Life and Pain

Life IS pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Dread Pirate Roberts

I don’t like pain. I just want to be clear about this from the outset. In fact, I avoid pain at all cost. My heel hurts, I don’t run. My head hurts, I take an Advil. My tummy hurts, I eat something or take a Tums.

But pain is a part of life, it’s unavoidable. We come into life through pain, we often leave life with pain, and the living of life often brings pain. For something to which we are so averse, there is an awful lot of it. And we spend an awful lot of time and money avoiding something that is so sure to occur.

And it’s not just the physical pain we try to avoid, either. I, of all people, hate dealing with emotional pain, so I avoid confrontation, stuff negative emotions deep down inside, and try to help everyone around me get along. In spite of everything I know about human relationships and how to have healthy ones, my desire to avoid temporary pain trumps what I know to be true.

I guess you could say that I naturally tend to the comfortable. And you do, too.

Often my desire for comfort clouds my understanding of what God wants for me. The thought goes like this: God wants me to be comfortable, so if it hurts, then it must necessarily be out of the will of God. We talked a bit about this in our small group last night. When I think that God causes all things to work together for good, I act as if that means that I will be free from pain. And with plenty of funds to do the things that I would like to do. And with the new vehicle I have my eye on. And...(insert your own idea of comfort here)

Consider these words from guys much smarter than myself:

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. C. S. Lewis

I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world? Phillip Yancey

God does not promise to make bad things good, nor has He assured us that He will keep us from bad things. He has promised us that in all things--even those that are terrible--good can come out of it for all those who love Him. Neil Anderson

When it comes down to it, at some point my desire for comfort becomes an aversion to stepping out and enduring some discomfort, even pain, even suffering, for the cause of Christ. It is at that moment that I begin to live as if God is here for me rather than me for Him. He becomes my Santa Claus, existing only to fulfill my wishes and to swoop in to remove me from any and every uncomfortable situation.

I will continue to take Advil. I will continue to acknowledge my physical pain and try to alleviate it. But maybe instead of trying to avoid pain in favor of comfort, I will seek to understand what I can learn through the pain, and open myself up to what God wants to do in my life because of my circumstances. Maybe then I’ll experience a bit more of that completion that James talks about:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

James 1:2-4