AN END OF SUFFERING: not ridding the world of it (only Good Lord, let this cup pass) but its telos

CAVEATS

Before I write a word about suffering, it’s important to qualify what I am and am not attempting here. This is precisely what I am NOT doing. I am not attempting to offer an explanation for evil, injustice, and suffering in the world. Nor am I am justifying evil or suffering as if it were a requirement for knowing what goodness is (i.e., we need darkness to know what light is). Nor is this blog post some feeble attempt at a theodicy.

What I am doing is making a case for what suffering, an inescapable reality of our current existence, can do if we let it. I am writing under the assumption that this world is broken, fractured, and full of suffering. In other words, things are not as they ought to be. While there is also tremendous beauty, goodness and kindness all around us, we cannot deny that in our world there exists unspeakable evil and suffering. Look at the bloodshed of the last century; look at the bloodshed today; take a look in the mirror.

Taking the reality of suffering as a given, I am simply suggesting an end of that suffering (not an end to that suffering, however necessary that enterprise may be). Again, I am addressing what suffering can do, by God’s grace, if we let it. In other words, I’m stating the case for seeing a point or (dare I say) a benefit of suffering.

HAPPINESS & SUFFERING

Pascal is probably right:

All men seek happiness without exception. They all aim at this goal however different the means they use to attain it. . . .They will never make the smallest move but with this as its goal.”¹

We typically seek this “happiness” by arranging our lives in such a way, so far as is possible, by fleeing suffering like the plague. Here is, I suggest, a standard view of what the good life entails: the recipe for happiness is simply to minimize pain + maximize pleasure (bake it for 70 or so years and out comes a banana nut muffin). This approach to life for any person, that of attempting to avoid suffering almost at any cost, is futile. Where can we go to avoid life’s sorrows? (For an interesting perspective on this very thing, watch M. Night Shamalan’s film The Village.)

For the Christian, this attempted evasion of suffering is even more off point. Unless we completely misunderstand the teachings of Jesus and unless we completely misunderstand the implications of what it means to follow him, this recipe that seeks happiness by minimizing or anesthetizing pain and avoiding suffering is one we absolutely cannot follow.

Instead, suffering seems to be a requirement of following Jesus. Much to my chagrin, it appears to be an avoidable part of the job description as a student of the Way. The way of Jesus is the way of suffering. This is not because Jesus was a sado-masochist, but because the world is broken.

Followers of Christ are called to pour their lives out for the sake of the Gospel. We cannot really follow Jesus if we’re constructing a road devoid of suffering. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it (Mark 8:35).

This may not be new news but I do think reminders from time to time are at least helpful, if not necessary. This is, in fact, precisely what NYT writer David Brooks’ article “What Suffering Does” reminded me of. Before I get into his piece, I’ll first turn to what Tupac and then the Apostle Paul can teach us about suffering.

TUPAC²

Though my parents may have made some mistakes rearing me (buying me Lunchables, allowing trips to Dobbins Island, permitting me to listen to gangster rap, etc.) – and what parent doesn’t? – I am grateful for being introduced to Tupac. What a fascinating character Tupac is: victim and perpetrator; criminal and hero; hater and lover; defamer and poet. Tupac is a tragic poet, expressed in both his life and lyrics. Though there is much chaff mixed in, Tupac is a poet worth listening to. His most powerful lyrics are his laments – lamenting the brokenness of America in terms of our relationships, families, neighborhoods, cities, and institutions.

I dare not try to fit Tupac into a neat little box of a man who redeemed his suffering and the suffering of his world. Not only is Tupac more complicated than that, it would also not be true. Still, in his music, we do hear gleams of wisdom for how one can be formed by suffering in this broken world (even if he ultimately feel prey to the very system that he both rued and perpetuated). Sometimes it did seem like it was just him against the world; this suffering shaped him and gave him a voice.

Tupac’s life was characterized by suffering. In “So Many Tears,” Tupac raps about his existential reflections on life and death.

Lord, I suffered through the years, and shed so many tears..
Lord, I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears.

In “Changes,” one of his more broadly popular songs, he vacillates between the bleak landscape of mid-90s America and the hope he clings to for black Americans.

I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races we under.
I wonder what it takes to make this one better place…

And although it seems heaven sent,
we ain’t ready to see a black President.
It ain’t a secret don’t conceal the fact…
the penitentiary’s packed, and it’s filled with blacks.
But some things will never change.

Try to show another way, but they stayin’ in the dope game.
Now tell me what’s a mother to do?

Bein’ real don’t appeal to the brother in you.
You gotta operate the easy way.
“I made a G today” But you made it in a sleazy way.
Sellin’ crack to the kids. “I gotta get paid,”
Well hey, well that’s the way it is.

We gotta make a change…
It’s time for us as a people to start makin’ some changes.
Let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live
and let’s change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do
what we gotta do to survive.

He was, in his own way, well acquainted with sorrows and this shaped him profoundly. Though certainly not the archetypical model, Tupac does attempt to allow his suffering to drive him to advocate for a change and to be a voice for hope. He is an interesting, even if tragic, example of what suffering can do.

Still, I think St. Paul (not surprisingly) offers a better paradigm for us to follow.

ST. PAUL

Following closely in the footsteps of his master, Paul was well acquainted with suffering. Like Tupac, whose suffering provided him the platform to call others to account (i.e., “five shots couldn’t drop me, I took it and smiled”), Paul appeals to his own rap sheet of suffering to add weight to his words (2Cor 11:23-28). Paul seemed called to suffer more than most of us pedestrian Christians. This evidenced by Jesus’ explicit statement: For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name (Acts 9:16). Paul understood the role of suffering in a public way for the sake of the proliferation of the Gospel and the building up of God’s people. Though perhaps called to a higher degree of suffering than most, he makes it clear that no Christian is exempt from suffering and that suffering has a particular purpose. To the Philippians he writes:

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel…For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake… (Phil 1:27-29)

In the midst of suffering, Paul emphasizes the importance of conducting oneself in a way that befits the Gospel. Our gospel witness is strongest when our lives reflect Christ well – when we bear the name of God well – and this in the midst of suffering. In a surprising way, God has granted for the sake of Christ that we should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake. That is, God has given us the gift of suffering. We are called to suffer well, and to suffer well publicly. Suffering provides not just some internal purifying benefit like boiling dross from metal  – it has a missional component – it indeed is for “the other.”

This missional component of suffering well is why I think Paul can write what he does to the Colossians:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. (Col 1:24-26)

Paul is rejoicing in his sufferings for the sake of the Colossians and somehow, in his flesh, he is filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. This is a striking statement and begs the question: what does it mean to fill up what is lacking in Christ’s affliction?

Paul is not saying that Christ’s suffering and death are somehow deficient in terms of their sufficiency for salvation for those who believe. Christ suffered and died once and for all; the work was accomplished; it is finished. Instead, what Christ’s afflictions are lacking is a contextualized, public demonstration.

John Piper is helpful here. He writes:

What’s missing is the in-person presentation of Christ’s sufferings to the people for whom he died. The afflictions are lacking in the sense that they are not seen and known among the nations. They must be carried by ministers of the gospel. And those ministers of the gospel fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ by extending them to others. Paul sees his own suffering as the visible reenactment of the sufferings of Christ so that they will see Christ’s love for them.³

DAVID BROOKS

This brings us David Brooks and his wonderfully insightful piece “What Suffering Does” in the NYT pointing out what suffering does, if we let it. Suffering, according to Brooks, can be ennobling and missional. He writes:

The right response to this sort of pain [from suffering] is not pleasure. It’s holiness. I don’t even mean that in a purely religious sense [though I of course would]. It means seeing life as a moral drama, placing the hard experiences in a moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred. Parents who’ve lost a child start foundations. Lincoln sacrificed himself for the Union. Prisoners in the concentration camp with psychologist Viktor Frankl rededicated themselves to living up to the hopes and expectations of their loved ones, even though those loved ones might themselves already be dead.

Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically. Instead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering, they throw themselves more deeply into them. Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability. They hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments.

The suffering involved in their tasks becomes a fearful gift and very different than that equal and other gift, happiness, conventionally defined.⁴

He is so insightful here. The response to suffering ought not be hedonism but holiness. Further, we should not be surprised that those who suffer rarely come out the other end (if they even do) unscathed; instead, they come out with scars. The skewed expectation that suffering has exacts little cost is precisely because, he argues, we misunderstand the point of suffering. The point of suffering (though certainly not all suffering) is that it forms us. Suffering shapes us into more of ourselves and drives us to mission in various expressions.

The call to follow Jesus is the call to embrace the gift of suffering, which he God grants to us for the sake of His people and the world. Just as self-sacrificing, unconditional love in a marriage relationship provides the opportunity to put God’s remarkable love on display to a broken and dying world, so also can our suffering, if only we let it.

Humans strive for happiness – that’s how we roll, when we ride out. When we all seek is happiness, coventionally defined, we’re selling ourselves short. The true telos of the human life is not happiness but resurrection joy. The way to this destination, this joy takes not the long way around suffering but walks directly through it.

1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees 425.
2. If the Tupac thing seems strange, that’s because it is. I included him because I awoke to my mind thinking through what a conversation between Tupac and David Brooks would be like. So far as I could tell, I woke up mid-thought, not mid-dream.
3. John Piper, “Filling Up What is Lacking in Christ’s Afflictions,” Oct 19, 2008.
4. David Brooks, “What Suffering Does,” New York Times, April 7, 2014.