Suffering 1 - Writing and Witnessing about Suffering

A Blogging Series on Suffering

Blog I:  Writing and Witnessing about Suffering

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            The great issues of life are timeless.  Suffering is certainly one of the great issues of life.  Job 5:7 says “Man is born for trouble as the sparks fly upwards.”  Everyone faces adversity, sorrow, sickness, pain, grief, heartache, and finally death.  So in each generation and with every new adversity we ask questions, seek answers, and discuss our theories and perspectives regarding suffering.  There will be no final word spoken on suffering until that moment our Lord wipes away every tear from the eyes of His redeemed.  Until then we will try to comfort those suffering, and will seek comfort in our own sufferings.

My theory about writing is a simple one.  We write because writing is a method by which one participates in the overall human conversation.  Being men and women created in God’s image is more than being individuals created in God’s image, it is also humanity created for oneness as the Godhead is also God in unity as well as Trinity.  So there is a humanity that carries on conversation continually about the subject matters that are of interest to us.  We write to be a part of that conversation.  I express my thoughts and they become part of a human process by which humanity and us as individuals within humanity decipher the current of thoughts making the rounds, and through it all we seek to gain wisdom and understanding.  Some things like suffering are bound to perennially capture our attention; because either we will be suffering or someone near us will be.

I don’t consider myself to have suffered a great deal in life.  I have led a fairly quiet life with perhaps less suffering than most if I am being honest.  I will try not to hype my suffering into this thing that gives me a special right to be heard within the human conversation.  This year one of my favorite books I have read is The Invisible Girls by Sarah Thebarge.  Sarah’s story is one of those stories where God gave someone an experience which through their endurance of the suffering has made their story compelling.  It wasn’t just that she experienced a very life-threatening form of cancer, but it is how when her world had been turned upside down she began to heal by discovering there were other people suffering, and she began to be a help to a family in difficult straits.  I’m not sure I can speak with such reality about suffering as she does.  Because I have read her book I am forced to think as I think about writing about suffering if I can write about suffering with any sort of reality like Sarah Thebarge wrote about it, or am I just offering words and clichés of an intellectual appreciation of a natural phenomenon from the safe vantage point of a cozy study?

My idea to giving witness regarding the things of Christ and of faith and of understanding has become heightened by reading Acts 1:1-11 in the Ascension Day liturgical readings.  In verse eight Jesus tells the apostles that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the world.  There was a phrase which caught me by surprise as I read the verse.  To whom were the Apostles to witness?  Jesus promised them that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and empower them, quoting Jesus to “witness to me.”  Our witness is not towards men but towards God.  One cannot separate the duties of love of neighbor from love of God.  Each careless word we speak to men is a careless word spoken towards God.  One cannot love God whom he cannot see; apart from loving men created in God’s image that we do see.  Ultimately therefore what I say to others about suffering is what I present to God as prayer in regards to suffering.  I think the Fathers understood this better than most modern Christians.  St. Augustine’s Confessions are a sort of an autobiography of the great theologian’s life, especially his life of thought.  But St. Augustine’s Confessions are first and foremost a book of prayers addressed to God that the Bishop of Hippo made available for others to read because what is the best thing we can offer to one another but what we offer to God, and what shows more our understanding of the nature of God than to give him that which is also a gift to the people he loves.

If this blog has been meandering it has been meandering to this point.  When the Christian gives testimony to Christ about suffering the first truth about suffering we will speak of to him is our praise and thanksgiving that our Lord has personally come into a realm where suffering surrounds us and he has suffered with us and for us.  We are fascinated most of all that a God who could be above all the sufferings of a fallen world chose instead to become man, to suffer for our sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that he might bring us to God.  This is our first confession when we think of suffering and bear witness to him.  Secondly, like unto this first truth is that when our Lord rose from the dead and ascended on high he did not leave suffering behind.  Instead he gathers the suffering of his people into his prayers and presents them to the Father.  He also promises by and through the Holy Spirit that wherever we are so He is also there.  He says to us in our grief and sorrow; “I am with you to the end of the age.”  Do not imagine he has left sorrow behind when he ascended on high.  He suffers with us and moreover provides comfort and in time will wipe away every tear from our eye.  So we may set our focus on the way ahead, knowing he is with us to the end of the age.