Pain is a sign that something is wrong, not right.
Philip Yancey, one of my favorite writers, once wrote that pain is a system developed to warn us that there is a problem somewhere that needs to be dealt with. He used the brilliant example of people who have contracted Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). One of the results of Hansen’s Disease is the destruction of the nervous system. The disease does not cause parts to fall off of people…the lack of a nervous system, the lack of pain receptors, means people afflicted with the disease cannot feel infections and when they are damaging themselves which leads to wounds and injuries going untreated, festering and ultimately death.
The point? Feeling pain, although unpleasant in and of itself, is necessary in a broken world to alert us to problems which we must then deal with.
Physical pain, emotional pain and spiritual pain all serve the same purpose and we must be attentive to them or risk permanent damage. Masking or burying pain does not get to the root issue and one will never find healing if they do not deal with the roots, the source.
One does not rejoice in pain like a sadist welcoming suffering. It is one thing to know “that in the world you will have trouble” it is another thing to gleefully accept it, because the point of pain is not acceptance but rejection. We reject pain and that rejection drives us to do something about it.
I have never appreciated those people of faith who have forced suffering upon themselves through self flagellation, or hair shirts or some other device designed to hurt. Like the person who admires a certain poet whose pain motivated the creation of great art and then seeks to replicate that pain by self-imposed suffering…it is all false. They are in no position to weep in the garden and beg for this cup to pass because they forged it themselves.
Pain is evil, but it is a necessary evil warning us of an impending greater evil that must be dealt with.Sadly some things cannot be healed, at least not by us. In that instance we must learn to live with the pain, not as a friend, but perhaps as a reminder that there is one who will one day take all the pain away and until that time perhaps we can use the lessons of our pain to help ease the pain of others.
“But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called,because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” – 1 Peter 20-21
This verse is not a call to seek out suffering. It is a call to put suffering into context and understand that some pain comes from outside ourselves. That some pain is as a result of a sickness in the world instead of our bodies or minds and this kind of pain is meant to motivate us to go into the world as healers while knowing that our very healing efforts may make us hurt more…but it is not for the hurt that we do this but for the sake of the world (which is for our sake as well).
And now to the great question of why? Why is there suffering? Sometimes the why is obvious – this family is suffering because a car hit their child. That man is suffering because he has a broken leg. Most times it is not obvious because when we are stretched the why we are looking to have answered is the philosophical why. We want to know why the car hit the child in the sense of why God allowed it and while there are things we an do about cars hitting children there is nothing we can do about why God allows suffering.
“Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!” – Job 40-1
The point? That while it is one thing to recognize that God allows pain and suffering in the world and ask why, it is wholly another to decide that God is wrong or unjust because we are incapable of understanding the mind of God.
In suffering we learn that our nerves are still alive, that there is still hope for us, because the warning of pain felt is the siren of a sickness we can still respond to. The thing to fear more than pain is the lack of pain…because unless all suffering has been ended, a lack of pain suggests a deeper sickness has taken hold.
Harnessing Chaos 