“Suffering, far from weakening, contributes to power in the Christian’s life.”
“We’re very pain averse in the 21st Century.”
“The classical sense of happiness differs drastically from what we mean today.”
“Today, when we talk about happiness..we mean, if you feel good, you’re happy.”
“But the ancient view of happiness was actually strikingly different..the ancient view of happiness says that you are happy to the degree that you are in the right relationship with God. In other words, your standing before God reflects you actual happiness.”
“Nowadays we say, ‘I feel good’ but in the ancient understanding, happiness means, ‘I am good.’ The actual condition of your soul, your spiritual condition is what makes you happy.”
“So under the ancient understanding of happiness, you can be happy when you’re diagnosed with a terminal illness. You can be happy, in a prison cell.You can be happy, washing the dishes. You can be happy, in the best of circumstances. You can be happy, in the absolute worse of circumstances. Because happiness goes to the very core of your spiritual well being. It doesn’t have so much to do with your subjective feelings and emotions.”
“It is important to seek emotional health and it is important to feel good as well. And obviously, I’m not advocating masochism here, nor were the ancients. However, what they had in mind about happiness is a whole lot more deep, a whole lot more profound and unshakable than our current conception. Because notice that the current conception of happiness, feeling good, cannot withstand the darkest times in your life.”
“Whatever the terrible circumstances that befall you, they can completely rob you of your happiness and they can destroy your sense of well being and your happiness crumbles. And so I think here, what you can clearly see is that the ancient understanding is a whole lot more durable, is a whole lot more stable, is a whole lot more unshakable. This is a much more powerful conception of happiness.”
“This is why I’m saying, I think we get happiness wrong. I’m not saying feeling good is a bad thing. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t seek to be subjectively satisfied and that we shouldn’t try to feel good. But I’m saying that if that takes priority over everything else, we have a problem.”
“If we equate happiness with simply feeling good, we are destined for despair and misery. The fact is, we live in a world that is deeply marred and broken.”
“Nothing lasts here on earth. And if we invest our happiness in this world alone, we are destined for despair. The ancient understanding of happiness sees through that superficial conception.”
“But if we understand happiness as spiritual health, this is so much deeper. If we understand happiness as what Christ was talking about to His disciples, the unshakable conviction that we are loved by God and that we belong to Him, nothing, nothing, can shake us. And it grants to us a power from God that is utterly out of keeping with this world.
This is true happiness. Our culture often gets it wrong. So we often get happiness wrong. But we also get pain wrong. All the time. In our culture here in North America, largely in the West, we regard pain as one of the greatest enemies. Peter Kreeft the philosopher says that we tend to fear pain, death and sin in that order. And we’ve got precisely backwards. We should fear sin above all else then we should fear death, then we should fear pain. Why? Well because pain and death are bad. Pain is bad. Pain can hurt you, pain can turn corrosive, it can turn to bitterness, it can divide you. Death takes everything away from you. But sin, unchecked sin can has the ability to separate you eternally from God…sin has the ability to separate you eternally from your Maker. That’s way more serious.”
“Pain can harden you or it can strengthen you. On an intuitive level, most of us will recognise that this as true. When we meet someone who has gone through great suffering, that has lived through great suffering, think of someone who is a survivor of a concentration camp, think of someone who has survived a serious illness. Whenever we meet someone who has gone through great suffering or who is in the midst of great suffering, why is it that we tend to take them a whole lot more seriously? You see, most of us intuitively recognise that suffering, as painful as it is, grants wisdom. That there is real wisdom that comes through suffering. That people who have suffered greatly are often some of the most compelling and interesting and frankly, challenging people we can meet.”
“Suffering doesn’t need to dismantle your character. If you give your suffering to Christ, it can be transfigured. As a Christian, I will tell you that the ultimate picture of the transfiguration of suffering takes place on The Cross at Calvary. Where we see Jesus Christ willingly go to The Cross and die for us, die for our sins, so that we might live. And on that Cross, suffering is transfigured and given a whole new level of meaning and dignity. May I suggest to you that your suffering, the pain that you’ve experienced in your life does not need to undo you. It can actually help you grow as a person. And indeed, if you’re a Christian, if you give you life to Christ, the pain in your life will be a key ingredient in your spiritual maturity and your stability and it will grant to you a power and a strength that is utterly out of keeping with this world. Our culture gets pain wrong when it says the pain is the worse enemy, that it will destroy you, avoid it at all costs, run away from it at all costs. That does not need to be the case. We don’t need to flee the reality of pain, we don’t need to hide behind distractions, suffering doesn’t have to harden us. Suffering can be a key ingredient in our spiritual maturity.”
“Finally, let’s talk about how pain gets us right. If pain is a key ingredient in our spiritual maturity, then it means that it is necessary. This is an extremely painful truth.”
“We often hear it said, when we are talking about certain obstinate children, ‘Well, he or she only learns the hard way. I wish it weren’t this way but he or she will have to learn it the hard way.’ Ladies and gentlemen, we only learn things the hard way.”
“My son will never learn how to walk unless he falls down. My son will not learn to be a functioning adult without bruises and lacerations. We will never learn how to be disciples of Christ without bruises and lacerations. This is why Tim Keller often says that you’ll know who Christ’s disciples are by the fruit and by the fact that they often walk with a limp.”
Extract from The Power of the Christian Life Part 1: Suffering by Cameron McAllister.
