Redemptive suffering

October 23, 2010

Redemption:  the act of saving something or somebody from a declined, dilapidated, or corrupted state and restoring it, him, or her to a better condition.

Richard Rohr closes his book on Job with reflections on the similarities in the stories of Job and Jesus and what each story teaches us about suffering, including several pithy and insightful comments such as:

“History is a spiral led by grace, not a straight line led by logic.”

“Suffering can be sharing in the passion of Christ – laying down one’s life for others.”

 “Sacrifice comes from the words sacrum facere – to make sacred or holy.”

“Making a wound sacred means reconnecting it to the whole – making it holy.”

“The wounded one is always the gift giver.”

“There are two things that draw us outside ourselves:  pain on other people’s faces and the unbearable beauty that is other human beings at their best.  Or, in other words:  cross and resurrection.”

 “Redemptive suffering always generates immense life in others – that’s why it is ‘redemptive.’”

Rohr’s insights inspire and encourage me in many ways. 

In our natural humanity, we seem to want to avoid pain (probably a good trait overall), but, at least in the developed world, we also take that to an extreme by wondering why anything bad or painful would ever happen to us.  This step seems to inevitably set us up for a showdown with God when almost any level of personal or collective disaster strikes.

On top of this natural tendency, Christians seem to layer what I would call a theology of blessing that basically teaches us to believe the following:  if we follow some rules, mouth the correct language about God and others, and constantly ask to be blessed while piously asking the same for those we love, then somehow we are inoculated or protected from harm and indeed almost guaranteed as much of the “good life” (the blessings) as we want.

As I have struggled in my heart and mind through the aftermath of Daniel’s death I have often wrestled with the obvious problem for me with this theology of blessing.  Like Job, I don’t have an explanation and like Job’s friends, this theology and many similar ones that circulate in our culture today come up very short for bringing any peaceful explanation to my soul.  In fact, most of the popular thinking on the subject of suffering leaves us mourners in the same bind as Job’s friends attempted to put him in:  cause and effect thinking, an attempt at constructing a theological “logic” to explain suffering seems to always take us in a big circular, nonsensical pattern and never satisfies our soul’s ultimate dissatisfaction with our loss.

Rohr on the other hand nails it by simply stating the obvious – understanding why anyone suffers is most often impossible to us as humans.  When pain, loss, or suffering come our way, as they inevitably do, our only real hope is to accept them in their mystery, embrace our natural response of grief, and struggle to incorporate this all into our lives – integrating our pain and struggles somehow makes them sacred or holy because we connect them not only within ourselves, but also into our relationships with God and with others in some patterns that hopefully become redemptive.

God:  I pray that my grief and suffering will be redemptive and immensely life-generating for me and my family, friends, colleagues, and everyone whose lives I intersect.