On Pain and Suffering: A Christmas Reflection

Every year I try to write something festive for Christmas but in honesty I found it hard to muster up enough Christmas ‘spirit’ to be able to write something with integrity. I don’t want to write something for the sake of writing it and being pretentious is often worse than silence. Over the past few months I have had in the back of my mind a few ideas that I wanted to expound on in writing, ideas that related to the interaction of the Christian faith with the imprint of God in the creation of man by virtue of His common grace bestowed upon us. At the same time, I wanted to write an encouraging message for Christmas, which this years’ Christmas warranting this the most. I figured I could meet these two objectives with an essay on pain and suffering. Indeed that is not a typical Christmas message, and how can that be encouraging? I hope to do this by reframing pain and suffering in light of several key moments in several artistic works.

The amplification of pain

Forgive me for starting with possibly the most frightening header. There is a scene in Man of Steel (2013) where the Kryptonian soldiers led by General Zod attacked Clark Kent (Superman). At one moment in the battle, Superman managed to damage Zod’s visor which exposed Zod – a Kryptonian with heightened sense – to voices and sounds in a large undefined area. Superman taunts Zod: “Without your helmet, you’re getting everything. And it hurts, doesn’t it?” When we suffer individual pain, we definitely feel it. However, the pandemic and its accompanied restrictions has granted us a glimpse of how Zod feels, as we struggle to keep contact with our friends, see the case numbers increasing and perhaps know someone personally who has lost their life due to the virus, whether directly or indirectly. Some of us try to be like Superman, who has honed his sense over his lifetime to focus on one thing at a time. That helps him greatly, but if are to maintain the analogy, it does not remove the pain.

Moving from analogy to application, some have a tendency to blame God for ‘all the pain in the world’. However, CS Lewis in The Problem of Pain points out that no one can accurately state that as an individual reason for doubting the existence of God, because though the collective pain may be of a high amount, individual suffering is felt by definition by the individual. This is not to say that we cannot resonate with the pain of a loved one, it is only to say that we engage in fiction when we invoke the claim that we understand the collective pain to rebut the proposition that God exists. Ironically, the collective pain can only be understood if God did exist. In Isaiah 53:3, Jesus is described as a “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief”. Matt Waldock in an address at the UCCF forum builds on this idea, pointing out that Jesus was the only one who could feel the full collective pain of humanity. This is because “He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). In other words, he transferred the pain that was rightfully ours onto himself. What was that “pain” he spared us from? The eternal separation and rejection from God. It is no wonder at the moment before His death Jesus yelled out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

The prior of pain

In Netflix Original Series The Order Episode 6: ‘The Commons, Part 2’, Vera to preserve an alliance takes a chemical that enables her to enter into a hive mind. Before doing so, she slyly took an emotional amplifier which she activated immediately after doing so. Suddenly, all members of the hive mind begin to cry, and the sadness was so intense that there were physical manifestations of pain, some members feeling as though they were about to vomit. Xavier, the leader of the hive mind asked, “How can you bear this?”. In a powerful statement she replied, “I bear it because I have already lived it.” The implications of Jesus’s incarnation into flesh is he has borne the greatest pain possible. He was rejected by many in his day, including people from his own hometown (Luke 4:14-30). He was beaten, flogged and crucified. He was rejected by God the Father and died on the cross. All suffering pales in comparison. The account in The Order is an apt analogy for how humanity would fare if we tried to distribute the pain among ourselves. The single event of rejection by God on the cross is more than unbearable for the individual. Only Jesus, the perfect God and man could do so.

Sure one could challenge the veracity of whether Jesus did indeed die or you could try to make an argument that some instances of collective pain overtake Jesus’ own, with a presumption that He was not God and could not bear the instances above. On the question of veracity, many good books have been written on it such as The Case for Christ. I direct your reading there as the topic though important is beyond the scope of the argument. On the question of greater instances of collective pain, I argue that one has missed the point if they speak of such. This is because the evidence for Christianity is not to prove greater pain, though that is an important implication of the death and resurrection, but it is to prove that as Rebecca McLaughlin pointed out in Confronting Christianity “Suffering is the cornerstone of Christianity”. Jesus life was filled with suffering, and Jesus is the cornerstone (1 Peter 2:7-8). Suffering cannot be abstracted from Jesus as that would be to miss out a huge point. So, suffering is the cornerstone. How then does this resonate with our own human lives?

The numbing of pain

In an episode of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon is on a relationship ‘break’ with Amy, he tries his hardest to activate his inner ‘Spock’ (a character in Star Trek) who by virtue of his half-Vulcan species, is able to partly eliminate his emotions in favour of logic. This was Sheldon’s approach to his break up. As I type this I can imagine the numerous instances of resonance with this account. A relationship not turning out as we hoped it to be seems to be too common a narrative. We rather defer to logic as a ‘dam’ to withhold the emotional tsunami from breaking us down. Though God is described as logos – the root word for logic (John 1:1), it is remarkably telling that God was the divine inspiration behind Solomon’s Song of Songs, a chapter in the Bible where the love of God to humanity is portrayed by analogy between husband (God) and wife (humanity). The husband addresses his wife “How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!” (Song 4:1). He then goes on to describe his bride with beautiful pastoral imagery and metaphor. Julian Hardyman in Jesus, Lover of my Soul analyses the whole of Song 4 and describes it as God’s “passion...turned up to full volume”!.

Through the years of my life I always felt a tension picturing God as both this logical genius and this sentimental lover. I have funnily enough once thought they could be equated to one another, with the former explaining the latter. Yet, the Bible clearly shows that a distinction but not a contradiction.

The mistune of pain

Sheldon is devastated in his breakup with Amy. He moves through fits of emotion and reason over the course of several episodes. In one episode, he had a song stuck in his mind. I am sure most of you are aware that a song can so easily get stuck in your head, especially if you listen to it right before you sleep! Sheldon annoys his friends as he repeatedly hums the tune, trying to figure it out. Finally, when he does, he realizes it was a song which described his inner change after meeting Amy.

Pain serves to provide a similar signal. Think of pain this way: Each of us hears a charming tune at the back of our minds, but its volume varies according to the seasons. We describe pain as horrible because we have an intuitive inkling of what is good. If we were in Sheldon’s shoes, the need for discovering the logic behind the repeated tugging of the tune would be brought about by pain. This helps to continue the God as passionate sentimental lover metaphor. Julian Hardyman aptly describes an increase in volume. The volume continues to increase despite our fickle turning of our volume dial. We hear a tune but it must be amplified for us, some more than others. As C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain says: “God whispers to us in our pleasures…but shouts in our pains. It is a megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” God’s amplification of the tune commensurate with His amplification of pain. For some of us he has to do this with a megaphone.

When He does, let us not kid ourselves, it hurts. We often feel like we are in a perpetual state of vulnerability, knowing that pain is about to come but unable to do much about it. We can come up with medicine for illnesses, but not being able to come up with a cure instantly is telling. Perhaps some dream of merging ourselves with machine, transcending pain. Even if the possibility manifests, in doing so I put it to you that we transcend being human. Take out the ‘sentimental emotion’ side of Spock would turn him full Vulcan and zero human. Take out the ‘passionate lover’ God and He is no longer God.

The transformation of pain

In one of the final episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Ted Mosby hears a beautiful rendition of La Vie En Rose played on the Ukulele by his future wife, the titular mother. The audiences first watching this were captivated, wondering if that was the moment that Ted would meet the long-awaited for mother. Such anticipation! Turns out Ted would only meet the mother at Farhampton Train Station the next evening, but this moment in the show creates suspense through an ‘almost yet not’ moment.

Up to this point, Ted has encountered rejection again and again, even being left at the altar once. Rejection of Ted has been so frequent until it has become comedic. But don’t let comedy overshadow persistence.

When Ted finally meets his wife, he is a transformed man. He took every rejection as preparation. The analogy slightly differs from reality in that it is God who used each rejection to prepare us. Like he prepared the Israelites to be a holy community, he too transforms us. Apostle Paul in the letter to the Romans states a verse that I believe we Christians constantly recite in the face of adversity: “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:3). But I feel that we often miss a few words at the start – and I am guilty of this too. We miss out the clause that precedes Romans 5:3 that states “we rejoice in our sufferings”.

What does “rejoice” mean in this context? It does not imply some sort of Christian sadism or masochism. Rather we rejoice that our suffering is pegged to the hope we have in God, who has suffered first for our sakes. The verse says rejoice in our sufferings not for our sufferings. Suffering per se is not pleasant, that is obvious. But what it leads to is cause for celebration.

The temporality of pain

How is the gradual loudening of the tune relevant here? It is that tune which began as a faint earworm now amplified into a lover’s ballad. Ted longs to meet the player the tune would lead him to. It will be the day that, like Sheldon, we discover the tune that has gradually transformed us. Revelations 21:3-4 describes this in the utmost personal language:

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

No mourning, crying nor pain. God dwelling with humanity. On that day we will see the player behind the tune. On that day, like Sheldon, we too will discover the meaning of the tune that transforms us. The tune is stuck at the back of our head, and pain is used by God to amplify it.

I am aware that for some of us, including Christians, certain things in this article may be uncomfortable. I am thinking primarily the comparison of God as a lover not only in Biblical Scriptures but my extending that to love songs. My reply is that Song of songs, which I cited earlier, grants that interpretative warrant. Indeed, elsewhere (in Ephesians 5 for example) marriage between husband and wife is described as an analogy to God’s love for His church. This fact, coupled with man being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) would reflect imperfectly the thoughts of God, though in man’s fallen state by virtue of common grace, provides no reason for reluctance to abstract romantic ideas from the artistic works of man.

For some others, you could be a victim of betrayal of trust that took place in a romantic setting. The romantic language may therefore be understandably off-putting. But God is there, arms wide open saying “Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful”. What if the pain we feel from the brokenness of relationship is what brings us closer to Jesus, who has the most tragic first-hand experience of betrayal? What if pain is the tune of the love song that can be amplified by the one who loves us with infinite passion?

This Christmas, we will experience a level of pain unprecedented. Yes, I used that word. But in doing so, I hope we re-appropriate the term unprecedented: an unprecedented identification and resonance with Jesus.

“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18)

This piece was largely inspired by my pastor Julian Hardyman’s recent book, Jesus, Lover of my Soul and the wise C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain and I feel it would not be right to not mention them in gratefulness. I also largely thank the friends who have comforted me in episodes of pain, enabling me to survive, recover and reflect on instances of pain. Above all, this piece could not have been written without the experiences of pain and suffering that the faithful Lord and Saviour of my life decreed I experience, moulding me that I may one day see him face to face, and he will wipe away every tear.