Does suffering have a formula? Episode 30
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Welcome to Jen’s New Song. My name is Jennifer Holmes and I’m so glad you’re here. This is a podcast for the broken, the weary, the hurting, and the suffering. Here we have honest conversations about mental health issues and we look at them all through the lens of God’s word. A lot of people don’t realize the vastness of what the Bible has to say about depression, anxiety, doubt, fear, or relational issues. The Bible is full of comfort and guidance for all of life’s problems, including the struggles of our minds and emotions.
Each episode will have a short encouragement from me as we study God’s Word together, drawing on my own experience with mental illness and my continuing education in counselling, or we will have honest conversations with a guest.
Whether it’s you who struggle, or you want to better understand how to minister to others, thank you for joining me today.
Have you ever thought to yourself, I wish God would show me what lesson He wants me to learn so I could get over this trial already?
In my circles at least, this is a common joke but we kind of mean it. We really feel that way. Like there’s a formula to trials. I’m suffering right now, therefore God must be trying to teach me something. If the suffering continues, then we must not be getting the point, and so we wish that we could hurry up and learn whatever it is that we’re supposed to learn so we can move on. And by move on, I mean have the trial end and life get back to easy. The whole point is to eliminate the suffering.
Some version of this thought is common in Christian circles and it’s easy to see why. Let’s examine why it’s easy to have this logic. First, James tells us that the trials of our faith work patience or steadfastness and that we should let patience have it’s perfect work in us. He also says right before, that we should count it all joy when we have trials.
There is something about suffering that makes us more like Christ. There’s no denying it, us humans work better under pressure for some reason. I wish that I became the most Christlike when my life was easy and happy and I was completely stable. I just don’t. I learn the most and grow the most when I’m in the middle of a trial and I think most people are the same. I am always glad that when I become more like Christ from trials that it gives them at least some purpose I can see and hold on to and so I am able to count it all joy with James. So I can see where this idea of quickly learning the lesson comes from.
Another reason this saying or thought has made it’s way into our vocabulary is because there are times when suffering is caused by our own sin. Think of David’s sin toward Bathsheba. He repented, “learned his lesson” we might say, and yet there was continued suffering because of his sin. His family was a mess from then on and God told David it was because of his gross sin. There are times that sin causes suffering, but it’s usually pretty obvious, like when God made this direct correlation for David.
Both of these things together - growing in trials and suffering caused by sin - can cause us to say, I wish God would show me what lesson He wants me to learn so I could get over this trial already. There’s one problem with that saying though. We’ve taken verses like those in James, good principles like becoming more Christlike through trials, and stories like David’s, and we’ve extended that logic out to think that sin or the need to learn a lesson is always the cause of our suffering.
This is something we want to do because if our suffering is caused by sin or the need to learn a lesson, then it is controllable. Then we can just hurry up, learn the lesson, become more Christlike, and the suffering will disappear.
Then it all becomes very logical, under our control, neat and tidy and tied up with a bow. We then have a formula. Suffering happens, we learn our lesson, suffering stops.
But that often leaves us confused and asking the question, what am I missing and why won’t this suffering stop?
I think it’s essential that we separate sin and suffering. There is suffering because of sin, but not all suffering is caused by sin. Look at the case of Job. His friends sit around for a lot of chapters asking him what caused this suffering. Job cannot figure out what he did that would have caused the amount of devastation that had come over his life. His friends urge him to figure it out, but he, rightly so, thinks that he did not cause this suffering. In the beginning of the book, God tells Satan that Job is righteous, so we know that this suffering was not caused by Job’s sin. Job can come off looking a little self righteous when talking to his friends, but imagine how frustrating it would be to be sitting in ashes and have your friends just tell you if you repent everything will get better. Meanwhile, Job knows that nothing will ever replace his children, his whole life is devastated, he’s in pain, and he can’t figure out the reason. God ends up defending Job to his friends and telling them they were wrong to assume Job’s sin.
It’s easy for us to look at Job’s friends and say they were wrong and that we would never have talked to Job that way. And yet, messages just like Job’s friends spouted abound.
When someone is depressed, we tell them to read their Bible and pray more, implying that if they just became more spiritual, their suffering will end. If they are anxious, we tell them to depend on the Lord and their anxiety will disappear, not taking into account the fact that it could just be their brain is sending too much adrenaline into their body. For years Christians thought that serious mental illness could be as a result of sin, the occult, or demon possession.
Don’t get me wrong, I am 100% on board with reading your Bible and praying more and becoming more spiritual. I’m also 100% on board with staying away from sin and the occult. I also think that if you know your suffering is because of sin, you need to repent and turn back to God. But why are those our default answers?
Because we’re all afraid to admit that sometimes suffering happens for reasons we might never know. Because it’s hard work to acknowledge and live through suffering that lasts. Because if suffering is unexplainable, then it’s uncontrollable. And that makes us uncomfortable.
And we end up like the crowd watching Jesus interact with the blind man and asking, who sinned to make him end up blind? Him or his parents? But Jesus tells them that there was no sin that caused this suffering and instead they will see His glory in the middle of it.
In my counselling classes, we’re taught that sin or suffering cause all of the problems people come to us for. Sometimes it’s their sin, but most often, it’s suffering. That suffering could be because of other’s sin against them, or just because we live in a fallen world in bodies that don’t work the way they did in the garden of Eden. Sometimes, people’s brains have the wrong mix of chemicals, sometimes people have too much adrenaline and their nervous system can’t handle it, and sometimes people are just in situations that are full of suffering that cause them to seek extra guidance, love, and care.
What if we stopped looking at other’s suffering and assuming they need to learn a specific lesson? What if we stopped thinking we have to find the lessons we’re supposed to learn so that we can stop the suffering? What if we all just leaned up against the Lord and asked Him to carry us through it? Because dependence on the Lord no matter our circumstances is the best lesson of all.
Thank you for listening today. If you’re suffering today, I pray you find some rest in the Lord and some care from a friend. If you’re new here, go ahead and find other episodes that might speak to your suffering. You can find me at jensnewsong on Instagram or at jensnewsong.com where you’ll find a free mini course on what God has to say about our mental health and other resources. Could you share this episode with a friend today? Let’s encourage each other as we all face our seasons of suffering.