Nine Wrong Responses to Suffering

 

Suffering 23

        

 

          Suffering is generally caused externally. In other words, with the exception of consequences, suffering does not begin because we cause it. Lets say you are in a boat drifting lazily between some lily pads on a pond. Suddenly, from the shore, someone heaves an enormous rock into the water just to the left of your bow. You did not throw the rock, but you do have to deal with the waves. Next week, we will look at good ways to respond to suffering but today I want to begin on the negative side of the equation. As I see it, there are nine bad responses to suffering. Here they are; do not do them.

Surprise

          Your parents are going to age and eventually die. Along the way, they very well may enter a long, slow, painful decline. Your children are going to make decisions you disagree with. Your pastor is going to misunderstand you and consequently mistreat you. Your friends are not going to notice how difficult life is for you. Your employer is going to fire you. Your body is going to fall apart. Your dreams are going to go up in flames. Your world is going to attack what you believe in and stand for. Someone is going to gossip about you behind your back. Someone is going to criticize you fiercely and publicly. Someone is going to accuse you falsely. Your money is going to run out just when you need it most. Your service for the Lord will go unnoticed and unthanked.

          “Boy, Pastor Brennan, you’re depressing today.”

Not at all. I just do not want you to be surprised when it happens. For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know (I Thessalonians 3.4). One of the primary reasons I am doing such a lengthy series on suffering is to prepare those I love for it when it comes. Because it will come.

Surprise is a bad response.

Accusation 

          Very rarely, do the people who hurt you intend to hurt you. There are evil people in the world; I accept that. But most of the people you and I interact with are not evil. Sinners? Yes. Evil? No. But as sinners their decisions, actions, and words will bring suffering to you, a suffering that is not imaginary, but they were not trying to make you hurt.

          The human problem here from a reaction standpoint is that lashing out at people who hurt us makes us feel better – temporarily. Yet we should not. Charity suffereth long, and is kind (I Corinthians 13.4).

          Not only should we not respond to suffering by accusing people we should not accuse God either.

          You see this all through Job, for example. In a sense, I accept and agree with it. We ought to pour our heart out to Him even if that heart is so hurt at the moment all we can do is blindly lash out at Him. (Always remember, most people do not respond logically while undergoing extreme suffering; they respond emotionally.) But in a larger sense, I disagree with it. Perhaps I should say it this way: when your head clears in the morning, when you are rational again, do not accuse God of unfairness or injustice. He is not evil.

          Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? (Romans 9.20)

Anger

          It may be one of the stages of grief but that does not mean it should be. We get angry at God for allowing it. We get angry at the friend, parent, child, or coworker we think caused it. We get angry at the company we work for, at the traffic, at the government, at the media. We get angry at how life has turned out. We get consumed with anger until the anger possesses us as surely as the demons possessed the maniac of Gadara. Suffering people often become angry people. That anger goes to the core of their being, settles in, and breeds all sorts of mischief. 

          The Puritans used to preach a concept called resignation. This is similar to the more modern concept of acceptance but more spiritual. It says, in essence, “God has apparently decreed this for me for this stage of my life; I accept His will; I am resigned to His work in me.”

          Job is a precious example of this. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? (Job 2.10) Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1.21). As was our Saviour Himself. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? (John 18.11)

          Do not be angry; be resigned.

Bitterness 

          I think I see this more than any other wrong response. It is so instinctually human. I am also conscious I fight it in my own heart. I always will. The root of bitterness is ever springing up (Hebrews 12.15).

          Bitterness springs from a sense of injustice. “I was hurt and it wasn’t fair; I didn’t deserve it.” Alternatively, “I was hurt and the one who hurt me has gotten away with it; that’s not fair.” Like accusation, this starts as a bitterness against people and proceeds to become a bitterness against God.

          The best word I can think of to associate with bitterness is destruction. Bitterness is eminently destructive. I am thinking right now of one particular wife of my acquaintance who is bitter at her parents. That bitterness has now driven away, in addition to her parents, her sisters, her in-laws, and one of her own adult children. It will only continue to wreak havoc so long as she harbors it.

          Bitterness becomes the taste that is always on your palate; nothing is sweet anymore.

          Bitterness becomes the only lens through which you see anything. Everyone and everything becomes suspect as you blame everyone in your past for every little thing that ever sat wrong with you. And you become an old, bitter, dried up husk of a person.

          Do not get bitter.

Envy 

          The sweet psalmist of Israel struggled with this, and expounds on it most movingly in Psalm 37 and its reverse, Psalm 73. In his case, it was seeing the prosperity of the wicked. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked (Psalm 73.3). Envy, however, is bigger than that. It is not just envy at the prosperity of the wicked but an envy of everyone around you who is enjoying what has so cruelly been denied you.

          Bitterness is what I see most often in others as they respond to suffering, but envy is what I see most often in myself. Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? (James 4.5) As my college days ended without obtaining that mysterious be all and end all known as a wife, envy grew in me. I looked around at all of my friends happily driving off for their honeymoon and I was envious. For many years, while living in Chicago, I could not afford to buy a home. I struggled with envy of those who could and did. At this stage of my life the spirit of envy in me is different. I look at those who can drive or travel without any apparent difficulty and then be perfectly normal once they arrive and I fight envy. Meniere’s Disease has robbed me of that, along with so much else.

          We so often get our eyes off of the Lord, beloved, distracted by the very blessings He so bounteously bestows on others. If you are in the Lord’s will you have Him. And He is the point; He is better than any of His gifts.

          Let us work at being happy for other people who have what we do not. Let us work at being content with what God has given them and denied us. Let us work at being grateful for His provision to us. Let us work at being enamored of Him.

          …but let us not be envious.

Guilt

          There is subtlety in the devil’s temptations sometimes, and here is one of those times. We do sin, and that sin has consequences. We do sin, and God does convict us of that sin. We do sin, and God does punish us as a result of that sin. But that does not mean that your child died because you did not witness to enough people last year.

          Conviction is a present thing; guilt is a past thing. The devil deals in guilt. God deals in conviction. David was blatantly rebellious and wrong when God took his son’s life. If you, though, have made something right already, and if you are sincerely following after the Lord, you need to realize that blaming yourself is not a healthy thing.

          Let me return to a moment to my old foe, Meniere’s Disease. I think (not know) that God has allowed me to have it as a check on my pride. If I am right about that, sometimes my thought process becomes… “Tom, you have Meniere’s Disease because of your pride. Your family suffers terribly right along side of you and has for years putting up with your disease. If you would just learn your lesson God would take it away and they wouldn’t have to suffer your disease.”

          Perhaps. But maybe God is using this in their life too. Maybe He intends for them to have to put up with my limitations, to not be able to do certain things with me as a father/husband because God wants to draw them to Himself.

          Ask God to show you where you are wrong, but do not blame yourself for all the waves that rock your boat in the lily pads.

Anxiety 

          Anxiety is the evil twin of prudence. The latter biblically looks down the road to see what is coming so it can prepare for it. Anxiety looks down the road and always sees something negative coming. The “what if” is always answered in the negative.

          I speak from sad experience here: when you have suffered it is very easy to become anxious all the time. Mandy and I buried our first child on a snowy Pennsylvania hillside in the waning moments of the last century. Since that day, we are sore tempted to imagine the worst for our children. You become exceedingly conscious of the frailty of human life; it is always on your mind.

          Learning from experience is one thing; allowing yourself to become anxious is another. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4.6-7).

Self-Pity 

          I sat on the picnic table across from a girlfriend who had just broken up with me. My class ring lay rocking gently back and forth on the table between us. She had just dropped it there. Shocked, I stared at her and groaned, “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” Ever the sensible woman, she looked me square in the eye and said, “Tom, you’re not the only guy in the history of the world to have his girl break up with him.”

          She was right. What helpful words those were to me in the dark years ahead. I was not somehow destined for a miserable existence beyond the ken of any man. I was just experiencing life, the same kind of life that millions of others before me and after me experienced. It was endurable. It was survivable.

Despair

          After so many years fighting Meniere’s Disease and its effects, I am generally on an even keel. But occasionally I will descend into the spiraled, twisting madness of despair. At such times, I feel trapped in a broken, deteriorating body, fearful I will be unable to continue to provide for my family or to serve the Lord in any measurable capacity. But despair is always wrong, beloved, always.

          Despair is a vote against the goodness of God. Despair is a vote against the sufficiency of God. Despair is a vote against a real view of what God is actually doing now. Despair is the emotional result of lying to yourself and believing your own lies. At its extreme end, despair becomes suicide, the direct result of a wrong response to suffering.

          Whatever you do, do not despair.

          I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God (Job 19.25-26).

          If you do not have the faith to share Job’s thoughts at least have the wisdom to cling to his words. Whatever has happened or will happen, God has not died. He lives. In the end, when it all is said and done, He will stand triumphant over a creation restored from its curse and you will stand there with Him.

          Believe that, child of God, believe that. And do not despair.