I hadn’t planned to discuss this topic, in part because I had another topic in mind but, more to the point, I’ve talked about it any number of times already.
I chose this subject because I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of any conversation about anything having to do with suffering, not just in Protestant circles but throughout the culture at large. It’s as if it’s a four-letter word. We simply will not talk about it.
Then again, suffering is as endemic to human existence as any other aspect of life. To avoid it seems unrealistic, if not absurd. As Christians, we ought to confront it head-on, knowing that God has a compassionate and redemptive response to the vagaries of every life.
I write this on Good Friday after once again witnessing the absence of any talk about suffering during this Holy Week, specifically and distressingly among Protestant clergy.
For example, I listened to a local pastor who last year argued that Jesus’ Passion should be mostly avoided since we’d already suffered enough from the pandemic and who thus counseled his flock to experience Holy Week as if a plane encountering momentary turbulence on its descent. No need to worry. Fear not. The plane will land safely.
This year he updated this theme by pointed out in his Palm Sunday sermon that we should get through Holy Week by remembering continually how the story ends – with the Resurrection. Don’t worry. Be happy. It’ll all work out.
I also attended a Maundy Thursday service at another church where the pastor talked about the Last Supper’s essential meaning – that in Jesus we are redeemed and our sins forgiven. All the while, I kept waiting to find out what specifically I was being saved from. It all sounded so clinical and antiseptic. It’s not that he misrepresented the meaning, but that he offered no tangible context.
Earlier, on Palm Sunday, he provided extensive background on the meaning of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. He highlighted the Maccabean uprising in 164 B.C. and how Jesus’ contemporaries would have drawn parallels to that event.
The problem is that we don’t live in ancient Israel. The conflicts and oppression of the Israelites from the Greeks and Romans might have provided a helpful backdrop in understanding what led to the reaction of the crowds on that first Palm Sunday, but it didn’t necessarily help us relate to what we’re dealing with today.
What does oppression look like in our time, in our world, in our country? While the Maccabean revolt may be of historic interest, it doesn’t necessarily touch on the struggles we face today, in the here and now.
So what did the messages of both these pastors say about suffering? My take is that neither was willing to look at the hard facts. It’s as if we today no longer face real struggles or suffer injustice or oppression.
It’s as if, because Christ suffered for us on the Cross, we somehow don’t have to. [Spoiler alert: we all suffer.] Pretending we don’t is sort of like whistling past the graveyard. It’s more a Stoic view of life, meaning that whatever happens is out of our hands, so we can either fight it and be miserable or just ignore it and choose to be happy. Easy-peasy.
Of course, there’s something else at work as well. And it has to do with our modern-day belief that we are in charge, that we can control life. We can turn increasingly to the “experts,” medical or otherwise, to guide us away from suffering and toward the sunny uplands of safety and security. We can look to health, wealth, and even politics to shield us from any semblance of the tragic. In short, we think we can “manage” life in ways that provide the desired outcome. Why, then, worry? Why admit to suffering?
For Protestants, we might add an additional wrinkle. At the time of the Reformation, Protestants had this tendency to reject Catholicism outright, thus producing something akin to what modern psychology calls “reaction formation.” This phenomenon occurs when we react to something we find objectionable by doing its exact opposite. Teenagers have perfected this art.
Thus Protestants see the crucifix and shudder. Their churches, as we know, feature the “empty Cross” symbolizing the “risen Christ.” Why look at the suffering of the crucifixion when we already know the victory of the Resurrection? It’s so nice and clean.
As I’ve pointed out in the past, Protestants also seem to have an aversion to the confession of sin. Virtually every church I’ve ever served lacked one until I came along.
The reason, I think, is related to what I’ve been saying. What’s the point of dredging up our failures, disappointments, and transgressions? It only makes us feel bad. It’s depressing.
My analysis, after years in ordained ministry, is that people find it hard to believe that God actually does forgive our sins. Because we’re not apt to forgive ourselves or others easily, we project that unwillingness onto God.
But were we to believe in God’s total forgiveness, we’d welcome the opportunity to unburden ourselves of that which weighs us down. To name our transgressions, then, is the opposite of depressing. What’s truly depressing is failing to acknowledge what’s inside of us absent the hope of redemption. The only solution left is denial. Yet in this we are robbed of the inner peace we desire more than anything in life, if we’re honest.
The same applies to suffering. We see no need to admit it precisely because we don’t think God offers us a way forward. And yet, paradoxically, to name our suffering opens us up to the grace and mercy of God as well as all the other resources the spirit makes available to us as we navigate through life’s inevitable travails.
Scripture tells us that the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. This means that unless we present ourselves before God, warts and all, weaknesses and vulnerabilities and all, until, that is, we admit our radical need for God (something endemic to suffering) we miss the consolations God intends for us.
Conversely, as long as we assume we’re in control, that we can “manage” life’s exigencies by denying our radical dependence on God, we miss out on the sheer nobility of suffering, on the concomitant growth in strength and spirit born in and through it, as well as the precious gift of humility and grace.
In essence, by denying our suffering we miss the whole point of the gospel, which saves us from the belief we can solve the human predicament on our own. If only the Protestant churches would reclaim this basic insight and rethink their current infatuation with an otherwise high-minded secular cult premised on the idolatry of self-sufficiency.
Until we reclaim this basic feature of the Christian faith, we will continue to lose the opportunity to touch the hearts and minds of those who, whether they know it or not, suffer as every human being who’s ever lived has suffered, yet who also desire in their innermost being to know the love, the joy, the freedom, and succor of life in Jesus Christ.