RECAPTURING THE ROLE OF SUFFERING


I’ve just finished reading the latest issue of “Mission Frontiers” with this provocative title. It was very stimulating and challenging. The articles shed light on this very difficult subject in ways I’ve never considered before. Since we are entering the season of Lent this week (Ash Wednesday is Feb. 17)--a time when we as followers of Jesus begin to reflect on and prepare for the incredible suffering Christ underwent on our behalf, leading up to His glorious resurrection on Easter--I decided to share some of the things I gleaned from this interesting issue of the magazine. Let me know what you think.

Suffering. We hate it. And in one way or another, it strikes all of us at various times in our lives. We in America do everything we can to avoid it, resist it, stop it. We try to ignore it, pretend that it will not happen to us, wipe it out it when it does descend on us with drugs, distractions, denial--any means at our disposal. We distance ourselves from suffering, or at least try to buffer ourselves from it, with things like insurance, comfort, safety, familiarity, predictability, and so forth.

Still, suffering continues to affect us. Why? What is the purpose? This is undoubtedly the biggest question--and biggest barrier--that disturbs people everywhere and makes them question God, or reject Him altogether.

Does God have a purpose for our suffering? Actually, we should expect suffering in this life. Jesus promised it to us! We cannot expect God to spare us from all suffering when He did not spare His only Son from suffering. Jesus gives us a key into how and why God allows suffering to happen: Jesus came on a mission to suffer and die for the glory of God! Did this idea ever cross your mind? And God has appointed us to “go and do likewise” in the advancement of His kingdom. God seems to have set it up so that it is through much pain and suffering that His kingdom is established and advanced among all the peoples of the earth.

Therefore, the real question is: will we accept the assignment, or resist it in a futile effort to avoid suffering? The purpose of life is to glorify God and to make His glory known to every tribe and tongue. This is God’s grand design for history, and suffering has always gone hand in hand with spreading His glory in all the earth. Will we choose to trust His sovereignty and purposes and not shy away from proclaiming the gospel in order to protect ourselves, even when suffering comes? When we come to faith in Christ, we receive a new master who has called us to be on a mission with Him, and faithfulness to that mission will, undoubtedly, involve suffering. Therefore, let us resolve to respond to suffering in our lives and in the lives of others in such a way that God receives the glory and His kingdom is established in all the earth.

This is, again, a very hard teaching for us in the consumer-driven culture of the West, designed around satisfying our every desire and to avoid suffering at all costs (unless, maybe, it will help you win the Super Bowl...). What was even more challenging for me to read was: what about believers living in the midst of persecution in dozens of countries around the world?

These hurting brothers and sisters in Christ suggest that the Church in the West has lost its missiological edge and has grown soft in the face of overt persecution. No wonder the Church is in decline here. They rightly understand that, biblically, a life lived in the presence of God will be framed by suffering and persecution. Can the same be said of us? We, who are the modern carriers of this Word of God, do we understand the central place of suffering and persecution in the faith we claim? Or, in light of the freedom that has shaped us, have we written these troubling truths out of our story? Are suffering and persecution essential parts of the story--or are they relics from the past? Western believers today may revolt at the thought, but unless we find our identity as God’s people in the midst of suffering and persecution, we will sadly discover that we have no identity.

Recently, I blogged about the twelve years that our “Friends of the Persecuted Church” prayer and advocacy team has been trying to help our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ by praying, writing letters, sending funds--anything to try and stop, or at least alleviate, the suffering of believers in oppressive countries around the world. This is certainly logical, compassionate, and biblical, isn’t it? One of the articles acknowledged this approach too, stating that many Western-based and well-meaning organizations have developed a protocol for responding to events of persecution: petitioning governments to intercede and stop the persecution, bringing our democratic political perspective and might to bear on the situation, even threatening the persecutors, and calling the Church to pray that persecution might end. Then I read this: “A truly biblical vision would likely respond in a different way.” The author suggests that a biblical vision reminds us that believers should not fear the persecution that is inherent in following Christ. Believers living in the midst of persecution say that when they are rejected by their families, thrown into prison, beaten, and killed for their faith, then that is precisely the time for the global Church to rejoice and give God praise--for His glory is being made known in that moment!

These overt acts of persecution reveal the persecutors’ abject failure to silence the witness, diminish the faith, and slow the Holy Spirit’s arrival in the midst of a resistant culture. The number one cause of persecution is people giving their lives to Jesus. Put another way, the major cause of persecution is refusing to deny others access to this very same Savior! Therefore, we can reduce persecution most easily by reducing the number of those who come to salvation! Is this, perhaps, what we in the Western Church are doing unconsciously, in order to avoid suffering? Salvation and witness inevitably result in persecution for Christian believers. Quite simply, persecution is normal for Christians. This is what a truly biblical missiology looks like.

Another author echoed this perspective. He writes: “More and more I am persuaded from Scripture and from the history of missions that God’s design for the evangelization of the world and the consummation of His purposes includes the suffering of His ministers and missionaries.” “Suffering is part of God’s strategy for making known to the world who Christ is, how He loves, and how much He is worth.” The “voluntary suffering and death (of Jesus) to save others is not only the content but it is also the method of our mission to proclaim the Good News of what He has accomplished.” This is both frightening and encouraging. It frightens us because it is so completely counter to the culture we live in, including our Christian sub-culture here in the West. The idea that a loving Father willing allows--and even designs--that His children suffer and endure persecution for His sake (to make His glory known to all the nations) strikes us as cruel, inconsistent with who God is, even sadistic.

But perhaps this is just one more of those strange, illogical, inexplicable paradoxes that are characteristic of our Christian faith. It can only be rightly grasped from the inside out, looking at the whole issue with eyes of faith, not with the sensitive, emotional, very compassionate and well-meaning eyes of the world. As Christians, we claim: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) The author continues: “We proclaim the Good News of what He accomplished and we join Him in the Calvary method. We embrace His sufferings for us and we spread the gospel by our suffering with him.” Joseph Tson puts it this way: “I am an extension of Jesus Christ. When I was beaten in Romania, He suffered in my body. It was not my suffering; I only had the honor to share His sufferings.” In other words, when we suffer with Christ in the cause of His mission, we display the way Christ loved the world, and in our own sufferings extend His to the world.

How illogical and contrary this sounds to those who do not see and hear with the eyes and ears of faith!

Finally, in an article entitled “The Other Side of the Cross: Suffering and the Glory of God,” the question is asked: “Did Christ think of me ‘above all’ (as the contemporary worship song goes) while He was on the cross? The Scriptures don’t point us in that direction. Did He think of us on the cross? Yes. Above all? No!”

“Let’s get this straight. There are two sides to the cross. For generations, many in the Church have known only one side...a side that can point to ease, safety, and comfort. But it’s time for the Church to grow up and look at the other side of the cross--the one that points us to suffering. The first side we are all familiar with: Christ died for us. But there is a second side to the cross: Christ died to magnify and vindicate the glory of His Father. This is the side where we are weak and need to grow deep roots.”

Why would Christ’s death be primarily for His Father’s glory? John 12:27-28 gives a clear picture of how Christ primarily viewed his death on the cross. He does not say “Save these people from hell, for they don’t deserve it.” He says “Father, glorify Your name.” Once again, we see that Christ’s primary focus was on His Father’s glory. Why? Because of all the sin that had not been punished and had tarnished the reputation of God. Christ was first and foremost concerned for His Father’s glory. He was saying “Father, I am going to the cross to show how holy, righteous, and just You really are.” This was primary. We were secondary.

This is strange indeed to our American evangelical ears--scandalous, even heretical perhaps. But we must ask ourselves: Isn’t it possible that, in this regard, we have allowed our secular sensitivities to infect our sacred realities with the individualistic, personalized, “well-being” view that permeates our understanding of Christianity? Making it ‘all about us’ rather than ‘all about God’?

This other side of the cross views suffering as first and foremost about the Father’s glory. Since Christ suffered primarily for the Father’s glory, then He has given us an example. We must be willing to suffer for the Father’s glory as well.

So once again, does the Bible call us to suffer? The “Mission Frontiers” answer is unequivocally YES! Jesus foretold us that it is going to happen. As the disciples saw suffering take place in their own lives, they wrote about it to each other, and those letters became part of our Holy Scriptures.

The question to be asked then is this: Why aren’t we suffering?

Answering this question falls into two categories. The first is found in the fact that we--the Body of Christ--are suffering. Just ask our brothers and sisters in Christ in China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, India, and a multitude of other countries.

They are being beaten, persecuted, tortured, raped, and killed. Just go to the websites of any of the Persecuted Church organizations and read about what our brothers and sisters are going through this very day.

Do we Americans get a “pass” on suffering? Most Christians are “passing” on suffering not because it’s not God’s will for their lives, but because they’ve only viewed one side of the cross. They are living a safe, soft, comfortable life because they think Jesus lives primarily for them ‘above all’. If they were to view the other side of the cross, they would find that Jesus lives primarily for the glory of the Father and suffering is to be part of their lives, though not necessarily the kind of suffering that would make it on The Voice of the Martyrs website. Paul spoke of different levels of suffering, including dishonor, bad reports, sleepless nights, emotional distress, and so forth. Many Christians in America experience this kind of suffering--emotional or “light” physical suffering--in their lives of faith. Though few Americans are involved in “great” physical suffering, many are experiencing suffering on a regular basis.

And finally, here’s something I’ve never considered before: one of the primary reasons why God wants suffering to be part of our lives is that suffering reduces sin in our lives! When I thought about this, and about the times in my life when I’ve experienced the most stress, uncertainty, and suffering, it is true that the weight of these realities kept driving me closer to God, spending my time and energy addressing these issues, rather than getting caught up in more questionable “sinful” thoughts and activities that always come when life is easy, routine, and rather dull and boring.

There was much more detail in “Mission Frontiers” regarding suffering that I’m still chewing on. However, I appreciated the challenging approaches and perspectives that the various authors presented. They seem to be on to something when suffering is connected to the gospel, evangelism, the kingdom of God, and the Body of Christ. It may not answer the perennial question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” but in the context of our faith, these insights were provocative and helpful.

I end with this, from one of the authors: “Discover the other side of the cross. Make the glory of your heavenly Father your highest priority, and live out the reality of Romans 11:36: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.”

(quotes and ideas taken from the January-February 2010 issue of Mission Frontiers - The U.S. Center for World Mission)