Truths for the Suffering Believer

Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come."

What does this mean when we are hurting? If the world without Jesus hurts and the body of Christ hurts too, what's new? What is the old that has gone?

For starters, I don't actually know. But here are some ideas from the Bible that we can hold on to.

First, as I concluded in the last post, God is not indifferent to our pain and weeps with us. This doesn't make chemo any more comfortable or solve the grief of a lost loved one, but it is nevertheless light in dark times.

Consider this testimony:
"Two weeks after my daughter's [fatal] accident, I was lamenting in prayer over how damaged Paula's body was. She had been an attractive young woman at the apex of her beauty, but in the accident she was thrown from the car and crashed against a concrete barrier. When I first saw her body in the casket, I thought we had walked into the wrong chapel. As I relived the horror of her shattered body with God, His quiet voice spoke inaudibly, "I felt that way, too." I was shocked into silence as I remembered that He, too, was a bereaved parent. (Reynoso, "Formed Through Suffereing" in The Kingdom Life)"

At the same time God empathizes with this woman who has tragically lost her daughter, God's heart is for each of us in our own experiences however we think it compares to anyone else's experiences. Pain is pain; God sees and grieves with all of us.

Secondly, we have the Holy Spirit as our comforter. In John 14, Jesus is preparing his friends for what's coming up. He tells them he's leaving soon, but that he's not going to abandon them as orphans (vs 18). With them will be the Holy Spirit described as the parakletos which gets translated as advocate, counselor, helper, comforter. Common ideas within these translations is that the Parakletos comes to the aid of one in need. And Jesus gives the promise that the Parakletos will never leave (vs 16) and will teach and remind (vs 26).

When we are in pain, pretty much we just want it to end or at least lessen. As we understand it, any supernatural power a god could have should be applied to that end. However, we frequently don't get that and certainly not when we want it. But just because we don't get what we want doesn't mean that as believers the Parakletos is not with us, that we do not have supernatural aid in our need. We may not notice until we're at the end of our rope, but God our Parakletos has been with us all the while actively helping us in our need.

Thirdly, as we follow in the way of Jesus, we come to know that death is not the end. Whether our suffering is spiritual, emotional, physical, relational, whatever it is, we have the hope of heaven. This is not a pansy, precious moments angels heaven. This is a stiff, bracing new reality filled with beauty, health, and rightness.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” ~ Revelation 21

We look around at the pain in our lives and the pain in the lives of others and the pain across the globe, across history and we can ask, "Is this as good as it gets?" And the resounding answer is No. All the good that we hope for will be fulfilled perfectly in eternity.

Outliers, part 1: Someone had a bad day

In sixth grade, sometime at the end of math one day, the teacher handed back some graded something. As I was returning to my desk at the back of the class, L.O. stopped me and asked me, "What did you get?" I was kind of reluctant to tell her. She asked again, "What did you get?" I don't remember the grade, but just guessing, it was a 95 or 100 because that's just the way my math grades were. Then she said, "I hate you!" and stomped away.

I have lived for 20 years crushed by that encounter. When I think about how it felt to be effortlessly good at school, I think about that moment. Me being me was cause for a classmate to hate me, to see me with contempt.

I've been processing the experience of being an outlier lately and found that I kept running into grief. And when all roads led to this afternoon in sixth grade, I was finally able to reconfigure the moment. I had taken the experience completely personally which isn't surprising. Twelve year olds are only just coming into mature empathy and I was a late bloomer in that area. But with some perspective, I bet that L.O. was herself having a bad day. She was frustrated about her own grade and whatever else was going on in her life. Her pain was not meant for me, even though I carried it around for a long time.

It feels immensely freeing to give that memory and the emotional associations back to God. I've asked about half-a-dozen outlier friends about their childhood experiences and none of them seem to walk around wounded the way I was. I choose to believe that their positive experience is possible and that I had the more rare experience.

UPDATE: Links to Part 2 & Part 3

Affirmation

Affirmation, on the one hand, feels like a really namby-pamby, soft, needy word. On the other hand, my experience is that it can be a razor sharp blade that frees someone to be more of who they were made to be.

My deepest hurt, I've realized, about our current church is the lack of affirmation and the constant, relentless message that we are not doing enough, not doing what we are supposed to be doing. I've been grappling with this for some months now, and it feels good to be able to identify the pain, but also stunning to see it in black and white. Partly because the problem seems abusive. The beatings will continue until morale improves. But mostly because I believe in the vision and mission of the church and was so encouraged to find a community with such a heart. Additionally, I believe we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. I believe that we could, we should be affirmed.

To be honest, I don't know what to do about this. No community is perfect; I don't think we're looking for that. But I feel we are being ground under and I don't know what it would take to live free.