It’s an interesting question, don’t you think? Is suffering the Christian’s friend or is it an enemy? We all have to deal with this question in some way, whether we seek to answer it consciously and explicitly or simply let it linger just below the surface of conscious thought, where it still has consequences for our actions and decisions and hopes. No doubt this latter case is true for the vast majority of us most of the time, and the former only happens when some real experience of suffering – personal or otherwise – intrudes into our lives and forces the question into our conscious minds in a way that’s hard to ignore. Even then our response will likely be to try to push it back down.
Of course, the question can also be drawn to the surface by something like a lecture or a sermon or an essay or a book. In fact, listening to a sermon recently is what has called the question to my mind just now. As I’ve been pondering it over the last several days, three different answers have commended themselves to me, more or less in sequence. And they have come, in sequence, with an increasing level of soul-satisfaction as I’ve tried to consider each one through the lens of Scripture.
The first – and most obvious – answer to the question is that suffering is an enemy. This is what we might call our “gut-level” reaction. Suffering hurts. Who could possibly see it as a friend other than someone who is mentally deranged like a sadist or masochist? There is something inside us that screams, “No!” when we see it or feel it. And this visceral, emotional reaction appeals to us because it has the veneer of what we might call realism. It matches our heart-response to suffering. It is no doubt this “realism” that informs the point of view that asks, “If there is an all-good, all-powerful God, how can there be suffering?” – or, for one who positions himself as a sceptic, asserts that because there is suffering, there cannot be an all-good, all-powerful God.
But Christians, of course, cannot land there. And so we push on to a second answer. In fact, the opposite one, namely, that suffering, in spite of all its apparently inimical character, is actually a friend. There is much in Scripture that seems to suggest this. For example, James unabashedly offers this counterintuitive call: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). The Apostle Paul says something similar: “…but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5). We are told in Acts 5:41 that the apostles, who had just been beaten for preaching the gospel, were “rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to suffer for the Name.” Perhaps most extraordinary of all is this, describing our Lord: “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Heb. 2:10). In light of such an astounding claim, how can suffering be regarded as anything but a friend to the Christian?
This conclusion, however, does not adequately take into account two other biblical truths. The first is this. Suffering in Scripture is presented to us as a result of the Fall and the consequent curse under which the creation now groans, longing for liberation. Second, we are told explicitly that suffering will be forever banished from the world to come – the new heavens and the new earth: “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” (Rev. 21:4). One does not banish friends. Given this fact, a third answer to the original question commends itself – an answer that acknowledges both the sensibility of our visceral reaction to suffering and the beneficent effect that it can have in our lives: suffering is fundamentally an enemy, but God is big enough, powerful enough, wise enough, and good enough to take the power that suffering has to hurt us, and to turn it to ultimately good purposes. This, it seems to me at least, is both a soul-satisfying and an intellectually satisfying way to understand Christian suffering. In fact, this is what the Bible claims that God is doing with all things – even the evil in the world – for those that “love him and are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). Note carefully, however, that this is not an answer to all suffering; only Christian suffering. The suffering of those who do not turn to Christ in faith remains utterly tragic and must be dealt with separately. It is another issue for another day. But at the very least, it is all the more reason to desire to be found in Christ at the Last Day.