Celebration and Suffering

There's something odd about seeing someone celebrate over a miracle. On several occasions, I've stumbled upon some people celebrating for whatever reason, and snickered, 'what's happened to them that's worth partying over?' That, of course, is just being grumpy; it seems to come easier with age. But there is a more serious kind of strange feeling over celebrating, a strange feeling that is more relevant to spiritual concerns. Lewis Smedes put the problem this way, when seeing the fuss that was made over miracle healings at his college :

"It was a feeling I could not shake -- not a scholar's argument, more like a mood or maybe an intuition, but in any case a stubborn, uneasy feeling about the fittingness, even the decency, of celebrating far and wide the miraculous healing of a relatively few ailments within a world endemically infected by enormous, intractable, unalleviated suffering. It felt to me like proclaiming that God is alive and well in the world because you survived an airplane crash in which everyone else perished. And proclaiming your personal joy to those who mourned their dead." (*Reformed Journal*, Feb 1989, p.14)

Smedes wasn't trying to be a spoil-sport or a party-pooper by bringing this up. He was trying to remind us that while there are some things to celebrate, our celebration is, at its most, only partial. Suffering intrudes on our joy. What kind of suffering? The kinds that we don't want to have.
loss of jobs
infertility
loss of a loved one
loss of one's ability to do things
poverty
injustice and oppression by governments, armies, economies, or social structures
racism and sexism
the effects of natural disasters
new or renewed illness.

Smedes went on to remind us of some things which we must remember, if not as we celebrate, at least after we do. (You may or may not agree with this, but Smedes sets up the basic context so well that it merits your full consideration.)

(1) Ministries of healing are not the main Christian answer to suffering. At their very best, they eliminate a particular suffering of a particular person. They do not remove all suffering from life, and there are still many others suffering the same suffering that was just healed. The healings are signs "that God is alive, that Christ is Lord, and that suffering is not the last word about human existence" (p.19). But let's not overstate their importance.

(2) Healing from within suffering is as wonderful as healing from suffering. God gives inner strength that compensates for loss, and gives the sufferer resourcefulness to live faithfully and effectively.

(3) The amazing amount of health in this broken world is a greater sign and wonder than an occasional healing from illness. We're so fragile, yet we live, and most of us most of the time live fairly healthfully. We celebrate the healings we get, but what about the healings which, by the grace of God, we don't need, the sufferings that aren't there?

(4) Pray for power encounters between Christ and the devil in the matrix of devilish political systems. As Smedes put it, "Evil empires! Or good empires that bunglers mismanage! Or run-of-the-mill empires that knaves make worse! .... Name your system, and the devil will be there." (p.20) : "I find it strange that governments and societies find it so easy to do things to make the poor poorer and to rob the disadvantaged of what little possibilities they might have. And the churches too often sit still for the creation of such suffering."

Then, Smedes asks for a two-fold change in our way of thinking and doing. The first shift, the same change that churches such as the Vineyard and the COGIC ask for, is to see the world as a battleground of spirits.  The second is a shift away from viewing goodness in life as an entitlement and toward living life as a servant and disciple of Christ. Smedes writes, "If I make the first shift, I am more open to the power of the Spirit to act in response to peoples' suffering. If I make the second shift, I am more open to the power of the Spirit to give me courage to will to suffer when suffering can be redemptive to those who suffer." (p.20) I think Smedes' final observation hits upon what I see as a sore spot with many of the churches that most boast about healings : all too many Christians "expect and celebrate God's triumph over our suffering while we show little readiness to suffer for the people whose suffering never gets healed." (p.21). He's right. Jesus' example is that of putting others first, not ourselves or those we think of as being like us. Jesus spoke endlessly about serving and being a servant, of being a neighbor to others like the Samaritan who cared, of loving others, and most importantly those we find hard to love, with the intensity and single-mindedness with which we love ourselves. Then, He died as a suffering servant, to clear our way to the Kingdom so that even death could not stop us.

"Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But, the fact is, pain and suffering are here among us, and we need to respond in some way. The response Jesus gave was to bear the burdens of those he touched. To live in the world as his body, his emotional incarnation, we must follow his example." Philip Yancey, *Where Is God When It Hurts?*, p.325 (Zondervan; Walker revised Large-print edit., 1996)

What does all this mean? One thing I think is clear : we rejoice too narrowly. We rejoice for our own gain, our own health. But there are examples that point to another way : the songs of the Mothers' Unions in South Africa; the almost constant spiritual singing of the 1950s-60s civil rights movement in the United States; the way that the Bethel New Life folks in Chicago celebrate each small victory for their community. This is rejoicing that is born of other peoples' suffering, taking the signs of relief from suffering as signs that God is mighty busy here on earth, doing a fuller kind of healing.

I suspect that Smedes' strict Calvinist upbringing might have predisposed him to distrust celebration. I think that those personal healings should not just be acknowledged, not just be warmly received, but there really should be flat-out rejoicing. Cut loose, revel in it, praise the Lord 'til you drop! It's the right instinct. Just so long as when we end the immediate rejoicing, we get down to our Christian duty to remember what context the healings take place in -- a hurting, crying, brutal, unhealed world, a world that Christ loved and died to heal. And we then stop and pray that God shows us how to be of service in Jesus' work of bring wholeness where there is suffering.


http://www.spirithome.com/suffering.html