When We Hurt

Bad theology can make suffering worse.

Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? John 9:2.

Not only did this man endure blindness, but the religious thinking of his day burdens him also with an inferred guilt. You can hear echoes of the accusations of Job’s friends, probing for the sin or sins which had brought the catastrophes on Job.

Unfortunately, theology which heightens suffering is not limited to assuming a person has brought their distressing circumstances on themselves through sin. When a lack of healing is attributed to a lack of faith by the one sick, religious belief is increasing suffering.

You are sick and don’t have enough trust in God to be healed. Feel better?

Similarly, if we think of God as one who chooses whether to intervene or not in human affairs, an idea I believe is a thoroughly flawed perspective on God, then a lack of healing must be associated with God either not caring or actually choosing for us to suffer.

Usually, under this way of thinking, we are told to trust that God has his reasons and our suffering is for the best, no matter how debilitating it is. Our pain is willed by God, which makes it all the more difficult. Of course, if God wills our miserable condition, we should not pray for relief since that would be to oppose what God desires.

When suffering is harder for a believer, being an atheist would seem a more comforting perspective. At least if there is no God, all we endure is the suffering itself and not some sense of judgment, abandonment, or inscrutable will.

Trusting in God should not make our struggles more difficult, but offer relief. Our comfort is found in experiencing God as the presence and companion that never abandons us, that God is with us in all our suffering. The God of the cross takes all our suffering upon himself in the vastness of eternal and ever-present love.

Granted, our questions of “why” our suffering occurred in the first place, and why it persists, will often remain unanswered. But there is the Love which is with us and to whom we cry out.

We are not alone. We are deeply loved. God is weeping with us. Our cries are heard and not simply poured out into nothingness. We are assured that suffering is a blight on creation, and God vows to remove once and for all, even as he endures the pain with us.