Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Embracing Necessary Pain
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
October 2000Next to my wife, Diana, the most important person in my life recently has been Jeff.
When I am with him, I experience deep, prolonged, and burning pain. The pain is necessary.
Without the brutal physical therapy that follows the repair of a massive tear in the shoulder muscles, my shoulder would quickly freeze, and my arm would be almost useless.
Jeff dislikes hurting people. He knows, though, that unless he does his job ruthlessly I will be a cripple. He has a goal in mind, so he moves my muscles, painful as that is. I owe him a great deal for that pain.
More ordinary suffering is at times also necessary. It, too, is a gift.
When I was a child, my mother diligently sat for three years and made me practice the piano until the spark caught.
I will never be a very good musician, but I owe her for suffering through those sessions -- and through my attempts at avoidance -- to give me access to the great joy of making music.
I could not even imagine that joy at the age of nine. All I knew was my suffering, with no clue to hers until my turn came as a parent and I failed to carry the torch.
We Boomers were generally not fond of discipline. Our children are paying for it. They pay in ignorance of Western culture, in the lasting trauma of homes broken because spouses simply stopped trying to be faithful, and in a general sense of instability
Christianity's claim that God knew suffering seemed outrageous in the first century. In the world of the Greeks and Romans, it was characteristic of a god to be beyond suffering. For some Greek thinkers, gods simply contemplated their perfection.
Imagine the reaction to a religion that spoke of God on the move, taking on all the limitations and vulnerabilities of human life, then going on to experience the most hideous form of death the word knew, emerging the victor.
How absurd that a suffering god from the backwoods of civilization should have anything to offer a sophisticated world!
We live in a culture almost as sophisticated as that of the First Century. Like its inhabitants, we stumble on questions of suffering, pain, the mystery of evil, and the even greater mystery of human cruelty.
In the midst of that predicament, what use is the suffering of God?
The New Testament witnesses to several aspects of the cross. Most basic is the gospel message that when we see the love God poured out in the face of our evil, we are convicted and also experience forgiveness. There is more.
God suffers with the world, showing it the eternal moment of the crucifixion, always offering the path of growth where we prefer death, always waiting for us to mature. The path to maturity requires the mastery of self, the pain of discipline.
It is not surprising then that there are places in the New Testament that tell Jesus' story in terms of disciplined pursuit of a goal.
The letter to the Hebrews is particularly blunt. Jesus is spoken of in dynamic terms, the "pioneer and perfecter of our faith." The Lamb is also a Tiger. Jesus' suffering has a purpose: "who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame."
To mature in Christ means, in part, having the nerve to suffer.
We do it with the support of community, word, and sacraments, but the choice to embrace necessary pain is something that only an individual can make. Each day offers the chance to be a hero.
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