Pain and Suffering

In the book the Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis takes us on a journey through the intellectual, theological and philosophical study of Pain and Suffering as see in classic Christian Orthodoxy. Its a short book dealing with a heavy topic that would make one think, can he really explain all pain, all suffering, and God's response and role in it all  in such a short time? Even C.S. didn't think so because in the very beginning of the book he writes a preface which I find helpful. He explains and knows that he is not completely qualified to write such a book because he himself has not gone through certain pain and suffering that others have gone through and he didn't want to make it seem as if he was minimizing such hurt. Not just that he says he is not some great theologian and to others some of these answers may be juvenile, but in the end, it could be helpful. Heck, he even says he didn't live up to his own answers he gives in the book when he was in pain and suffering. Because he knows as you and I know, that when you are walking through pain, when you are suffering beyond what you thought you could bear, the last thing on your mind is how to intellectually deal with it, because pain and suffering isn't something to deal with, its something we will forever bear on us.. In the book he says, Mental pain is less dramatic (meaning we don't see the broken arm, or open wound” than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”

And so today, I am going to attempt to help and unpack very complex and difficult question and like C.S. Lewis, it may not provide every answer you are looking for. Mental toughness: Because we believe and Know God is with us we have the ability to confront and overcome challenges, adversity, or setbacks with resilience and determination. This is true, but it also doesn't bring comfort in the moment, there is a 100% chance of all of us experiencing pain and suffering at some point in our life and if any of you left today and God forbid something happened to you or a loved one, and you think back on this message and you say “well pastor cam said Because we believe and Know God is with us we have the ability to confront and overcome challenges, adversity, or setbacks with resilience and determination. I can just pull myself up by my bootstraps and white knuckle this suffering, and I can move on as if nothing happened. But you know that isn't the case. In fact in my years of being a pastor the #1 reason people leave the faith, question God, or decided to never belive is because of pain and suffering. But I have also seen people return to God or deepen their faith because of pain and suffering.

For many of us the question we see when we look into the world is if God is all loving, all powerful and a good God, why in the world is there so much pain and suffering? After all, you’d expect that if you lived good, were righteous, upright citizens, then of course suffering, pain would never come close to you or your loved ones. If you were God, thats how you would do it. But we know that logic doesn't add up.

As a first responder some of you are one, or know they see the worst of the worst in the world. Not just in the world around us, but in your world. Many of you have felt the pain of an absent father, or mother, husband and wife, you have memories of asking why mom didn't love us enough to stay, why did dad leave, was I not enough. Was I unloveable as a husband or wife? Or maybe you know the pain of wanting to hear three words “I love you” from your mom, or five words “I am proud of you” from your dad and now its too late and no matter how much you pretend it doesn't bother you, it's there, it's always there lurking in the shadows.

You have been through the pain and suffering of a cancer diagnosis and the fear of what's to come. Questioning why me, why my wife, why my husband, why my child. The fear and sadness of hearing terminal, or the relief and joy of hearing cured or no trace, but even if you are cancer free, its lurking in the shadows is the next pause of fear at the next dr. visit. Abuse, physical, emotional, sexual that you've experienced. Miscarriages, desiring a child or spouse and not getting one. Your loved one dies, kid dies in an accident, and there maybe times down the road where you are never over it, because you never get over it, you live with it, and then out of nowhere, you catch a smell, you see a resemblance in a sibling or spouse or a stranger in the crowd, and it brings you back. God is a good God, a good father, Jesus a good savior, but I dont have the answers to your questions.

That's why the book of Job for me is an interesting book, by and large it has the most questions asked of any one book in the bible with 330 of them to put into contrast the largest book Chapter wise is Psalms and it only has 160. Why so many questions in Job? Because the main theme in this book is human pain and suffering. What I know about human pain and suffering is that it removes the veneer from our carefully constructed life and soul and we get to the raw emotions, feelings and questions we otherwise would be afraid to ask. This is what Job 1:1 says, “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” First thing we learn is he was good even before the law of Moses, Job was not an Israelite but most likely lived during the patriarchal time of Abrham. He loved God, he was righteous and he was incredibly wealthy both monetarily and by family standards. He had 3 daughters and 7 sons, 7k sheep, 3k Camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys and many servants. It says “He was the greatest man among all the people of the east”

Then we get a sneak peak behind the curtain where satan is to give an account to God of what he has been up to and it says Job 1:8-11 “Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” (wouldn't it be great if God spoke like that about you) “Does job fear God for nothing? Satan Replied. Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and herd are spread throughout the land. But now stretch your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surly cure you to your face.”The thing about this is that pain and suffering happens for a variety of reasons, the first is sin. Your sin, your mistakes, your decisions  have caused you pain, others sin against you that was not your fault at all, someone's decision to drive drunk caused it. Or natural sin of living in a broken world, natural disasters, mutated cells, etc. God sees it all, God is sovereign, nothing happens without God's knowledge, so why didn't he stop it? That's why I call the mystery in the middle between Gods Sovereignty and the suffering of people. Why didn't he save, and in Jobs instance  God allows this to happen, we don't know why and in fact we are never given an answer to the why in the whole book or really in the whole bible there isn't an adequate answer to our pain and suffering. Even if there was an answer to your questions would it be adequate enough to bring you peace?

For Job in a single afternoon his life is turned upside down. Because “Pain and Suffering is rarely on the schedule” it normally blindsides you at 4pm on some idle tuesday. Four surviving servants one after another come and tell job, his oxen and donkeys were stolen, a fire burned up his sheep, a raiding party took his camels, and all of his children have died. This isn't the end of his pain either, we see that satan then inflict him with sores all over his body, to the point he takes shards of pottery and scrapes off his sores to get some relief, his wife survived but told him to curse God and die, in chapter Job 7:5 we see because of his wounds he gets maggots and worms festering in his wounds, Job 7:14 he has night terrors, in chapter 30 he discusses - Osteopathy pain all down his bones, and his skin begins to die off turning black. Then to make it worse as we will see in a moment, he has the three worst friends imaginable. In Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.

But before that there are a few amazing verses that could shed some light on how he can respond to our suffering and pain. Chapter Job 1:20-22 - At this, Job got  up, tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground and worshiped. Naked I came from my mothers womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised. In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.``

It says he worshiped, how in the world do you worship, how misguided is the devil when it comes to the people of God. Who inflicted pain on Job in order to get him to curse God, led Job to the only thing he believed he had left in the world, his God. Later in the book we see Job though his friends and reason begin to question God, but his first response is worship. Which shows us that Grief and Worship coexist. That's hard to hear, in fact I am even intimidated to say our first response to pain and suffering should be worship, when worship may be the furthest thing from our mind. The Purest form of Worship is in our grief.

In 1870’s Horatio Spafford was a businessman in chicago who was financially devastated when the chicago fire destroyed many of his properties, to make matters worse in 1873 came an economic downturn and that same year he planned a trip with his family to England. He sent his wife and 4 daughters ahead of him and the ship carrying them collided with another vessel and he received a note from his wife saying “Saved Alone” On his way to comfort his wife on his ship as he is passing by where his daughters died he wrote these words, When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know It is well, it is well, with my soul. When you worship in grief you are holding onto the only one who is stable, that when the storm is going on around you, God is claiming the storm in you. We run towards God, not away from him.

In the book Nightlights the author David Cambell highlights how Christians respond in suffering and as you read it, you are overwhelmed by story after story. One such story was a father whose daughter was killed when her car was struck by a drunk driver, and at her memorial as they sung hymns, the fathers arms were raised in worship. Years later their son was a missionary in Israel, got into a car accident and he too died. At his son's memorial the father had his hands high in worship. He explains this and this helped me understand grief in a way I never have before and I can see it in the book of Job. He said, upon facing such tragedy and sorrow, you permanently move into a house of grief. This is a house you haven't chosen to move into and it is one that you will never move out of. Because there is no closure to grief, over time the pain lessens and every person chooses a way to continue living. But in this house of grief, there are many rooms that every person who is going through pain and suffering goes through and resides in from time to time, maybe going back and forth, and everyone is understandable, but not every room is habitable long term.

A Room of Despair: Job 6:2-3 - If only my anguish could be weighed, and all my misery be Placed on the scales! It would surly outweigh the sand of the seas. No wonder my words have been impetuous.

To live in despair is to have no hope to live in darkness, and there are times we feel like there is no hope we cant see how we will move forward. You can live in despair for a few days but living in a room of despair permanently leads to self-destruction where you will find ways to fill the passing days. That's where people drink their day away, find ways to get numb because if you can feel numbness you can't feel the pain, but pain is an indicator that something is wrong and you have to go to the one who can heal your pain.

A Room of Anger: Have you ever been really angry with God, you want to shake your fists at him, curse him out, more angry with him than possibly you’ve ever been mad at anyone else? Thats ok, Gods a big God he can take it in fact, in times of pain and suffering we get so angry we being to accuse God that he himself is attacking us, Job says so here in Job 6:4 “The arrows of the almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; Gods terrors are marshaled against me. Again in Job 16:12 - All was well with me, but he shattered me; he seized me by the neck and crushed me. He has made me his target.

You Are angry at God, angry at the world, but if you allow yourself to live in a room of anger eventually you will look around and no one else will be there with you. Anger in the moment, anger at the time is ok, but i’ve never seen someone live healthy who lives in anger permanently;

A Room of Blame: We see this one all the time, people blame themselves, blame others and in the case of Job he had the three worst friends of all time. In fact, job is a case study on how NOT to counsel someone. Eliphaz blames Job for his sin that caused God to punish him, Bildad blames his children and says they obviously Got what they deserve, and Zophar and the rest try to pressure Job into confessing sins he never committed as the reason why God moved in this way. With friends like that who needs enemies, this is for free, if you are with someone going through hardship, don't ever do that. Walking with people in suffering and pain ive learned a few things, Listen patiently,  be unshockable, be a walking ICU, more often than not silence is greater that words.

Blame never helps us move forward, it only keeps us looking back. You can’t live in blame.

A Room of Hope and Faith:

There is hope to be found, faith to be had in a good God that loves you deeply and can redeem any moment in your life. Job has a moment of Hope and faith in Job 19:25-27 “I know my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! Listen friends, in suffering and pain this hope and faith can only be found if you know Jesus. We can bring our pain, suffering  and grief to God and we trust that God cares and knows what he is doing.

After all of the questions, all of the anger, blame, resentment, despair, hope and fiath and arguing back and forth God finally speaks to Job. And he asks Job a series of questions that don’t answer jobs questions, but it gets Job to the realization that God controls it all, he sees all, knows all in the physical world and the spiritual, and it overwhelms Job to the point where he isn't asking questions any more he simply cannot speak. He realizes what many of us do, that our questions in pain and suffering never lead us to the right answer, but they will always lead us to the right person. Jesus Chrsit.

I want to introduce you to a friend of mine whose name is Lauren. Several years ago an unimaginable tragedy hit her family and through that ours, she is my God sister. Our friends over at CCV did a life story on Lauren a few years ago and they have graciously let us have it. When I asked Lauren if we can use her story for this series she told me, “of course, that's why I did it, so that others can know how good Jesus is through all of this.” This is Lauren's story.

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Job is a book with a lot of questions, and very little answers. Just like in our life, we have tons of questions but never a solid answer. But it leads directly to the person of God when God speaks to Job through the whirlwind, he questions Job about his sovereignty, majesty and might, never giving Job the answer he was looking for, but giving him the one he needed. Job needed God, and thats who he God. Pain isn’t a single to run away from God. It’s your cue to run towards him.

God knows what it is to suffer greatly, he knows what it is like to lose a child, and he knows what it is like for others to reject him. Because Jesus knows what it's like to suffer, Jesus knows what its like to lose those he loves, Jesus know the pain of rejection, he knows the pain and the weight of sin as he suffered on the cross. Its in our pain and suffering that we fix our eyes on him, knowing and trusting that God cares for you, he knows you, he sees you and he loves you. This is what Hebrews will tell us Hebrews 12:2-3 “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Pain and Suffering are indicators to run back to God who empathizes with you.