This is a warning that this post is a bit more academic. Read at your own risk!
Living in Haiti has forced me to develop a deeper theology of suffering. Suffering has been at the center of my thinking for the past number of years and has become the center point of my theology as well.
Suffering isn’t a very popular topic, which is strange because pain and suffering is one of the primary features of human existence. If you were to think about it, the reality is that we arrange our lives in such a way so as to control, minimize, or eliminate pain suffering. So much of life is pain management (pharmaceutical companies are doing better than ever).
Pain and suffering is one of those things that doesn’t bring itself immediately into the public domain for discourse. It stays hidden just below the surface, wreaking havoc on our private (and public) lives. At the same time, enduring pain and suffering is the primary factor thrusting us into our social behavior (drinking, entertainment, media, etc.) — it’s all medication; it’s all pain management.
At the same time, we cannot deny the fact that suffering is at the center of Christian theology (which, I think, is one of the features of Christian thought and theology that validates it). If at the heart of salvation is the cross, then suffering too must be at the heart of redemption. We cannot over look the fact that God redeems the world through suffering. Suffering is a necessary part of the story.
This means that in the cross merge these three things: (1) the fulfillment of God’s mission to the world, (2) a superior ethic of dying for those who hate us, and (3) suffering. In short, mission, ethic, and suffering.
I believe these are three essential pieces that make up the mosaic of the Christian reality. These three things are to be at the heart of all that we do and all that we are (the two of which are inseparable).
When we bring these three together in proper balance, we have an idea of who we are to be as the covenant people of God in the broken world.
We are to be the ones who fulfill the mission of God by allowing a superior ethic of sharing in the suffering of the world to characterize our behavior.
When we enter into the suffering of the world, redemption happens. This is what happened when Christ did it, and it will be what happens when the church does it (as the body of Christ who carries forward his mission to the world).
What’s “new” about the new covenant (or “Testament”)? Many things, but the essential thing, I believe, is that in the new covenant, God had entered into the suffering of the world. He took it upon himself. I think that this turns around to be the mandate, the calling, the vocational ontology of the people of God. There’s no way around it.
More to come.
Dr Scott Peck writes about this – that life is difficult, and most of our problems come from trying to avoid or deny this fact, and therefore our pain – wonderfully in “The Road Less Travelled”.