Fire & Water
…we went through fire and water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance - Psalm 66:12
I am sure that I have run more swiftly with a lame leg than I ever did with a sound one. I am certain that I have seen more in the dark than ever I saw in the light, - more stars, most certainly, - more things in heaven if fewer things on earth. The anvil, the fire, and the hammer, are the making of us; we do not get fashioned much by anything else. That heavy hammer falling on us helps to shape us; therefore let affliction and trouble and trials come.
Charles Spurgeon
Bad Things
I’m just about to start one of my daily health routines. After years of searching for answers, I finally found a handful of things I could do on my own that supplemented my medical treatments. These routines cumulatively took up multiple hours of my day, but it was worth it. I would do anything to get better.
The moment I start, the doorbell of my house rings. I’m immediately irritated. It’s summertime, and the neighborhood I lived in at the time was a hot spot for solicitors.
I open the door and put a smile on my face. After all, I know what it’s like to sell door-to-door—tough business. Whoever this was, they didn’t need another rude person screaming at them and slamming the door in their face.
“Are you the dad of the house?” says a girl in an Eastern European accent. I laugh and explain that I’m a younger guy who lives alone. The only child who lives here is me.
After a brief discussion, I learn that she’s almost done with college, but she’s spending the summer in America selling books door-to-door. Six days a week, thirteen hours a day, with no breaks. Brutal.
She tells me that she rides her bike from the house she’s staying at, and works her way farther from home every day. During her last week here, she mentioned that it will take her over an hour to reach her starting location, only to have to bike back another hour-plus after her thirteen-hour shift is up.
Oof. I immediately felt bad. After she shared how much they were paying her, I gently informed her that she was getting ripped off. Not to mention the brutal heat and lack of a lunch break.
“Yes, but it builds character”, she said with a smile on her face.
I felt a surge of deep respect for her. I share the same mentality, and she more than deserved a quick win. I bought one of her more expensive books as a gift for someone and wished her the best, telling her to give me a shout if she ever needed some food, water, or a bathroom break.
She took me up on the offer, and it quickly blossomed into a friendship. During the next few weeks that she was in the States, I would occasionally pick her up from wherever she was and give her a ride back to her place. No one should have to bike an hour home in the dark after a fourteen-hour day.
During one of her days off, we were hanging out at my house—drinking tea, playing the piano, and having her teach me how to say the names of animals in her native language.
After I failed to say rabbit correctly for what seemed like the two-hundredth time, she gets up and starts exploring my place.
I’m leaning against the door jamb, watching her peek in closets and go through my belongings like she’s a detective at a crime scene. I didn’t mind the nosiness, though.
She picks up a stack of books on my nightstand that I’m currently reading and shuffles through them—all theology: Chesterton, Lewis, Augustine, Kierkegaard, and my Bible.
She looks at me for a moment with a wry smile on her face, and says, “You’ve had a lot of bad things happen to you.” It sounded more like a statement than a question. She knew a bit about what I had gone through with my health.
“Yes,” I said.
“Like really, really bad things?” She continued.
I nodded.
“But you still believe all this stuff,” she says, gesturing to the stack of books in her hand.
“Absolutely, I do.” I didn’t even have to think about the answer.
She then went on to ask the question I hear all the time—the question that goes through all of our heads whenever we see suffering in the world, or experience it ourselves.
“If God really loves us,” she says, “then why does he let bad things happen? I’ve had bad things happen to me, you know that. It feels like if he loved me, he would have stopped it.”
Do you ever feel that way? Have you ever asked him for help, cried out, yet he didn’t? Lord, if you had been here [1]. I know I have.
I told her my beliefs on why evil and suffering exist, how it’s been paid for, and how one day every sad thing will come untrue [2]. I talked about a God who is near to the brokenhearted [3], a God who weeps when you weep [4].
However, the aspect I want to discuss today is what my European friend and I spent most of our time discussing. It’s a topic that I don't think is discussed enough. We discuss the why of suffering and how to overcome it, but we rarely address what to do with it.
Instead of seeing suffering only as something to avoid, fear, and escape as quickly as possible, we can view it as something we can use.
Can we use it to become better, wiser, and tougher? Can we use it to shape our perspective? To take the lessons we’ve learned from our suffering and help others? I certainly think so. I know so.
More importantly, can we use it to draw closer to God, to share in His sufferings, and glorify Him in the process [5]?
Not only can we, but should we? The answer is yes, absolutely yes.
Let’s dive in.
What is Suffering?
I want to begin by going against the grain a bit. I’ve read a lot of books, listened to podcasts, and seen TED talks. The common narrative amongst most of the mindset gurus out there is that pain is real, but suffering is a choice. I disagree.
To find some middle ground, I will say that we live in a culture that’s become soft. Weak. We claim suffering in situations that could be remedied by a change of perspective and taking action. Instead, we whine, complain, play the victim, and wallow in our misery.
Your mindset is crucial when it comes to handling trials. One of my mantras—the thing I repeated to myself thousands upon thousands of times during my sickness and suffering—was, For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so [6]. But sometimes the pain is too much, too dark, and too long-lasting to keep it from being anything but suffering. And to claim that suffering is a choice is to invalidate the true sufferers.
If suffering were a choice, then why would Jesus—the one human to ever walk this earth and only make perfect choices—be our fellow sufferer [7]? Not only did he suffer, but he suffered more intensely than you and I ever will, to the point that he sweated blood due to the agony and terror of his impending sufferings [8].
So what’s the difference between pain and suffering?
Pain is a thing; suffering is a state of being.
Pain is the sensation that hurts and tells you something is wrong. Suffering is the emotional response to that pain.
Pain is the ouch when you stub your toe, the heartbreak when your dog dies, the sharp stab when someone you love betrays you.
Suffering, in my opinion, is long and drawn-out pain that seems unending and inescapable. It’s the feeling—or reality—of that pain never ending, wearing you down bit by bit like water dropping on a rock. Or in the case of Jesus, so emotionally, spiritually, and physically devastating that to try to fit his experience in the category of pain would be like trying to fit the contents of the ocean into a thimble.
Suffering is also relative. There is no standard—no bar that must be reached to qualify. We are unique individuals with different programming and distinct experiences that have shaped us. You may find two separate people experiencing vastly different degrees of objective agony, yet suffering equally.
There should be no comparison in suffering. If we play the “someone else always has it worse, therefore my suffering is invalid” game, we realize that if we follow that line to the end, there is only ever one person on the planet at a time who is truly suffering.
Suffering is personal. Suffering is real. But to validate it and stop there would be irresponsible. Humans—and Christians specifically—have a duty when it comes to suffering. That duty is not just to endure it or escape from it, but to do something with it.
It’s a Tool
What good could ever come of this? I would often think during my years of agony. Well, what good could ever come out of Nazareth [9]?
Come and see [9].
When you find yourself suffering, your responsibility is this: use it. God isn’t going to allow you to go through something without leaving an opportunity for good things to grow. When it comes to suffering, he uses the whole buffalo. But you have a part to play in whether or not your suffering is fruitful.
The ancient Greek Tragedian Aeschylus said that wisdom comes through suffering. This is true, but it doesn’t magically appear on its own. To gain that wisdom—or other beneficial traits that we will go over—you have to be willing—willing to be broken, molded, refined.
This is where you come in. And it starts with a choice. The Holocaust-surviving Psychologist Viktor Frankl said that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any set of circumstances.”
How you choose to handle your suffering directly affects the outcome of your suffering. Will you choose to be bitter, resentful, and perpetually sorry for yourself? Will you project it on others? If you do, you will be no better of a human at the end of it; you will have impacted no one positively, and I do not see how this attitude glorifies the Creator.
But if you choose to use it, wring it out for all its worth, and commit to growing throughout the process, then not only will your life change, but you’ll help change the lives of others.
“I’ve learned lessons,” I said to a buddy on the phone recently, “lessons that I never would have learned if I had never suffered with the mindset of using my suffering as a tool.”
Yes, suffering sucks. Yes, you should work to escape your terrible situations. But man, if you were to stop raging against the suffer-machine for two seconds and use a portion of your energy to let it teach you, strengthen you, and hone you, then you’ll give it some meaning. Suffering is only just suffering if you do nothing with it.
Using suffering to become wiser, tougher, more compassionate, and ultimately a better human being should be sought after, but one thing should be set above all else: to deepen your relationship with Jesus and grow in your faith.
The christian Response
I was around seven years old when my mom got diagnosed with cancer. She had already had a history with chronic illness—she was no stranger to suffering.
I didn’t completely understand what was happening, but I knew that she was sick. Very sick. Yet she never complained in front of the kids. I only ever saw her smiling, in the way people smile when they’re trying to mask their pain for your benefit. No hair due to the chemo, feeble, sub-100 pounds, sad eyes, but still smiling. Warrior.
But more importantly, she is one of the most faithful people I know. I will not pretend to know what her dialogue with the Lord was, but I’m sure she had her own personal version of the Psalms, filled with questioning and bouts of anger.
But I know that it only brought her closer to her God, because she leaned in—used it. To this day, she prays more than anyone I know, sometimes hours at a time. She lives out her faith day by day and has a true heart of service.
She could’ve turned from God during that time, or during any of her other trials. Thrown in the towel—quit. But instead, she chose to develop her relationship with the Lord. Isn’t this the approach to trials we should want to take? To be able to come out on the other end of it as a better spouse, parent, friend, and human being?
More importantly, can we glorify God with it? Can we transform the evil of suffering into praise? If we adopt this mindset, then suffering is no more than a hidden opportunity for praise—an opportunity to make a heaven of hell [10]. But just like a pearl buried in an oyster, it must be cracked open and dug out.
Let’s take a look at what the Bible has to say about suffering and our response to it.
Expect it
Generally speaking, First Worlders in the middle class or higher have cushy lives compared to the rest of the globe’s population. I think that this may sometimes create a sense of subconscious entitlement, or at the very least, a false expectation of how things should be. We’re accustomed to easier, so we expect easier.
How could this ever happen to me? We say, as if we should be exempt from the effects of a fallen world riddled with sin, death, and destruction. Suffering, in some form or another, is part of life, no matter who you are, where you’re born, or how good a person you think you are [11].
Do not be surprised as though something strange were happening to you [12], the Apostle Peter tells us. That doesn’t mean you should walk around waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it does mean that you shouldn’t feel blindsided when it happens. If there were no sin—and the subsequent curses of its reality—then there would be no need for a Savior. Hardship is an inherent part of the human experience.
Stand Firm
For years, I had an image in my mind. It simply fell into my head during one of the hundreds of days I was stuck in bed. The image was of a tree on the edge of a cliff, leaning at an angle, being blown by the wind, as if it were holding on for dear life with half of its roots ripped out of the ground. It looked as if it would topple into the abyss at any moment. I’m that tree, I thought. Refusing to let go and be defeated, yet simultaneously one gust of wind away from being done in. Ostergren’s Never Quit, my father taught me when I was a little boy. I was determined to fight and hold on for as long as I could.
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, James 1 tells us, knowing that the testing of our faith makes us perfect and complete. This doesn’t just mean standing firm against whatever is plaguing you; it also means that your faith shouldn’t be shaken.
If you lose your trust in God because things aren’t going your way, then your faith needs work. This doesn’t mean you can’t have doubts, but you need to doubt your doubts and say, Though he slay me, I will hope in Him [13].
Rejoice
One of the most counterintuitive commands in the Bible concerns joy. Joy isn’t something we typically have to be intentional about. It usually appears on its own. You score that goal, get the promotion, the girl of your dreams says yes, and without even realizing it, you’re filled with joy. But the Bible is specific about this emotion and what to do with it. Joy is the feeling; rejoicing is the action. And we are told to rejoice not only when good things happen, but always [14].
At first thought, this seems nonsensical. It goes against human nature. When bad things happen, we are overwhelmed with negative emotions. And yet the Bible tells us to use our energy to rejoice. This isn’t a recommendation, it’s a command.
Not just counterintuitive, but overwhelmingly difficult. This doesn’t mean we ignore our negative emotions, bottle them up, or discredit our pain. It means we do both: we recognize what we’re going through, we cry out, we feel the sorrow and pain, and yet we still rejoice.
The Psalms are a great example of this concept. David and the other psalmists express their anger and distress, yet they conclude their prayers in praise, rejoicing in the goodness of God.
Before C.S. Lewis became a Christian, he wrote a poem comparing God (or “The Thing”) to a man who crushes a beetle without even noticing it. I talk to many people who think God is nothing more than a tyrant in the sky. Angry and wrathful at worst, apathetic at best.
So why should we praise and rejoice in times of trouble?
Well, for one, He is the Great I Am [15]. If our human brains could fathom his glory, we would do nothing but worship, much like some of the angels in heaven [16].
But for those who see him as the Beetle-crushing Tyrant—The Great Destroyer of all things good—I would point you toward the cross. If Jesus is who he said he was and did what he said he did, then the cross is enough. No matter what pain and suffering we experience in this life, we are still eternally indebted to him for what he did for us. For this reason alone, he deserves our praise even when things are not going our way. This isn’t about positive thinking; this is about how choosing to rejoice in times of trouble is an act of praise and worship [17].
Rejoice because he is worthy, rejoice because it brings him glory, and rejoice because you are sharing in his sufferings [18]. If we are called to be like Christ in every aspect of our lives, then we should also suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him [18].
Suffering In Reverse
Expect suffering, learn from it, stand firm in it, rejoice despite it, but know that this light momentary affliction, says the Apostle Paul, is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison [19].
When you are suffering, it is hard to imagine it ever ending, or ever being worth it. To fathom a time and place with no sickness, toil, nor danger [20] may seem impossible. But the truth of the matter is this—for those who follow Jesus, you may suffer for 90 years with no reprieve and die, but on the other side of death, you will spend the next 90 trillion years in paradise. And when that 90 trillion years is up, you get another 90 trillion, times infinity.
Not only is an eternity of peace and bliss with the Lord secured, but your suffering on earth is reframed. Reversed. In C.S. Lewis’s fictional novel The Great Divorce, he meets one of his inspirational heroes, the Scottish minister George MacDonald. When discussing the topics of heaven and hell, MacDonald puts it like this:
‘Son,’ he said, ‘ye cannot in your present state understand eternity…but ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.
You see? Whatever you’re going through, no matter how bad it is, is nothing, nothing at all, compared to the goodness that’s coming. And I understand that doesn’t help relieve the immediate agony. In fact, there were times when I couldn't have cared less about a future relief of suffering. Things were so bad that all I cared about was having it end right then and there. However, I would encourage you to set those thoughts aside and hold onto your future promise. It will be worth it.
Not Alone
If you’re suffering, you may be surrounded by people who want to help but can’t understand what you’re going through. At best, they understand that they can’t understand.
However, you have access to a God who is near, who understands what you’re going through, and who feels what you feel. And when you do feel alone, when you cry out and hear nothing but silence, He is still with you, and will never leave you or forsake you [21].
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you [22].
The Bible is full of promises similar to the one above: He will not let your foot be moved [23], No evil shall be allowed to befall you [24], The godly run to him and are safe [25].
This doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen to you. The Bible makes no promise of protection from suffering; in fact, it promises the opposite, as we’ve already established. What it does promise, Minister Eugene Peterson points out, is preservation from all the evil in whatever difficulty we face.
We went through fire and water. Your foot won’t be moved. You shall not be burned.
Peterson continues to say that verses such as these mean that no disaster, no tragedy, and no amount of suffering will overtake you with its evil power in separating you from God and His good purpose for your life. In this world you will have tribulation, Jesus says, but take heart; I have overcome the world [26].
No matter who you are, you will suffer in some capacity while you are here on this earth. So, the question is this: can you use your suffering to learn, to grow, and to deepen your relationship with Christ? Will you surrender it to him and allow him to bring you to a place of spiritual abundance? Can you release your fear of hardships and say, Let them come, knowing that if used correctly, you will only become more like Jesus? Or will you let your suffering go to waste? The choice is yours.
P.S. —
Want to know something cool? My European friend recently sent me a message telling me she has been regularly attending a Bible study. You never know what may happen by simply planting a seed.
Footnotes
[1] John 11:32
[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
[3] Psalm 34:18, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
[4] John 11:35, C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew
[5] 1 Peter 1:6-7, 1 Peter 4:12
[6] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Scene II, Act II
[7] 1 Peter 4:12-13, 1 Peter 3:18, Romans 8:17, Philippians 3:10
[8] Luke 22:43-44
[9] John 1:46
[10] John Milton, Paradise Lost
[11] Matthew 5:45, Job 1:1
[12] 1 Peter 4:12, John 16:33
[13] Job 13:15
[14] Romans 12:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:16
[15] Exodus 3:14
[16] Revelation 4:8
[17] 1 Peter 1:6-7
[18] Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 4:13, Philippians 3:10
[19] 2 Corinthians 4:17
[20] Poor Wayfaring Stranger
[21] Joshua 1:5, Deuteronomy 31:6, Hebrews 13:5
[22] Isaiah 43:2
[23] Psalm 121:3
[24] Psalm 91:10
[25] Proverbs 18:10
[26] John 16:33
