Suffering

             For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, (Philippians 1:29)

 

            Wait – what? It has been granted to us…to suffer for him? That’s a deal-breaker for some. It’s the sort of statement that makes God seem sadistic. He wants us to suffer?

            Well, yes, but we need to define the term. To suffer is to “experience or be subjected to (something bad or unpleasant.” So, the person who joins the military must suffer through boot camp/basic training. The person who wants to play a team sport must suffer through hours of practice. A person who wants to go from point A to point B must suffer through planning, prepping, and traveling. If you want to do well in life, chances are good that you will have to do things you won’t enjoy – like having a job. And if you want to write a book,  you must suffer through hours of thinking of bad ideas that don’t work, writing, deleting, rewriting, revising, editing, etc.

            And, if you have children or pets, you are likely to be willing to let them suffer – or make them suffer – to become well-behaved adults. You make them learn to walk (perhaps on a leash.) You teach them to wait until they’re in an appropriate location before urinating or defecating.  You may take them to school. Yes, you want them to suffer because it’s good for them.

But you also want them to suffer for you by not embarrassing you, obeying you, and even by standing up for you against others. You may be willing to let them suffer for the sake of their spouse and children. Or, you might take pride in their suffering for the sake of others, for your community or country. None of these things is the sort of suffering we think of when reading the verse above. Instead, I suspect we think of the master criminal laughing at the difficulties we face and contemplating what he/she can do to make life more miserable for us because that pleases the master criminal.

I’ve said before that I struggle with the idea of suffering  because it seems that most of my suffering isn’t  “suffering for him.”  Martyrs suffer for Him. There are others we’d probably agree suffer for him. But theirs are heroic sufferings, the equivalent of the spectacular blessings and gifts that we (I) tend to consider blessings and gifts.

Years ago, I spoke about two of my collections: swords and letter openers. The swords are the heroic sufferings and spectacular blessings and gifts. The letter openers are the mundane things of life. I have one nice replica sword and (if I didn’t give it away) an old, beat-up Knights of Columbus sword. Not exactly a collection that one would brag about. But I have more than a hundred letter openers. Some are nicer and more expensive. Others are the cheap things that companies hand out for free as advertisements. The less expensive, less spectacular things make up the more impressive collection.

Suffering on a small scale is more challenging. The pain may not be as intense as spectacular suffering, but with spectacular suffering, we tend to know the reason. There’s something about it that we can take pride in. When we suffer in small ways, we’re tempted to think there’s no way that God can be glorified through it, there isn’t any good reason for it, etc., but those make the suffering harder to endure. And God is glorified through our patience and faith in the face of suffering, not by the suffering itself.