What Will Suffering Teach Us?

My girlfriend subscribes to Elle magazine and every so often there's an article that piques my interest. This time it was an article about a new and very expensive rapid form of detox. In traditional detox, you would simply have to wait out the awful effects of withdrawals until your body recovers naturally. In rapid detox, they accelerate the process and sedate you for the duration of it, condensing a process that can take more than a week down to a few hours.

I think it is noteworthy that with our wealth we find more and more ways to do evil without paying the consequences. This process is apparently becoming more and more popular as higher numbers of people become hooked on painkillers. This of course, is linked to a significant rise in the prescription of painkillers. We create more painkillers, not simply as a legitimate response to pain, but as a way to deal with the symptoms of our unhealthy and extravagant lifestyles. We would rather take pills than exercise or eat differently or lift with proper technique. We need more painkillers to prevent the consequences of abusing our bodies.

But painkillers have proven to have consequences as well: they can be addictive. Dealing with addictions is physically and emotionally painful, not to mention time-consuming and embarassing! So do we stop prescribing so much and start dealing with our problems the way that is both cheaper and more effective? Of course not. We use our wealth to invent a quick and painless solution to our invented problem.

It is not surprising that intially such processes caused several deaths. But what are a few lives in exchange for a reliable way to circumvent natural consequences? This seems to be the way we deal with everything. We use our wealth to save ourselves from inconvenience or pain. We use oil to save us from having to walk so much, and to bring us luxurious goods from far away. Then when there isn't enough oil around here to support our not-walking and our need for luxury items, we use our wealth to get oil from far away. Then, maybe when far away lands with oil have problems that might jeopardize their willingness to sell us oil, we might send our soldiers to bring us oil. Maybe we've done that and maybe we haven't. It wouldn't be out of character.

The problem isn't with the inventions. It is possible that nothing is wrong with oil or with painkillers. It is imaginable that we could use oil conservatively rather than to subsidize our laziness. We could use electricity more sparingly and ride bikes and walk more, and live without so many luxuries from far away places. It is possible that people could use painkillers responsibly, only to help themselves on the way to making lifestyle changes, rather than to save them from ever having to make them. We could use them conservatively enough to avoid more than a few of the addictions that seem to happen.

But that is something that our culture is not equipped to do. We do not know how, and I will admit that I do not know how, to take a gift and use it responsibly and carefully. There is something in me that only knows how to abuse gifts and make idols of them. I do not know how to play a video game just for an hour and then do my homework. I have to do my homework first or I will inevitably play much longer than I should. I have a very difficult time figuring out how to use my intellectual gifts solely for God's glory and not abuse them for my own pride. And in this respect, I feel very at home in this culture.

What is it about our culture that creates people like this? I cannot claim to know definively. I am only speaking as one who shares the problem. But there was something in this article that seemed to me to illustrate the problem as well as anything. In defense of the use of rapid detox, a woman is quoted as saying "Why should Gabrielle go through 10 days of anxiety, vomiting, and diarrhea? What will that suffering teach her?" (emphasis mine). At the heart of the problem, I think, is the fact that our cultural resources no longer contain a use for suffering or hardship. There is nothing wrong with using medicine to avoid suffering assuming no other harmful consequences, but in our wealth and prosperity we have deluded ourselves into believing that it is our right not to suffer and that suffering has nothing good to teach us.

This problem manifests itself in many ways. Recently, I was reminded of a passage I read in high school from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards delivered in 1741 entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" that depicts with vivid imagery the precarious position of sinful man in relation to a just but merciful God. A sermon like that would never be preached today. We would never dream such a portrayal of God. I admit that even as a Christian, such a vision did not sit well with me at the time.

In the time since then, Christianity and time have given me resources for understanding such a perspective. As I have lived more and searched the Scriptures more, I have become more and more convinced, by the Holy Spirt I believe, of the depths of my own guilt. I have begun to understand why "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Hebrews 10:30) I understand why Peter, upon witnessing a miraculous catch of fish, would exclaim, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" (Luke 5:8). I think I have begun to understand just a glimpse of just how evil I am without God. There is no way God could be just is if were not angry at the things I have done. I do not believe such evil is, as a good friend puts it, the deepest truth about who I am, thanks be to God. Yet it is, at least for now, a truth about who I am. Christianity gives me a way to understand that truth about life without being consumed by it. Our culture's only answer would be that I am simply being too hard on myself and have low self-esteem.

What is it that has led us to believe we have a right to a life without suffering no matter how badly we abuse our bodies, our minds and our souls? What is it that leads us to expect that God would not be angry with us no matter how we ignore Him, or abuse the poor? I believe that we as a culture have idolized our wealth. Indeed, wealth makes these promises that God does not: wealth will save us from the discomfort we bring on ourselves, it will numb us from pangs of conscience, it will deaden us to all spiritual worries, and it will never punish us, if only we would bow down a worship it, seeking it above all else. Wealth has offered us comfort in exchange for our souls.

The book of Hebrews, I think, was written to a group of Christians with a similar problem. It seems they had lost those resources to understand suffering. They had grown comfortable in their Christianity and they grew to love that comfort. I would like to submit three passages from that book, which, I think, have much to say to our culture.

(1)"Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions." Hebrews 10:32-34

The writer reminds them of times when they suffered willingly and joyfully, and he reminds them why. It was because they knew there is something better than not-suffering. American history can offer this to our culture, in its own way. But our present generation has forgotten that there is something larger and more important than itself and its comfort.

(2)"During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. ⁸Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered." Hebrews 5:7-8

Here we are reminded the Jesus suffered and that he learned from it. We like to think that we can learn everything we need to without suffering and without experience. We live in a culture of arm-chair quarterbacks, arm-chair preachers and arm-chair Christians. But we cannot learn obedience to God without suffering. Indeed, "suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope" (Romans 5:3). Our generation must remember that there is value in suffering. We can learn something through it. We can develop character through it. It is certain that the generations who lived through the Great Wars and the Great Depression and the Revolution knew more about perseverance and had more character than ours does. It is probably true then, that they also knew something about perseverance, character, hope and obedience that most of us do not.

(3)"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 'Make level paths for your feet,' so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." Hebrews 12:7-13

Finally, we have this passage, rich with understanding so different from what we have today. It is not surprising to me that this idea is so foreign to us when one of the premises the writer holds as an assumption is so untrue for us. Those of us in our generation who had "fathers who disciplined us" are truly rare and blessed. The image of a father disciplining a child seems almost as foreign and archaic in our culture as the idea of a angry God. And yet the underlying idea here is so powerful that we cannot turn away from it: something beautiful and good often results from something painful. Even more foreign to us is this: if God did not discipline us, He would not really be loving us. If we grab hold of this passage, would we be so eager to spend such a large portion of our resources simply to save ourselves from suffering?

I believe these passages contain Truth that our generation sorely needs. I believe they contain Truth that I sorely need. I have attempted here to relate them to elements in our history in a perhaps misguided effort try and communicate them better. But I do so not in an attempt to idealize those Americans or to Americanize those ideals but instead in an attempt to illuminate the specific ills of this generation through contrast with previous generations, who admittedly had their own problems where they did not share ours.

I am convinced that our generation will learn the lessons of suffering one way or the other. It is my hope that we can learn them by choice rather than by force when all choice is gone. It is my hope that we can learn to be responsible with our gifts, and to honor the gift-Giver, before our abuses lead to their natural conclusion. But I fear that it may already be too late.