Someone sent me this delightful video just as I was reading a book that explores the word redeem. Slum children creating music out of garbage stands as a perfect metaphor for a word usually encountered in theology texts.
Some twenty years ago Jerry Sittser, a religion professor at Whitworth College, was involved in a horrific auto accident. A drunk driver hit the vehicle he was driving, killing Jerry’s mother, wife, and four-year-old daughter—three generations at once. Jerry survived, along with three other children who had significant injuries. Not long afterward he published the book A Grace Disguised giving his reflections on the tragedy and its effect on his faith.
Last year he published a follow-up book, A Grace Revealed, describing what has happened since, including a re-marriage and the challenges of a blended family. That book has a passage on “redemption,” for Jerry asks what good has come out of the difficult times he lived through.
Most English words that begin with the prefix re-, he notes, look backwards: we re-visit a thought, re-hab an old house, re-sume a school semester after the holidays. The word re-deem points ahead, to God’s promise to re-store creation to its original design. Sittser adds a further insight, that redemption always involves a cost. To redeem a slave, someone must pay—or, in the case of the U.S. civil war, an entire nation must pay. To redeem the world, Someone must die.
I would suggest one further aspect of redemption: though looking to the future, redemption does not erase the past. A ransomed slave still bears the scars and memories 
of his time of bondage. Creation “groans as in the pains of childbirth,” the apostle Paul says of the redemption process of planet Earth. Jerry Sittser, the victims of war and persecution, the community of Newtown, Connecticut—they may find ways to endure suffering, even redeem it, but the painful memories will never disappear, nor should they. Even Jesus’ resurrected body retained scars.
Indeed, this notion of redeemed suffering may be the distinctive Christian contribution to the problem of suffering. Governments respond to suffering by attempting to remove it. The U.S. invades Iraq—oops, there’s Afghanistan! We help freedom fighters in Libya, but along come Egypt and Syria. Where does it stop? Medicine conquers smallpox and polio (almost), but what about malaria, AIDS, MRSA, and of course cancer? Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Newtown—can we ever stop these tragedies? No matter how well-intentioned and admirable, our attempts to remove suffering most often end up resembling the carnival game Whack-a-mole.
Each major religion has its own slant on the universal problem of suffering. Islam says we should submit and accept all that happens as God’s will. Doctors in Muslim countries tell me that parents rarely protest when their baby dies—grieve, yes, but not protest. Hinduism goes further, teaching that the suffering we bear is deserved, the result of sins we committed in a previous life. Buddhism frankly admits, “Life is suffering,” and teaches how to embrace it.
The Christian faith encourages protest, even to the extent of including the very words we can use in books like Job, Psalms, Lamentations, Jeremiah. We pray along with Jesus that God’s will “be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and vigorously oppose the evil and suffering that keeps the prayer from being answered.
Despite what some prosperity-gospel teachers claim, we have no promise that suffering will be removed, only that it will be redeemed—or, to use a more modern word, recycled. I take used and crushed aluminum cans to a redemption center in hopes that someone will make something useful out of them. I drop off an outdated computer knowing that someone will remove the gold and rare earths and “redeem” them in new and better ways.
The apostle Paul likened his worldly accomplishments to a pile of dung; yet even that can be recycled, as fertilizer. The sufferings of Martin Luther King Jr., of Nelson Mandela, of Gandhi, of Solzhenitsyn, were all redeemed in ways the persons themselves could not have imagined at the time. And the hallmark crime of history, the execution of God’s own Son, we remember as Good Friday, not Dark or Tragic Friday. Jesus said he could have called on legions of angels to prevent the crucifixion. He did not. The Christian way is not around pain, but through it.
In the movie Shadowlands, based on the life of C. S. Lewis, his wife Joy Davidman experiences a brief remission from her excruciating bout with cancer. The two have a romantic interlude in Greece, a moment of exquisite grace. Looking ahead to what awaits her once the cancer flares up again, Joy says, “The pain I’ll feel then is part of the happiness I feel now. That’s the deal.”
Joy dies. And in one of the final scenes C. S. Lewis tries to comfort her son David Gresham. Lewis clung to belief in Heaven as a drowning man clings to a life-preserver, or perhaps as a starving man dreams of food. He makes a subtle change in Joy’s words: “The pain I feel now is part of the happiness I’ll feel then. That’s the deal.”
Oh, yes, and while thinking such forward-looking lofty thoughts, don’t forget to watch the present-day, very down-to-earth video above…
We resist suffering and pain but develop our finest character traits through them. An easy life does little for the inner person. This is a beautiful and insightful essay on the spiritual dilemma of suffering.
Hello Mr. Yancey. I did not really know where to comment with what I wanted to say (as it does not relate directly to this blog). However, I had just finished your book “What’s so amazing about grace?” and found myself deeply affected. I was so moved that, in fact, I actually used your work as the basis of a paper I recently wrote with hopes of obtaining a scholastic scholarship. It is a bit of a stretch to think that you might actually respond to this (I suppose), but I was just wondering if I could get your feedback? Rest assured, the paper itself is on the shorter side.
Thank you sir!
Hello again,
So I did also want to comment on this blog as well. I really appreciated where you mentioned that the Christian way is “not around suffering, but through it.” As it happens, that was a theme that I addressed in the previously mentioned paper. Though, in that case, working through the suffering pertained more to the effort inherent to forgiveness. Directly, I would tend to approach the theme of suffering in terms of the task of pardoning a wrong that has been wrought against you by another. Such a feat also requires, I would say, a dedication to approaching suffering in a way that looks forward to the ultimate joy that will hopefully result from such a process. However, this type of mentality must be one that is given constant attention for, just as you had mentioned, “long after the wound is forgiven; the memory of it lives on.” Memory, as it were, can certainly possess certain nuances that are often difficult to navigate (especially when one often feels a pull towards the lure of scorn which, by human terms, might appear more than justifiable).
“Perceived injustice, and unfair suffering.” What you wrote honestly made me wonder as to how one could possibly forgive God (especially when He engenders such a concept). This wondering, in turn, guided me to an article that addresses this idea somewhat indirectly. In this article, written by William O’Malley (2008), the idea of suffering being unfair is approached from a perspective that thinks of blaming God as something that God himself anticipates from his creation. Directly, the author states that, as per an old Jewish belief “when we use our God-given wits to dispute with him, God dances for joy!” He also comes to cite the story of Job as a prime example, where Job is finally rewarded, near the end of the book, for his perseverance. I am sure that God knew Job’s character even better than Job himself, however did God not anticipate each of Job’s subsequent actions according to God’s own foreknowledge? Perhaps that question in itself sounds Calvinistic (though that was not the direct intent). Anyways, I guess I wonder if blaming God for what we humans perceive as injustice is simply a natural act? However, I would also submit that any human audacious enough to blame God for anything must also be humble enough to recognize the supremacy of God’s intent towards humanity. Just as was the case with Job when he was hit broadside with God’s questioning him as to where he (Job) was when the foundations of the earth were laid. Regardless, with these precepts first accomplished (questioning God with God-given wits, and also being genuinely ready for His assured sovereignty in the process), could this be even a Biblical recommendation as to the management of suffering? Is this correct to assume as a viable method for arriving at the knowledge that “each crisis in physical growth is a natural invitation to broader and deeper participation in being human[?]”
Phillip, your blog reminded me that my struggle with suffering was partially based on an error in assumption. I presumed that life was our default position and from birth we were owed it. But it’s helped me to realize that death is the default, not life. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” Once I accepted death as the starting place, it made sense to look upward and forward to Christ for redemption from the pull of darkness. This has helped me in dealing with guilt, my current limitations and the tempation to blame God for this messed up world. So, as suffering continues to haunt, I’m learning that somehow it propels us closer to life.