israel a tongue-lashing, full of terrifying expressions of his justice served upon their injustice. However, as I read chapter 6 and the following chapters, a phrase began to pop off the page as it showed up repeatedly: “Then you [or they] will know that I am the Lord.”
Each time the Lord uses that phrase it’s at the end of a long list of afflictions that will fall upon Israel. It’s important that we do not read into that phrase too much from our own cultural context however. This isn’t a Muhammad Ali kind of thing where God tells the press how He will “knock out” the nation of Israel, so that the world will know He’s the greatest. No, this is actually a far more relational thing than it may appear at first. God’s desire for Israel is that they would see Him and know that He is the Lord of all things and that He is exactly who He has told them He is. God’s desire is not to teach Israel a lesson of morality by giving them a severe “spanking”, but of theology. Allow me to show how that ideal manifested itself in my own life.
After I graduated from college, the following September of 2012 began one of the most intense seasons of trial and suffering that I have experienced. The Lord had called me to begin my vocational ministry on staff for a church plant in the Jersey Shore area. I had to leave everything I had known behind and start a life I did not know nor understand. I was engaged to a girl I was convinced was ”the one”, only to discover a few months before the wedding day that the callings God had given to us as individuals were not as complimentary as we had originally thought. So, we mutually broke off the engagement. In the aftermath, the heavy grip of depression, which I had never experienced before, seized my heart. On top of that I came into ministry like a baby deer: stumbling, relatively clueless, figuring out how to be an independent adult on the fly while trying to lead in ministry.
Now, I’m sure that there are many of you out there who could easily “top” my experience in terms of how much you have suffered, but hear me out. The whole time all these different things were piling on top of each other, I was crying out to God with a flood of the same kind of questions previously mentioned. I searched the scriptures for some kind of explanation, and although there were a lot of potential answers, they weren’t as specific as I wanted them to be at that particular time. I had the unrealistic expectation that when I opened the Word, something would jump out saying, “this is specifically why you are going through the specific thing you are going through”. I tell you now, that I had no actual clue until hind-sight took its course. What perspective did I find as time passed, you might ask? To put it simply, Jesus is Lord, and suffering exists because sin exists. After having almost every aspect of my life spiral out of my feeble sense of personal sovereignty, I finally understood and felt for the first time, the comfort of knowing that God is Sovereign overall and the humbling truth that the reason that life is hard is because of man’s sinful condition to which I contribute. So, I can only trust in the Sovereignty of God, and look hopefully towards the promise of Christ’s second coming, when there will be no more sin and, as a result, no more suffering.
Now, I can’t say that every instance of suffering is the same in terms of how it is meant to affect or mature us. But what I can guarantee is that one of the reasons why God “allows” suffering to go on is because He knows that every single one of us still has an incomplete picture of who He is, and if everything was perfect in our lives, we would not even acknowledge Him. Our hearts would naturally reject Him, thinking we do not need Him.
However, in the midst of the frightening realization that we are not in control of our little worlds, we are more easily led to witness the truth that He is in control of EVERYTHING. Apart from that bitter taste of life’s depravity, we would not know the sweetness of how the presence of a Heavenly Father seated upon the Throne as King of Kings impacts our everyday life.
Again, to simply say this to someone in the midst of their suffering is not wise nor is it inherently Biblical. Even Christ empathized with Lazarus’ family to the point that he wept as they were weeping (John 11:35). So, our first response when we come across someone’s suffering should be to validate their feelings and seek to comfort them by being there with a Christ-like love. But, when the time for explanation comes in order to pull that person out of the mud of their sorrow, pointing someone to reflect on the character and work of God, specifically Jesus Christ, is never a bad thing, for there is nothing that speaks to our wounds like the wounds of Christ.
