Suffering

The scriptures referred to are 1 Peter 2:19-25.

A sadist and a masochist are talking about their fetishes. And the masochist is saying, “Pinch me! Slap me! Hit me! Please! I want to suffer!”

And the sadist says, “No.”

Aside from a few people like that, no one really wants to suffer. We spend much of our lives avoiding suffering. But sometimes you can't avoid it. Like now. Extroverts are suffering because socializing in person can be dangerous and they must stay home. Grandparents are suffering because they don't know when it will be safe for the grandkids to visit. Business owners are suffering because they are worried that their businesses might be closed for good. Their employees are suffering because paychecks have stopped and getting unemployment is both difficult and inadequate for their basic needs. People who are chronically ill with other things are suffering from fear of getting the coronavirus. People who are coming down with something are suffering because they are afraid they might have COVID-19. People with confirmed cases of the virus are suffering not only from the fever and breathing problems but also because they know they might die. The patients' families are suffering because they can't be at their bedsides. Chaplains and clergy are suffering because they can't be there for their people physically. Doctors and nurses and EMTs are suffering because they are overwhelmed and because they can't save everyone.

Suffering is a part of this life. And I've never understood the people who think that the fact of suffering somehow disproves the existence of God, because the Bible totally acknowledges the existence of suffering. In fact there is a whole book in the Bible about a man suffering without deserving it. Besides Job, the topic comes up in Ecclesiastes and Proverbs and the Psalms. All four gospels lead up to the horrific suffering of Jesus, during which he cries, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

And no facile answers are given. Yes, there are passages which, taken out of context, seem to imply that suffering is tied to sin. Which is sometimes true. Bad behaviors take a toll on us. Many of the leading causes of death can be tied to bad habits. Lots of lives are cut short by smoking, drinking, recreational drugs, overeating and not eating healthy foods. And most people spend the last years of their lives sick.

But that's not the only reason we suffer. Of a disaster, Jesus said, “Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:4) No, he said. And when his disciples asked him if a man was born blind because of some sin he or his parents committed, Jesus again said no, seeing it instead as an opportunity to use God's glorious power to heal him. (John 9)

If you ignore these sayings of Jesus, you might get the impression that all suffering is a judgment from God. Even Job wants to take up his cause with God, not Satan. And some parts of the Hebrew Bible seem to lay everything at God's feet. In Isaiah 45:7 it says, “I am the one who forms light and creates darkness; the one who brings about peace and creates calamity. I am the Lord, who accomplishes all these things.” More literal translations render the Hebrew word for “calamity” as “evil.” So does God create evil?

First let's look at the context. Isaiah is addressing Cyrus the Great whom God has chosen to release his people from their exile in Babylon. Cyrus is a Persian and thus believes in Zoroastrianism. In that religion there is a good god named Ahura Mazda, who is opposed by the destructive spirit Angra Mainyu. The good god knows all but is not all powerful. Isaiah is saying that unlike Ahura Mazda,Yahweh is omnipotent. He is ultimately in charge of everything. And he takes responsibility for everything, even things he didn't directly cause, the way shadows are caused by the presence of light.

Look at it this way. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury and the most common cause of nonfatal trauma-related hospitalizations among older adults. Each year they result in 2.8 million injuries treated in emergency rooms, 800,000 hospital admissions, and more that 27,000 deaths. While poor vision, tripping over stuff, and unwise use of ladders are usually factors in falls, the ultimate cause of hitting the ground is gravity. Get rid of gravity and no one falls. Of course, gravity also keeps us from being flung into space from a planet spinning at 1000 miles an hour. Gravity is essential but it has some potentially unpleasant side effects. And ultimately gravity comes from our Creator. So if you eliminate all the intermediate steps you could say that the reason grandma broke her hip is because of God. But that would be grossly reductive.

In the days and culture in which the Bible was written, the true complexity of the world was not known. If Genesis 1 started with a rigorous description of creation according to our current state of knowledge, it would sound like gibberish to Bronze Age people and would not have been preserved. For that matter, if you talked about quarks and mesons and quantum foam to Isaac Newton he would stare at you as if you were barking mad. So in earlier times people tended to go right from an event to God as the ultimate cause of everything. The idea of impersonal causes and forces had not yet arisen. And the Bible has to work with that very basic understanding the way you would explain to a child why their cat died. Rather than launch into a scientifically valid but to them incomprehensible discussion of feline leukemia, you'd say. “Fluffy is with God now.” It's not wrong but neither is it an exhaustive explanation of exactly what happened.

As children grow they can handle more information and complexity. In the same way, the Bible reveals more about God as it progresses from Abraham and the nomadic tribes in Canaan around 2000 BC to the Greco-Roman civilization 2 millennia later. So, as we said, Jesus doesn't hold that all suffering is a direct punishment from God. And his approach is not to try to puzzle out why bad things happen to certain people but to help them. He sees people who are sick and he heals them. He sees people who are hungry and he feeds them. He sees people who are ignorant and he teaches them. Jesus is very practical.

And as his followers that is the approach we should take in the face of suffering. And that is the way the church has traditionally dealt with suffering. When plagues broke out in the ancient world, the rich fled the cities which were rife with the disease, but Christians stayed and took care of the sick and dying at a very real risk to their lives. This is one of the things that changed the way pagans saw Christianity. But of course, the knowledge of exactly what caused epidemics was nonexistent.

By 1527, it was understood that a person could spread disease to others, so when a plague hit Wittenberg Martin Luther wrote to a fellow clergyman, “ I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.” Notice that Luther speaks of purifying the air. In that era the invisible agent that caused illness was thought to be bad air, miasma. They didn't yet know the cause but they acted on what they did know, just as the good Samaritan washed the beaten man's wounds with wine and olive oil, not knowing they had a mild antibacterial quality.

In 1665 plague was again sweeping Europe. In the village of Eyam in England, the church rector and the ejected Puritan minister got together and convinced the town to quarantine itself. They did this for 14 months and 273 people out of their population of 350 died. But they kept the plague from spreading to the surrounding countryside and neighboring towns. They made great sacrifices to do what is right.

The first several generations of Christians also made painful sacrifices to do what is right. In their case what was causing suffering and death was not a virus but an emperor who thought he was a god. That is why our passage in 1 Peter is talking about suffering unjustly. He is talking about the kind of suffering that comes from people deliberately harming others without good cause. It could be a bully or a criminal. But at the time of its writing 1 Peter is referring to official opposition to preaching and practicing Christianity. Those in power don't like rivals. Even though he never let himself be officially called an emperor, Augustus was ruthless in eliminating rival politicians. He wasn't declared a god until after his death. Eventually his successors did him one better. They proclaimed themselves gods in this life and didn't tolerate people who wouldn't worship them. They demanded sacrifices. Most polytheistic religions had no problem with this. They could just add another niche to their pantheon.

Jews absolutely refused to do this and so the empire reluctantly let them stick with their one God. It was an uneasy relationship that did not end well. But at first Christians were viewed as just another school of Judaism, like the Pharisees or Sadducees. However, as the two faiths began to clearly distinguish themselves from each other, Christians were seen as practicing an illegal religion. And by refusing to make a sacrifice to the deified emperor, they were regarded as traitors. And we all know what the penalty for treason is.

So Christians faced a stark choice: remain faithful to Jesus and undergo imprisonment and torture, or renounce their faith and make a sacrifice to the emperor. They would also be asked to name and implicate other Christians. If they refused, they could be executed. So our epistle tells them, “But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”

“For to this you have been called...” The situation in which Christians found themselves was not a fluke. When Jesus said that those who choose to follow him must take up their cross, he wasn't being metaphorical. That was literally the ultimate penalty which those in power would impose on them. The Roman empire did not ban crucifixion until the 4^th century, when Constantine, the first Christian emperor, outlawed it. And even before that the Romans had other inventive ways of executing people, like feeding them to wild beasts as public entertainment. Christians who were Roman citizens, like the apostle Paul, were given the more humane death of beheading.

But crucifixion did not go away. In Japan in 1597 as part of the imperial effort to suppress Christianity, 26 Christians were crucified in Nagasaki. Hundreds more followed in the next century. Crucifixion is still legal in Saudi Arabia and has been used in 2012 in Yemen and in 2014 in Syria by ISIS, though the executed are not necessarily Christians. The idea has always been to cause a painful and humiliating death and to serve as a warning to others.

But let's go back to the fact that Christians are called to suffer for their faith. Imagine Jesus coming today and preaching that. How many megachurches do you think he could establish with that message? How often do prosperity preachers tell their congregations that God calls them to suffer if necessary for doing the right thing?

What's sad is how many Christians feel that not being allowed to be the dominant religion in the US anymore is somehow the equivalent of persecution. That disrespects our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in countries where they really are in danger of arrest and even execution.

Yet the fact remains that doing the right thing can lead to opposition even in our country. And Christians can't wimp out when doing what is right becomes hard or costly. I have a colleague who was arrested for being part of a ministry that feeds the homeless. The mayor and commissioners of Ft. Lauderdale tried to stop him and his coworkers. Volunteers for the faith-based ministry No More Deaths have been arrested and even convicted for leaving food and water in the desert of southern Arizona to prevent the deaths of hundreds of migrants by dehydration and starvation. Teresa Todd (no relation) of Marfa, Texas stopped to let 3 migrants, 2 brothers and their seriously ill sister, sit in her car while she texted a friend and lawyer who works for the Border Patrol for advice. The 18 year old girl was near death, suffering from dehydration and the resulting death of muscle tissue. Then a local police car stopped and the officer put Todd, a 4-time county and city attorney, under arrest. She is under federal investigation for human smuggling. Todd said, “It makes people have to question, 'Can I be compassionate?'” Imagine if Jesus' parable ended with the Good Samaritan being arrested for saving the life of the man he found left for dead.

Most people are not monsters. They will do the right thing most of the time...provided it's not too inconvenient or too costly. But if it takes too much of their time or their money or they have to give up some control over what happens to them, they will pull back. Compare this to what our passage says about Jesus: “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” We have to trust God to make things right, but not necessarily in this life.

Real change takes going beyond doing just a little. Teresa Todd is now working with elected officials from both parties to change the law so that good Samaritans are not punished for helping suffering people, regardless of their immigration status. Martin Luther King Jr. suffered jail and even death to change unjust laws. Women demonstrated, were jailed, went on hunger strikes, were force fed and worse till they got the vote in 1920. Women of color had to wait even longer.

When Jesus said, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me,” (Mark 8:34) he meant it literally. The church eventually adopted the cross, not as bling, but as a symbol of our faith in a God who suffered for our sins to save us from suffering. The early Christians followed in Jesus' steps and their compassion won people to a faith that meets suffering head-on. Let's not drop the ball on this. Whatever the cost to us, let us, in the words of the old hymn, “Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, till all the world adore his sacred name.”