The Suffering Cycle
Discipling sufferers in a comfortable society
We need to develop a theology of suffering. I’m aware that plenty of amazing work has been done on suffering. My concern is that there is no easily communicated framework for suffering that can be used as a tool for discipleship around suffering.
It might sound cold to hear a phrase like “framework for suffering.” The last thing someone needs in their moment of deepest pain is a “framework.” They need comfort, love, support, community, understanding, easing of burdens, time and space to process, and trustworthy people to share and cry with. So why do we need a framework?
Because we have a deficiency in understanding around how God uses suffering in our life. We’re unprepared for the suffering that we must experience in life because we’ve bought into a prosperity-lite gospel that says that life should be easy and suffering should be avoided. We spend too much effort on “why do bad things happen to good people?” and not enough time on “how do bad things form us into Christ-like people?”.
Jesus described a type of person who, “hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away” (Matthew 13:20-21). Can we strengthen the soil of our churches so that people don’t fall away when trouble comes?
Suffering should be included in our standard topics for discipleship. While we want to teach the Bible, doctrine, spiritual disciplines and more, we should also include God’s work in our suffering as one of the key things we prepare people for, especially before they endure suffering. As a teacher of mine once said, “we do theology in the light so we can stand on it in the dark.” I believe we need to equip people for suffering before they suffer. Being equipped won’t lessen the pain of suffering, but it might increase our reliance on the Lord in the midst of it.
So what would this look like? There is a two-step move that can get us there.
1. A Means of Spiritual Formation
The first move is two introduce suffering as a low-control means of spiritual formation in our lives. My favorite definition of spiritual formation comes from Robert Mulholland. He defines it as “the lifelong process of being formed into Christlikeness for the sake of others.”
John Mark Comer has developed a framework for spiritual formation that I have found to be immensely helpful.
Most of our efforts in discipleship focus on the high control elements above the line. Good teaching, getting into community, and practices such as Bible reading and prayer. These are good, and we shouldn’t emphasize these any less. It’s the low-control element of spiritual formation that we need to emphasize more.
We have little to no control over the hard knocks of life throughout our lifetime. Instead of thinking that life should be good and with some hiccups that we might be able to avoid if we play it safe, we should recognize that life is full of hard knocks, suffering that we can’t control. If life is full of suffering that is out of our control, then the important thing is not to avoid suffering, but to know what to do with it.
Jesus himself said this, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Trouble is guaranteed, but peace in Christ is guaranteed for those who are in him.
But how?
2. The Suffering Cycle.
The common verse to go to for suffering is James 1:2-4, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
This is a great verse because it gets us to the counterintuitive conclusion that trials should be considered joy and produce maturity. But I think there is another passage that gets to the same idea in a slightly more helpful way.
I have come to rely on Romans 5:3-5 far more. Paul says essentially the same thing that James does. He says,
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
I’ve started calling this The Suffering Cycle.
Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance character. Character hope. And it’s through that hope that we experience God’s love poured out in us. Because of the love we experience, suffering becomes something to be gloried in, not avoided.
Suffering Produces Perseverance
Having lost almost everyone in my family and experienced multiple significant wounds by churches, I can attest that there comes a point when you begin to become familiar with suffering. The pain of suffering isn’t reduced in any way, but you begin to remember the same feelings as you experience them over and over again. Eventually, you realize that no matter what you suffer, it doesn’t have to break you.
Like David says in Psalm 27,
“The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?”
Because of the suffering you have endured in the past, you are able to persevere and endure even more suffering in the future. Each season of suffering prepares you for the next one. As you persevere in suffering, you become more resilient in the face of trials.
Perseverance Produces Character
Perseverance doesn’t simply make one more resilient. If that were the case, the only outcome of suffering would be brute forcing our way through the pain. But that’s not the only way. Enduring suffering and allowing it to do its work in us produces character—the character of Christ.
As we are conformed to Christ in his sufferings, we take on the character of Christ. We’re empowered to take on his character through the Spirit and embody his characteristic: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. Persevering through suffering is like the vine being pruned in order to bear more fruit.
Suffering cuts off the lies that we have been believing and gives us perspective into the way things truly are. If we don’t fight the process and instead allow the process to work in us, we will grow in character as our priorities and perspectives are realigned with reality.
Character Produces Hope
Because we are being conformed more to the character of Christ, our hope in Christ is strengthened. Our suffering connects us with all of creation as it groans for redemption (Romans 8:22). We know that through our trials we are being redeemed and that one day all things will be made new and we will be free from this body of death.
Instead of suffering filling us with nihilism and filling us with dread that we feel like we can’t escape, the vanity of the things we put our hope in is exposed and we turn our hope away from the things that are “under the sun” and to the one who is above the sun.
From then on out, there are always two layers to suffering. A top layer that experiences immense pain and heartache and a bottom layer that is still anchored in hope that even this will be redeemed.
Hope Experiences Love
It’s in this place of hope we experience the reality that, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Our suffering doesn’t produce shame, because in it we experience the love of God. That there is a special outpouring of God’s love that is experienced by those who are heartbroken and grieving. Those who are mourning are truly blessed for they will be comforted by God himself.
Far from being evidence that God doesn’t care or is out of control, God—who himself suffered—comforts us in our suffering by pouring out his love in our hearts.
Trouble Will Come
This isn’t a cycle that will happen once. It will happen over and over again in someone’s life, in big ways and in small. It’s imperative that we reframe suffering from being a time of God’s absence to a time of God’s presence.
Discipling Christians on how to persevere in suffering as part of their spiritual formation into Christlikeness is desperately needed in a comfortable society. While incomplete, I hope this framework can help as a starting point.