The Real World
If I speak, my pain is not lessened, and if I refrain, what pain leaves me? Job 16:6 NASB
Not lessened – There was a time not too long ago when I knew exactly what Job was talking about (in fact, it was quite a while ago, but it seems like yesterday). Something was wrong with my left knee. It hurt. No, more than that. I was in excruciating pain twenty-four hours a day for nearly a month. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t lay down. I could barely walk. Every step felt like a knife blade slipping under my kneecap. The doctors couldn’t understand why this was happening. X-Rays, MRI’s, physical exams—no explanation. Just pain. Pain. Pain. I wrote this:
“You’ll feel better in the morning.” “This too will pass.” “Just give it some time.” All words of useless advice. When you’re hurting, “Pollyanna comfort” doesn’t help. What you want is the pain to go away—now! When my knee was so sore I couldn’t walk or stand, when I had 24-hours-a-day agony, it didn’t make much difference for someone to tell me that eventually things would get better. It might have been true (and, in fact, it was) but that didn’t help in the midst of the suffering. And anyone who faces the reality of human existence would refuse to accept such pablum. Don’t offer me a remedy tomorrow. Let me deal with today—head-on, straightforward, in the face of evil.
The preamble to this comment was written even longer ago:
On the 30th of April of this year, I wrote a piece about the excruciating pain I was experiencing in my left knee. I asked for your prayers (thank you). I wrote about the spiritual crisis that accompanied this physical suffering. As you recall, the pain was non-stop, twenty-four hours a day for many weeks. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it disappeared. I made my journey to America, saw my children, and took photos in a slot canyon. Since then I have had no more problems with my left knee. Now when I re-read what I wrote at that time, I’m embarrassed and ashamed. My faith in the benevolence of YHVH was put to the test and I don’t think I did very well. I can carry a lot of mental anguish, but during that time the physical torture was more than I could deal with. I questioned my faith—and God.
It’s been about four months since I wrote that. Now I realize that a greater crisis is upon me despite the fact that I am walking without trouble. What is that crisis? The shame of it all. There is a real sense that my failure to maintain my view of God’s goodness makes me feel unworthy of His blessings—and unable to re-engage with Him. I must be such a disappointment. Here I am, scholar, teacher, believer—and I’ve heard the cock crow three times. How can I continue to write about the sovereignty of God if I so easily questioned it in the past? How can I accept His continuing care when I have been such a disappointment? My limbs aren’t stricken anymore, but my heart is.
This is my Job experience. I know exactly what he feels when he says, “Why should I say anything? The pain doesn’t stop because I talk about it. And if I don’t talk about it, that doesn’t make any difference either.”
The reality of pain is that nothing really makes much difference when you’re in the midst of it. Oh, afterward you can reflect and adjust, but when it’s right there, grinding away at every nerve, you just don’t care about much of anything except “Stop!” If you haven’t been where Job is at this moment, then you don’t know his reality at all. You are just imagining something that isn’t real for you. But if you have been there, then what he says makes perfect emotional sense. And it is precisely at this point, at the point where no words make any difference, that persevering faith must be real. So real that the hope in God’s character outweighs the reality we are feeling. I’m not sure many of us have this sort of faith. I am sure many of us think that we do—until the pain just doesn’t go away—ever. Then things seem quite different. I also suspect that God knows how we could react under such circumstances and He oversees our lives so that we don’t reach the breaking point. Oh, we might come close—very, very close—but that’s part of what it means to experience necessary suffering. And as long as we are still alive, there’s something to be learned.
After the pain stops.
Topical Index: pain, Job 16:6
That sounds awful. I’ve suffered comparatively little physical pain. Got a bad left knee, and after my first cortisone shot wore off I was ready for surgery that day. Normally, I don’t even like going to a doctor for an annual physical, but I was ready for surgery. I get what they call “white coat fever”. I can understand on that level how it gets your full attention. Hard to imagine that kind of pain that doesn’t stop for a longer period of time.
I’m much more familiar with emotional pain, the continuous, albeit endurable, lament of the loss of loved ones, “church family” and once dear friends, the disillusionment of significant pastoral failures, not to mention my own, estrangement from children, on and on, the slow burn. So many times I could’ve given up. I’ve failed to trust miserably many times, and turned to lesser things to cope. But He never let go.
And I think that’s the point, isn’t it? He kicks the legs out from under the stools we build to prop ourselves up and put on a show, one…leg…at a time. And they all have to go.
It was never going to happen on our dime, through our strength but subconsciously we still think it will.
“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” Phillipians 3:7-8
The price of admission to “knowing” Him was suffering loss. And even though to a large degree much has been restored to me, I think like Job, who I’m sure never forgot the children He lost, the appreciation of what has been restored is tempered by the loss. He is a jealous God (and the consequences of my idolatry weren’t His fault). I’m so grateful for new family who accept me as I am, truly grateful. But I know more than ever those things are not to be primary in my heart, He is.
We all I’m sure are tempted to give up at times. But here we are, even after failing miserably (in Peter’s company), having His strength perfected in weakness, enduring, persevering, only by His grace, still preoccupied with searching Him out, being searched out by Him, rowing the boat…imperfectly…learning how to lean into Him more and more.
Emet, Kent! Very well described… and much with which I, too, relate. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks Richard…
“He oversees our lives so that we don’t reach the breaking point. Oh, we might come close—very, very close—but that’s part of what it means to experience necessary suffering. And as long as we are still alive, there’s something to be learned… after the pain stops.”
Yes…most assuredly and certainly… if we take receipt of learning.
There is pain for which there is no mitigation and it is never minimized; it is Yahweh’s grief…effected by sin that leads to destruction. “And Yahweh regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was grieved to his heart. And Yahweh said, ‘I will destroy humankind whom I created from upon the face of the earth, from humankind, to animals, to creeping things, and to the birds of the sky, for I regret that I have made them.’” (Genesis 6:6-7)
But thanks be to God through the originator and perfecter of faith, Jesus Christ the righteous Son, who for the joy that was set before him disregarded the shame, enduring the cross, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God! (cf. Hebrews 12:2)
Divine grief assumes… it takes as given… that holiness is deformed by sin. And although God’s holiness is unassailable, it grieves him to his heart when man, created in God’s own image, is deformed by sin.
“Sing praises to Yahweh, you his faithful ones, and give thanks to the fame of his holiness. For there is a moment in his anger; there is a lifetime in his favor.
Weeping lodges for the evening, but in the morning comes rejoicing.” (Psalm 30:4-5 )
Hmm. I understand your what you have gone through. We are going through something similar for last four months but it is not my story to share. As the party not going through the pain but a supporting character I can understand the frustration of Job’s friends. I am by extreme nature a fixer and when I can’t fix a problem I get frustrated and angry. Not so good at faith.
I do want to say for you not to be so harsh on yourself for you are human. No matter how much education or experience in faith you are still human. Uncontrollable pain is the great equalizer of knowing and experiencing our humanity.
I have a query of your statement “but that’s part of what it means to experience necessary suffering.” What do you mean by necessary suffering? That God imparts necessary suffering?
Keep the faith we really miss the conferences.
It seems as if human beings don’t get close to their own reality until they experience suffering. The silver spoon desire leaves us less human. Yeshua should be our example, even in this.
Amen. Thanks.