I brought a bottle of vinegar along to church last Sunday. I got the kids to come out to the front, showed them the bottle and asked them if anyone would like a glassful of vinegar to drink. Not surprisingly, no one did. None of the adults in the congregation was interested either. I then asked the children if they would perhaps like to have just a tablespoon of vinegar but there were no volunteers for that either… there were not even any takers for just a teaspoonful of the stuff. Vinegar, it would seem, is something that people generally avoid drinking. And who can blame them?
I then asked the children to give me some examples of pain and suffering. I got the expected answers that ranged all the way from falling over and grazing your shins to a toothache and from pulling a muscle to being stabbed. I then asked the children if there was pain and suffering that was more than just bodily pain. The kids readily picked up on the sobering truth that suffering is not just physical; that in fact there are worse pains than bodily pain. One of the children mentioned death and bereavement. We also talked about the pain of being bullied. The point I made with the children was that pain is like the vinegar. Just as we don’t want to drink a glass of vinegar so too we try as much as possible to avoid suffering.
I mention all this because in the Bible there are those interesting verses that tell us to rejoice in our suffering. James chapter 1, for example, “Count it all joy… when you meet various kinds of trials.” Of course no one wants suffering… and the Bible nowhere encourages us to seek it out. However, while we can avoid drinking vinegar we can’t avoid suffering – much as we would like to. But my concern is that when the inevitable happens there are Christians who have no philosophy of suffering. Some of the popular television evangelists have not helped in that regard. Some of them have no theology of suffering either and one gets the impression that some of them seem to think that God owes it to us to always keep us healthy and well. You only have to read the book of Job in the Bible to learn otherwise.
There’s another verse in the Bible that links suffering to Jesus. The apostle Peter says, “Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you. Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.”
The point I made with the children last Sunday is that Jesus suffered too. Horrendously so! Whipped and scourged and crucified and abandoned by God, His Father. But so much that was positive came out of those sufferings of Jesus Christ. Three days later there was the joy and the glory of the resurrection on Easter morning. What’s more, the sufferings of Jesus led to our forgiveness and to the privilege of a new life in relationship with God… to say nothing of the joy and the hope of sharing in God’s wonderful new creation when Jesus returns. All of that is now ours simply by trusting that the sufferings of Jesus were meant to bring blessing for us.
I pointed out to the children last Sunday that sometime they do consume vinegar… often without even realising it. I then showed them a jar of pickles and asked them how you make pickles. They understood that pickles are made by putting them in vinegar. So vinegar has some good purposes. But the point is that this is no longer vinegar just by itself. So too suffering is good for us… but not by itself. Hardship and trial are good for us – but only when the Lord Jesus has a place in it. He can use our suffering to make something beautiful. So from the Bible’s perspective suffering can produce something good – just like vinegar can produce something good in a jar full of pickles.
John Westendorp