Suffering as Discipline
Several weeks ago I wrote about my decades long interest in understanding the purpose of suffering in the world over which God is sovereign, especially in the lives of believers. I’ve recently renewed my study of suffering. I’m working on putting the course I developed for MINTS Seminary on understanding suffering into a final written form. So my ears naturally perked up when one of my pastors at North Shore Fellowship, Jason Hood, addressed suffering in his sermon on Hebrews 12 last Sunday.
As we think about our brothers in prison locked down and confined due to the pandemic, as many of us know of people who have suffered and died from this disease, as we have people in our lives who have suffered financial hardship, as we continue to live with our own pandemic disruptions, as we watch major upheavals in our country, suffering is a real thing.
Today what I’d like to do is share some thoughts and observations about suffering from writers I’ve been studying and then conclude with some of the insights from my pastor.
The loss of loved ones, debilitating and fatal illness, personal betrayals, financial reversals, and moral failures—all of these will eventually come upon you if you live out a normal life span. No one is immune. ---Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering.
For many suffering people the problem of pain is not a theoretical problem, a theology game of lining up all the appropriate syllogisms. It is a problem of relationship. Many suffering people want to love God but cannot see past their tears. They feel hurt and betrayed. Sadly, the church often responds with more confusion than comfort. ---Philip Yancey, Where is God When it Hurts?
To speak in a detached philosophical manner to an actual sufferer is cruel. And yet the experience of pain leads almost inevitably to “big questions” about God and the nature of things that cannot be ignored. ---Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.” ---C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
We then turn to the strangeness of God as displayed in Jesus of Nazareth. Only by looking to this man can we reorient our experience of suffering in a way that is truly Christian. ---Kelly Kapic, Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering
Here’s what I wanted to share with you from Pastor Jason’s sermon. He preached from Hebrews 12 in which the author wrote: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure” (verses 5-7).
The Lord, who loves us, uses suffering to discipline us. But discipline is not punishment, it is a tool for shaping. Pastor Jason quoted the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys Tom Landry, “Coaching is making men do what they don’t want to do so they can become what they want to be.” Great coaches can make men go through hard things, things that make them suffer, so they can achieve their goals and become what they want to be. If you can do that, you’ll be a great coach.
But Jesus is much more than a coach. He’s a composer. He uses hard things, painful things, suffering in our lives, not to make us to become what we want to be, but what he wants us to be. Jesus takes the dark notes of our lives and turns them into a beautiful song.
And that beautiful song is a life that is more like Jesus. Verse 10 says that he “disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.” Pastor Jason said the Father sent Jesus to the cross to save us. He sends crosses to us to shape us to be more like Jesus.
Let us, therefore, not resist the work of God in our lives, not resist our suffering, but embrace it and allow it to do its redemptive work in our lives, molding us, shaping us, forming us, more and more in Christlikeness.
Much love, Barry