Saturday, 25 July 2009

• Reasons, Part III: Why Must We Undergo Suffering?

   by mr maple
  
  Finally, at the end of a long year working in the hospital as a student, I came down with my own illness: a collapsed lung that required an operation and some hospital time of my own.  It was not my first surgery for the problem and I still harbor the fear that it will not be the last.  Even as I sit here typing, I still feel the healing scars that the procedure left in my side.
  
  True to form, my mother insisted that there was a Reason behind it; the timing, the method, the stresses I was going through were all too coincidental to be due to anything else.  And we talked, perhaps for the first time, about what it meant to use reason and to look for Reasons.  It reminded me of the Tower of Siloam:
  
  

  There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." - Luke 13
  

  
  Whenever I talk at length about the nature of suffering, I mention an example a mentor once used.  Suffering is simply the push that tips a cup over; it has no bearing on what comes out.  This is what I have come to believe about suffering, illness, death, and all Events with consequences for which we seek a Reason: they reveal what is inside me, the things deep down inside that refuse to come out otherwise.  And who was I?  Someone lacking faith. 
  
  The passage made me think about one of my favorite narratives in John about a man born blind (whom I was surprised to see was told to wash in the pool of Siloam):
  
  

  As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

  "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

  Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

  His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, "Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?" Some claimed that he was.
  
  

  Others said, "No, he only looks like him."
  
  But he himself insisted, "I am the man."

  "How then were your eyes opened?" they demanded.

  He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."- John 9
  

  I keep returning to this passage in John because of the simplicity, power, and revealing nature of the healing.  There was no intricate, mind-numbing litany of theological arguments or philosophical musings about the nature of suffering.  There was no explanation or rationalization for the years of darkness and a lifetime in blindness.  Jesus merely gave the command to heal and to be healers: the solution of Himself alone.  In fact, it was the Pharisees, the educated elite of their day, who did their best to conjure an explanation and a Reason for the healing.  In the end, it was not that they ever lacked a reason but that they found it insufficient and incredulous.  They interrogated and hurled insults at a poor and simple man, a man whose only testimony and defense was, "One thing I do know.  I was blind but now I see!... Lord, I believe."
  
  I believe that my mother and I fall on two ends of a spectrum of belief, but that true faith lies somewhere in between.  In some sense, we both have outpaced our capacities for faith, wanting more Reason than we have right to demand or see fulfilled.  We are both searching for a mechanism of control that often remains firmly beyond our grasp and comprehension, but that is no reason for cynicism or despair.  Indeed, in the words of 19th century minister AB Simpson:
  

  And so I thought the healing would be an it too, that the Lord would take me like the old run-down clock, wind me up, and set me going like a machine. It is not thus at all. I found it was Himself coming in instead and giving me what I needed at the moment. I wanted to have a great stock, so that I could feel rich; a great store laid up for many years, so that I would not be dependent upon Him the next day; but He never gave me such a store. I never had more holiness or healing at one time than I needed for that hour. He said: "My child, you must come to Me for the next breath because I love you so dearly I want you to come all the time. If I gave you a great supply, you would do without Me and would not come to Me so often; now you have to come to Me every second, and lie on My breast every moment."...

  I had to learn to take from Him my spiritual life every second, to breathe Himself in as I breathed, and breathe myself out. So, moment by moment for the spirit, and moment by moment for the body, we must receive. You say, "Is not that a terrible bondage, to be always on the strain ?" What, on the strain with one you love, your dearest Friend ? Oh, no! It comes so naturally, so spontaneously, so like a fountain, without consciousness, without effort, for true life is always easy, and overflowing.

  In every encounter with the limitations of my capabilities, with each circumstance and happenstance, there is indeed something in me that can be humbled and taught to reach for Christ.  Perhaps it is a sin I need to repent of, a fault in my character that needs mending, or the beginnings of a testimony that will one day encourage a suffering brother or sister.  They may not be the reasons for which I suffered, but I would be foolish to ignore the chance to redeem it for something greater.  For in all things, I must have faith in the Christ who gives sight to the blind and pneuma, spirit, to the dead. 
  
  Who has given to You
  That it should be paid back to him?
  Who has given to You
  As if You needed anything?
  From You, and to You, and through You
  Come all things, O Lord
  And all we do is give back to You
  What always has been Yours
  
  Lord, we're breathing the breath
  That You gave us to breathe
  To worship You, to worship You
  And we're singing these songs
  With the very same breath
  To worship You, to worship You
  -Matt Redman, Breathing the Breath
  

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