My wife and I were thinking about Tiffany on the way home from our Army this weekend. This gal is a "deployment widow," raising a 16-month old on her own while her husband serves our country in Afghanistan for the next year.
From our brief conversations with Tiffany, it seems like she is one of the hundreds of thousands of deployment widows who slip through the cracks of society, unnoticed by most. But this is not a unique problem for deployment widows. Tiffany actually belongs to a group of tens of millions more of sufferers in our country who largely slip through the cracks.
Why do they slip through the cracks? Because suffering is not allowed in postmodern America. This is particularly ironic because the postmodern mindset seeks authenticity, which it usually boils down to pain, pleasure, and power.
Read Game of Thrones, for example, and watch as the rare person who clings to truth, morality, or goodness is dramatically killed off. Life in George R.R. Martin's series is all one big pursuit of power--a game of thrones--with pain always alongside and pleasure offering brief respites from the game and from the pain. Here's the irony: The average postmodern person (most youngish Americans) loves suffering in his books and shows because they depict reality, but he actually hates suffering in his reality. For him, there is nothing worse than suffering.
As Tiffany suffers, she will likely hear remarks such as "Couldn't your husband have gotten out of this deployment, considering your situation?" or "Why don't you all get out of the military?" Even worse, if she attends a church, she may hear "Perhaps God hasn't called you to this."
This is how we deal with suffering. Instead of helping someone navigate their suffering, we seek to remove the "cause" of the suffering. Fighting with your wife? Divorce her. Deployment hard? Get out of the military. We can't handle suffering in our society because we cannot explain it. We embrace it in theory, but rarely in experience.
We can't fathom that there are things worse than suffering. This is where postmodernism falls short as a philosophy. Because it views the world and man in terms of pain, pleasure, and power, it cannot fathom that there is something ultimate beyond these concepts. A husband bears with an unbearable wife because the bonds of love transcend his suffering. A soldier puts himself in harms way, and a wife endures a year of hell, because both country and battle buddies make their suffering worthwhile, even if miserable.
As in so many other areas, the wreckage of postmodern deconstructionism leaves plenty of opportunities for the claims of Christ to build shining new edifices of hope. Is community breaking down in our society? The Church can fill the void with love that transcends normal ties. Is society running away from suffering and from sufferings? The Church can embrace them, following in the footsteps of Her Savior.
But I wonder if we Christians have not spent to much time drinking the cultural Kool Aid in this regard. Reflect on how you regard the sufferer. Do you pawn the sufferer off on the pastor, much as we are prone to do with the politicians and the rich in our society? Do you stand next to the sufferer and complain about greed and social problems rather than helping him?
When you converse with the suffering, do you suffer with them? Do you weep and refrain from words? Or do you offer trite cliches about God's providence? Do you all them ample time to suffer, recognizing that it is fundamental to human existence in a broken world, or do you put their suffering on a stopwatch and tell them when to stop? Do you recognize the profundity of their suffering and cry out to the God who alone knows, or do you try to give them answers and fixes?
The Church has an incredible opportunity to embrace the suffering. But She must first embrace her own suffering. The reality is that I am not fine and you are not fine on a Sunday morning. I am always wrestling with one sin or another. There is always a festering wound somewhere in my heart in need of the divine Physician's healing touch.
Here are three ways in which Christ's Bride can seize this moment, in God's grace.
1) We must maintain a biblical view of suffering, not a cultural one. Suffering is not the fundamental problem in this world. It is a symptom of the greater disease of sin. Thus, suffering is not the ultimate enemy upon which we must wage war--it is sin. And God often uses suffering to sanctify His people--exposing sin, enabling us to trust Him, and pointing us toward our heavenly home (Heb. 11). There are worse things than suffering, but there is nothing better than God's grace by Word and by Spirit, often shared through fellow believers, to comfort us along the way.
2) We must deepen the bonds of Christian fellowship by suffering together. In my years of counseling soldiers, I have noticed countless interpersonal conflicts between two people who are oblivious to each other's suffering. What if they suffered together? I come home and I notice how many wives have been suffering alone? What if they suffered together? Likewise, I know a multitude of suffering believers, who, like military wives, live on isolated islands of suffering. What if they suffered together? How much richer would our bonds of fellowship be?
3) We must seek out and love the suffering. By this, I mean we must reach out to all people, recognizing that they are fellow sufferers. This might be the single mom or the homeless veteran, or it might be the wealthy, white suburbanite. We all suffer. If we regard each person with whom we relate as a fellow sufferer, then we will be more compassionate and more eager to make than an object of love rather than an object of a sales pitch.
If I am honest with myself, I will try to pawn off the suffering on someone else. Why don't the rich give more to the poor? Why won't the government do more to help? Can't other paid professionals and pastors do more of this laborious work? But Jesus hasn't called me to abdicate responsibility, but to seize it in gratitude for what He did for my sake.
He did not shortcut His suffering when called to drink the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs. He did not give in to Satan's temptations to avoid the cross. He intentionally suffered for our sake.
So with joy in my heart--even with tears in my eyes--I will strive to not shortcut the suffering of others because Jesus did not shortcut His own for my sake (James 1; Heb. 12).
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