”I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world.”
-John 16:33

There is an element of audacity to write on a subject one is but faintly familiar with. There is also the inevitable risk of criticism when writing on sensitive subjects. I don’t mind either one. My purpose here is not to imply that I have it all figured out. Far from it. But I do love to speculate, to grow in wisdom and understanding, and to be in a healthy process of figuring it out (“it” being anything worthy of being figured out). And living in a society overwhelmingly overcome by pain, suffering, and what is now labeled as a “mental health crisis”—and being no stranger to pain and sorrow myself—my written thoughts here are simply to propose what I have found helpful, harmful, and hopeful in the experience of long-term, or even short-term, dealings with pain, sorrow, suffering, and healthy honest endurance.

I am a Christian. I cannot live apart from the Christian lense in which I view the world and all that encompasses it. It is not “my reality”; it is reality, period, whether people suppress it or not. However, being that the vast majority of society suppresses truth—which is largely why it finds itself in the mental health crisis it is in—it is also reality that unhealthy, indeed harmful, therapy solutions are dominantly proposed as the ultimate cure for anyone enduring mental/emotional pain. “Self-love” therapy—encouraging anyone experiencing grief or sorrow to simply engage in more activities that promote self-care—is at the top of modern therapy tactics. Prescribing anti-depressants might be even more prevalent. And there are rising tactical mental “cures” among modern therapists such as the increasingly popular EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) technique, which readjusts a trauma-victim’s brain to process and store painful memories accordingly, so that the victim is no longer undesirably stuck in a past scenario, existentially living with all the psychological and physiological symptoms that were experienced during that timeframe.

Before getting defensive about such therapy options, hear me out. I am not saying I am conclusive in ruling out every such tactic for every possible scenario when coping with suffering. Indeed, there are many who have suffered beyond my experience, and who am I to assume a position on something I have not been fully immersed with myself? Yet as I confessed, I am still no stranger to suffering. And being that sorrow and suffering are so prevalent, and are indeed experiences that everyone has and/or will face at some point in their lives, if not throughout a great majority of their lives, it seems to me that knowing the purpose of suffering is vital to wisely navigate what to do with it.

As a Christian, there is indeed great purpose in suffering, in which makes all the difference in how to navigate it. A large part of my proposal is that experiencing pain and suffering is not necessarily bad, nor something that always needs to be fixed, but rather should be used for our growth, sanctification, and reliance on the Lord. In a society where feeling good and being happy have become the ultimate objective, and where people will do anything to avoid being uncomfortable—let alone feel pain—I realize this is not what modern ears want to hear. Most people want a cover-up therapy tactic as the ones I have mentioned—anything to numb the pain and feel “happy” again. But isn’t there an element of superficiality in that? What happens when one runs out of antidepressants? What happens when you realize that all of your self-care therapy activities don’t really bring lasting joy, because they aren’t growing you in wisdom and character and beauty of the soul, but rather are turning you into a self-loving narcissist? This brings me back to the purpose of suffering; to the source in which true hope and true wisdom can be found.

Forgive me, before looking into the purpose of suffering, it is vital to first address the purpose of our existence in general—from which flows the purpose of everything else that takes place within it. Man’s purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever (WSC Q:1). Knowing this chief end is key to discerning everything that happens to us, not the least of which includes all pain, sorrow, and suffering. If God created us to glorify and enjoy Him, anything He allows in our lives is for the ultimate purpose of bringing us closer to Him in trust, joy, love, fulfillment, and glory to His name.

This, indeed, is the overarching purpose of suffering. Philippians 3:7-11 states, “But whatever things were gain to me, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count all things loss to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them worthless, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him […] that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.” The apostle Paul wrote that he counted everything as loss—even as worthless—in light of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus. Knowing the worth of our Lord is truly the highest aspiration our minds can attain, and it is scarcely achieved through comfort. Paul recognized that it is through sharing in Christ’s sufferings that we come to know Him and the power of His resurrection. No mention of avoiding suffering, trying to erase suffering, or numbing suffering is found in Scripture. Rather, it is clear that suffering is indeed inevitable and, as my goal in this essay is hoping to relay, should be accepted and embraced for the betterment of our souls, rather than run from.

A predominant assertion of renowned psychologist Jordan Peterson is that the baseline of human existence is difficulty. This is a truth that modern society does not want to accept, and will do anything to avoid its reality. There are many who have not yet experienced true suffering, but are merely unhappy in the circumstances of their lives—perhaps are even in fairly difficult trials—and cannot bear even this. Perhaps they are bored with their mundane job; perhaps they wish they had more free time; perhaps they wish they had a family, or more fulfilling relationships, or more children, or lived in a more pleasant neighborhood, etc. etc. There are many in these perhaps undesirable circumstances who react as if their world is full of darkness and seek therapy for depression. To be sure, this is not what I’m addressing here. I (to fault my character) have little patience for such self-pity in a world that is full of true darkness. Perhaps I have read too much history, and cannot help but compare the agonies of captives in a Japanese POW camp to the complaints of spoiled adults. But these scenarios are simply a matter of lacking contentment, in which I have written another article addressing such matters, titled, “On Contentment (Or Excitement)”. For such circumstances I would also strongly suggest reading The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs, in which the beloved author emphasizes the point that if we truly recognized what we have been saved from and all we’ve been given in Christ, we would never have room for discontentment in our hearts, but only hearts overflowing with gratitude and joy, no matter our outward surroundings. I highly recommend studying his book, and his emphasis isn’t far from my proposal of how to deal with true suffering as well.

Perhaps there are some reading this thinking, “You don’t know what I’ve been through… You don’t understand… It’s not that easy to overcome pain and sorrow…” And no, I don’t know what it’s like to experience anything I’ve never personally experienced. I’ve never lost a child, a spouse, or an entire family; I’ve never been mutilated or tortured to an unbearable measure, nor have witnessed a loved one being tortured or killed. By the grace of God I cannot say that I’ve undergone such nightmares. But I do know people who have. I’ve seen people and have read of people who have endured the harshest of circumstances, and I’ve evaluated what makes some thrive and others crumble. And 100% of the time, fleeing from pain does not produce a purified soul. I have tried this. Though, as I have said, I have not experienced the cruelest of circumstances, I have been given my measure of pain and darkness. I know what it is like to experience so much pain, day after day, wanting only for it to go away, and being presented with options for that to happen. Being diagnosed with trauma (which, if anyone knows anything about trauma, you know it is something out of your control; you don’t want it there; you don’t want those memories there; but you wake up and they are at the forefront of your mind, forcing you to live in the psychological and physiological pain that you experienced at the time of what haunts you, very literally as if it is still happening… I do understand this very well…) it was suggested to me to undergo the EMDR therapy that I have previously mentioned. “One session of your eyes following my fingers and your memories will be properly processed and you will feel good again.” Sounds tempting doesn’t it? But this didn’t sit well with me. Would I really be myself then? Would I really be learning from my pain and growing in sanctification if I simply erased painful memories from my mind and lived in happy lala land? That actually didn’t sound like a good thing at all. That sounded more along the lines of Carl Jung’s examination that “people will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” Through this painful and seemingly endless process of navigating this day-in, day-out pain I was living with, I was learning more and more that running from pain wasn’t the answer. I did not want to run from my own soul. I did not want to run from what God was working in me.
It was one very painful, dark morning—a morning I woke up with tormenting images and thoughts that very realistically seemed placed in my mind from the devil himself (I know Satan has much more prominent people and places he’s concerned with other than me; I don’t suggest to be that important. He does have legions of demons, however, that I have no doubt are working tirelessly to crush the saints with temptation and despair, and I’m acquainted with this very well), that I remember crying out to God once again to remove this suffering from me, and was seeking His wisdom in whether EMDR is good in His sight or not. Now, I am not one to encourage opening your Bible, placing your finger on a passage it falls on, and asking God to speak to you through that magical passage. To be clear, that’s very far from how I believe the Bible should be read. BUT, I do believe that there are times when God does speak very personally to us as we are reading through His word, as He knows exactly what we are going through and what we need to hear to transform our hearts and minds. And after all, He is a very personal and intimately acquainted God to us. He is not distant, but made us for Himself.
One such instance I experienced this was in my early twenties, when I went through a similar situation as the one I am discussing, though the trauma didn’t last quite as long and I don’t think I would really say I had trauma from it at all, as much as the circumstance set me into depression for several months following. Day after day I would find myself crying out to God, “Will this pain ever end?” One such morning as I wrote those very words in my prayer journal to the Lord, I looked up at the Scripture passage I was on (It is my goal to read through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation every year, and I happened to be in 1 Peter chapter 5 that morning). The passage that nearly visibly raised itself to me was 5:8-10: “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. So resist him, firm in your faith […] The suffering won’t last forever, it won’t be long before the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” Oh the comfort this gave me! Comfort and hope directly from God to my heart. Keep looking to Me. Take heart. I assure you the suffering won’t last forever. How would I have known this comfort and even joy in the personal care of God if I had forced “happy feelings” upon myself through antidepressants or psychotherapy? This was real healing. The others are merely a coverup.
So it was with the story I am currently telling. Fast-forward back to more recent in my life. This dark morning as I was seeking counsel from the word of God, the Lord brought me back to that exact passage from years ago. It’s funny how easily we forget. I always love the truth of the analogy of us being as dumb sheep whom the Lord shepherds. We are so prone to forgetfulness, to stupidity, and even to harmfulness to ourselves. How we need the Lord’s guiding care every moment of our lives! So the Lord brought me back to First Peter, in which the words of this English Standard Version illumined themselves to me: “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” Will Himself. I did not need EMDR, or pills, or to talk to a therapist who 99% of the time have little to no wisdom to offer. I needed Christ. More of Him. More of His sanctification. More wisdom from His word to understand the purpose of suffering. No self-love, medicating, memory-erasing tactic can provide the purification and beautification of mind and soul as the transforming power of God can. Do I still have sadness? I deeply do. I am not suggesting that God purifies us through the total removal of suffering. But I have learned to accept and live with it. Referring back to my favorite psychologist (is it any wonder he was the son of a reformed Presbyterian minister?) Carl Jung, I understand very well now when he wrote things like—“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious” … “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness” and perhaps my favorite, “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” I still have sadness, to be sure; but there is an understanding and hope even in the midst of the sorrow that makes it possible to live with gratitude and joy as I look to and rely on Christ for daily strength and growth. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). I know this full well; I know His peace that surpasses all understanding, and I could not know it any other way.

Now again, there are always rebuttals. I am sure there are those who will be quick to point out that some people have just gone through too much or have witnessed too much that they need a numbing therapy to heal them. I am not blind to such scenarios. I can tell you of many such instances myself, in which I cannot judge for that person. I know of one such child homicide detective who witnessed such horrific torture and mutilazation of children that it affected his mental state for years. He walked into an office of an EMDR therapist one day, desperate for help. He looked old, aged, and grieved beyond despair. He told the therapist that fifteen years ago he was assigned a murder case in which an 8-year-old boy was so tortured and mutilated that the images of his body and knowledge of what had happened to him never left the detective’s mind. He was traumatized. He could never escape the torment it caused him, even fifteen years later. The therapist performed her EMDR magic on him and he left. The next day he came back and the therapist didn’t recognize him. He lost ten years on his face and looked like an entirely different person. He said he hadn’t slept so well in years, and wanted to thank her. In such a scenario, am I in a position to say he shouldn’t have undergone that therapy? That there was a better way? I won’t suggest I am in a place to make such a judgment. I have not had such memories as he had tormenting me. I am indeed happy for the man, that he is no longer in such torment. But are we allowed to speculate whether that was the best option? Did he grow in wisdom and understanding of the human condition? Did he place any hope in the Lord, or leave with any hope? I do not know if he was a Christian or whether he ever sought the Lord, and if therefore he is truly well. As I firmly insist, the most important thing about someone is what they believe about God. And I don’t know if his therapy enhanced a truer and purer belief about God, or simply made it easier to live. I can only offer what I’ve found to be a healthy, real, and good way to understand and willingly accept suffering. To quote Jung once again, I agree that “wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.” I would rather be hurting and whole than dancing in delirium. (In regards to what happened to the boy, and to all evil and horrific occurrences in life in general, I have written yet another essay titled “The Problem of Evil” addressing why there is such evil in the world if God is indeed good. Be gracious to me, as it has been several years since I wrote it in college, and hopefully I’ve grown in understanding since then.)

As I am not a certified psychiatrist but merely a lover of wisdom and researcher of goodness, truth, and beauty, my purpose here is not to insist upon the specific cure for every individual’s depressive state. My desire is to offer true hope and wisdom in the midst of a very hopeless and superficial world of therapy whose number one question and concern is “Do you feel better?” rather than “Are you growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?” Going back to the prominent question of the purpose in our sufferings, Joni Eareckson Tada observed that “God uses suffering to purge sin from our lives, strengthen our commitment to Him, force us to depend on grace, bind us together with other believers, produce discernment, discipline our minds, spend our time wisely, stretch our hope, cause us to know Christ better, make us long for truth, lead us to repentance, increase faith, and strengthen character.” Even this exhaustive observation is not fully complete, for who can know the mind of the Lord? His ways are higher than ours, and we can only know as much as He has revealed to us. But nothing that He has revealed to us hints at there being a goal of merely “feeling better” in His purposes for our suffering. Instead, taking a further look at my cherished epistle of First Peter, we see more intimately the truth behind Eareckson-Tada’s assertions in chapter 4: “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God” (4:1-2); “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share in Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed” (4:12-13); “Therefore, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (4:19). It is very true that suffering as a consequence of sin—indeed to discipline and purge us from sin—is a real occurrence in the lives of believers. I know this firsthand, have witnessed it in the lives of my loved ones, and to be sure, anyone who doesn’t experience the discipline of the Lord should be concerned, for He says “Those whom I love I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore and repent” (Revelation 3:19). Receiving the Lord’s hand of discipline should therefore be a great comfort and assurance to us, that He loves us too much to let us ruin ourselves. But we also see that suffering is not always the result of any particular sin of our own, but is a vessel in which God is conforming us to the image of His Son, and we are to but “entrust our souls to our faithful Creator while doing good.” In his work The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, John Calvin wrote that “Sometimes God uses adversity to stir His people to deeper reflection on the things of heaven […] God had promised to be with His people during times of trial, and when they feel the truth of this promise, supported by His hand, they endure patiently. They could never do this by their own strength. Patience, therefore, gives believers experiential proof that God does indeed provide the help that He has promised whenever there is need.” Believers are not called to run from or avoid suffering in life. We are to endure patiently, relying on the Lord—even and especially during the long painful trials in which our souls cry out day and night “How long, oh Lord?”—and thus experience very intimately the strength and support of His ever-present hand that only He can preciously provide to us. If we are honest, could we experience anything more precious than this?

I want to turn now to take a look at someone who knew this adequacy of the Lord; someone who knew suffering to it’s utmost degree, and who, after undergoing unjust cruelty and torment for years, came out a more grateful, wise, and beautiful soul than he admittedly otherwise would’ve been.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Russian captain in the Soviet Army in the 1940s. In 1945 he was arrested and convicted for criticizing Stalin and was sent to the Gulag, spending eight years in torturous prison camps. His photographic memory of what he experienced and witnessed during those eight years are accounted in his work The Gulag Archipelago. In this account you will find in-depth stories of prisoners being worked to death, starved to death, dragged to death, sleep-deprived, shot, tortured, stabbed, stripped of clothing, being separated from their children and told of the torment being done to them. Most of these accounts are too terrible for the mind to grasp, though they are factual and indeed occurred. It is evident that this happy-feelings, comfort-driven modern society we live in simply does not have a category for the cruelty and real suffering that took place in the gulags. (It is for knowledge of such history that I say I do not have patience for such complaints as boredom, not having needs met, not having pronouns acknowledged, and other such nonsense that pale in comparison to real-life hardships. And it is for this reason that I could never be a pastor—God bless them—and thankfully never can be due to my chromosomes. Oh the patience they must have toward us ridiculous creatures! Imagine even more God’s patience with us. But I digress.)

In an article contemplating the life and sufferings of Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Pearce asserts that “Older readers will hardly need reminding of who Alexander Solzhenitsyn was. Younger readers, sadly, might never have heard of him. The ignorance of the latter is nothing less than tragic.” It is tragic indeed, for it is largely due to ignorance of history that the society we find ourselves in is one of entitlement, narcissism, ignorance, and depression. If people cannot handle the slightest discomfort now, how could they possibly comprehend—let alone endure—such monstrosities as took place in the gulag? The irony of the modern idea of being “enlightened” by looking inward to ourselves is that there is no light to be found within us. Attempting to find light in a shadow of darkness has only left us in desperate despair, with weak fortitude, and superficial happiness. G.K. Chesterton (my favorite Catholic writer) articulates this thoughtfully when he writes “Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.” The fatal flaw of secular society today is that is has moved back away from the outer light (Christ) and back to the inner light (looking into oneself) which is ironically no light at all. God makes clear to us humans that “the human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9), and Paul emphatically agrees with Him, stating, “I know that nothing good in me dwells” (Romans 7:18). This is why Chesterton concludes that “thinking about yourself will make you depressed.” It is no wonder, then, that we are on a mental health crisis, when all that is encouraged is to think about yourself, focus on yourself, love yourself, follow your own deceitful heart, etc. etc. If all we’re ever doing is seeking goodness and fulfillment in ourselves, we’re going to be sorely disappointed and inevitably depressed. I would support Chesterton’s suggestion when he further wrote: “Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself. Human beings are happy so long as they retain the receptive power and the power of reaction in surprise and gratitude to something outside. So long as they have this they have as the greatest minds have always declared, a something that is present in childhood and which can still preserve and invigorate manhood. The moment the self within is consciously felt as something superior to any of the gifts that can be brought to it, or any of the adventures that it may enjoy, there has appeared a sort of self-devouring fastidiousness and a disenchantment in advance, which fulfills all the Tartarean emblems of thirst and of despair. […] Difficulties can easily be raised, of course, in any such debate by the accident of words being used in different senses; and sometimes in quite contrary senses. For instance, when we speak of somebody being “proud of” something, as of a man being proud of his wife or a people proud of its heroes, we really mean something that is the very opposite of pride. For it implies that the man thinks that something outside himself is needed to give him great glory; and such a glory is really acknowledged as a gift.” A big problem today is that people think of themselves as the ultimate gift, taking pride in themselves, rather than looking outside themselves to receive the good gifts the good Lord has to bestow upon them.
Searching further and further into our own hearts should eventually lead us to discover the depravity that is in each one of us, and how desperately we need a Savior to save us from our own wickedness every hour. Realizing this leaves no room for victim mentality. What is causing your pain? Are you aware that you are very capable of committing that very crime that pains you? It is only the grace of God that has held back such malice or sin from cultivating in your heart. Pride is ignorance. And it is only ignorance that makes one think they are incapable of committing the most heinous of sins. As Jung stated so well, “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of others.” Similarly, 12th century monk Bernard of Clairvaux insisted that “You will never have real mercy for the failings of another until you know and realize that you have the same failings in your soul.” Solzhenitsyn of all people (Now getting back to his story; I sure can go on tangents can’t I?) emphasized this point greatly. Himself being thrown into prison and treated torturously and unjustly, he writes—not pointing fingers at others, but acknowledging his own sinful heart—that “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart. And who is willing to cut out a piece of his own heart?” This is after eight years under oppressive rule of the guards who tormented political prisoners as himself. Through this Solzhenitsyn recognized human depravity and understood that he was no different from the guards. Indeed, it was through his sufferings in prison that God brought him to the Christian faith, and he saw his own defiance and sin against the holy God who created him, and this allowed no room for self-pity or anger or entitlement, but rather mercy and forgiveness. He dismissed the “pitiful ideology” that men are made for happiness, and insisted instead that our purpose in life is to “develop our souls enough that our principles can withstand even the pressures of a prison camp.” Despite being unjustly imprisoned and tortured each day by sadistic prison guards, Solzhenitsyn reflected upon his own historical wrongdoings and asked himself, “Am I any better?” It is in our ignorant belief that we are any better that we cling to the assumption that we deserve a pain free, happy life. But the belief that making “happiness” the ultimate goal of life Solzhenitsyn discarded as “shallow and misguided,” and insisted rather to “always be prepared for suffering, and make sure you are worthy of your suffering when it comes.” This echoes the apostle Paul is his constant desire to be worthy to share in Christ’s sufferings, and later led Dostoevsky to declare, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” What a difference of aspiration between the cowardess of running from suffering, and the purity of simply longing to be worthy of it.

Most people in the gulags, as are most people today, were not (as Solzhenitsyn put it) “spiritually pure” before entering the gulags, and so became corrupt themselves upon receiving unjust treatment: “Those people became corrupted in camp who had already been corrupted out in freedom. If a person went swiftly bad in camp [i.e. resorting to theft or murder] what it might mean is that inner foulness which had not previously been needed disclosed itself.” The prisoners who became corrupt in camp he further notes were beforehand outwardly “good” to the point of self-righteousness. They were not aware of their capacity for evil. They were not aware that every human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. But assessing Solzhenitsyn’s philosophy, Joseph Pearce writes, “an awareness of your own capacity for evil can be a great motivator to resist further wrongdoing. On the contrary, self-righteousness can be the ultimate corrupting influence. This goes some way to explaining the age-old paradox that the greatest saints believe they are the greatest sinners, while the greatest sinners believe themselves to be saints. According to Solzhenitsyn, those who believe they are free of evil are likely the ones most susceptible to it.” And so seemed to be the case among the majority of the fellow prisoners whom Solzhenitsyn suffered alongside.

I cannot explain how refreshing it is when I come upon someone who agrees with my way of thinking—nonetheless someone whom I admire. This rarely happens in day-to-day life. Typically, I find I have an old soul and ancient mind whose contemporaries have died long ago and I only encounter them in written works. This is evident in my love for all whom I have thus so far previously mentioned: Clairvaux, Calvin, Jung, Dostoevsky, Chesterton, the Old and New Testament writers, and a few others. As I was gathering my thoughts for this essay, I had in mind my proposal of what is indeed a healthy navigation of suffering. I didn’t have many contemporary supporters, as most do not like to hear that suffering is good, needed, and should be accepted. To be sure, of the small handful of people I sought counsel from during my own suffering, I found little wisdom at all. So it was to my great delight when I came upon the aforementioned article analyzing Solzhenitsyn’s life and contemplations that I found I was not alone in my propositions. The author summarizes a great deal of my own thoughts so accurately that I will not try to summarize but simply insert an excerpt here:

“The purpose of life is not worldly riches and the creature comforts they can purchase. Such trinkets can never satisfy the needs of the soul. The purpose of life is to grow in wisdom, to mature into the fullness of what it means to be human. The problem is that most of us are quite happy remaining comfortably numb, wasting our lives on trash and trivia, distracting ourselves to death long before we actually die. We are all in danger of growing old without growing up, which is the greatest tragedy that can beset any of us. It is for this reason that suffering is such a blessing. It brings us to our senses. It is a reality check. It reminds us that we are not gods, that we are not immortal. It cuts us down to size.
Most of us do not need years in prison to come to our senses, as Solzhenitsyn did, though one wonders how much it might do us good. But we do need suffering. We do need sorrows. We do need our crosses to bear.
It is, however, not suffering that sets us free from ourselves and our comfortable numbness but the acceptance of suffering. This is the beginning of wisdom.
If suffering is not accepted it embitters. It twists us. It shrivels us.
In contrast, the acceptance of such sorrow and suffering is liberating. It sets us free. It allows us to grow into the fully human persons we are meant to be. This is why Solzhenitsyn could bless the prison in which he found himself. He did so because prison had set him free.”
(“Solzhenitsyn, Suffering, and the Meaning of Life” by Joseph Pearce)

As refreshing and delightful as this article was for me to read, and how they nearly echoed my own thoughts, the author failed to include one vital observation. Solzhenitsyn was a Christian. He became a Christian in the gulag. His entire philosophy that he adapted stemmed from his faith. Prison had set him free because it was there that he encountered Christ. Whomsoever Christ sets free is free indeed. The true enlightening of Solzhenitsyn’s soul came from his freedom and knowledge of Christ. He knew he was a sinner. He knew he had been freely given the gift of salvation through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and this opened his eyes to the meaning of all that took place in his life; not the least of which included his suffering. It was for this that he was able to say, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”

Being that suffering is not a new epiphany to humanity, nor is its purpose, Solzhenitsyn was certainly not the first man to realize how to accept it with a contrite and humble spirit. Many a saint of the past have come to the same conclusion, praising God in unspeakably difficult circumstances, yet with true joy and hope in their hearts. One such man was Horatio Spafford—an attorney and Presbyterian church elder in the 1800s. A devout, God-fearing man, he was happily married to his wife Anna, and with her had five children. In 1871, the Great Chicago fire consumed his entire law firm and real estate business. Shortly after, his only son died of Scarlet fever at four years old. Two short years later, when his wife and four daughters traveled ahead of him on ship to meet him in England, their ship collided with an iron sailing vessel and disappeared into the waters. All four of his daughters died, leaving his wife alone to await her husband. While en route to join, comfort, and grieve with his wife, Spafford was informed by the ship’s captain of the moment they were crossing over the location of the sunken ship whereupon his daughters died. Upon hearing this, Spafford went to his cabin and wrote the words “It is well; the will of God be done,” which he later evolved into the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul.” In this hymn we not only find immense trust in the Lord during horrific circumstances, but remarkably we find that Spafford—in the nightmare of losing his business and all five of his children—focuses his thoughts on his own debt of sin and the bliss that his debt has been paid by Christ on the cross. Truly, his understanding of sin and of the gospel made all the difference in the world in how he accepted and responded to the suffering in his life. He most surely had a living hope, and rejoiced even when being grieved by various and ongoing trials. How very real the word of God was living and active in him: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Indeed, Spafford’s sufferings and trials resulted in praise and glory and honor to Christ, and—though not easy and coupled with pain—is the beautiful goal we must strive toward as we accept and respond to the trials God sends our way. They are inevitable, but we have been promised hope and deliverance as we seek Christ. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19). His deliverance may not be the removal of the hardship, but His merciful hand that upholds and carries us through it with a peace that surpasses all understanding, attainable no where else but in Him. How Spafford must have known this peace so well. How he must’ve been sincerely able to declare with Paul, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). To attain this belief fully in our hearts is of highest eminence.

Lastly, I want to take a look at one last man who was well acquainted with suffering—one who seemingly had all the reason in the world to give into anger at God, despair, grief, and hopelessness, but instead found in the end that God was his only true and lasting foundation, and his hope in Him expounded in praise and trust and joy as a result of his crushing circumstances. This man’s name was Job.
Job was a righteous and God-fearing man, “blameless and upright, he feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1:1). He had great wealth, good health, a wife, and ten beloved children. Not having any other reason to point accusations at him, we are told in the book of Job that Satan accuses Job of honoring God only because God has greatly blessed him and has always spared him of pain. God allows Satan to take away Job’s wealth and all of his children, and later to afflict Job physically. Though undergoing immense grief and pain—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—Job grieved deeply but did not charge God with wrongdoing: “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (1:22). Rather, Job boldly declared, “Though He slay me, I will trust Him” (13:15). Even when his wife suggested that Job curse God and die, Job responded, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” (2:10). Skeptics are known to reason that an all-powerful and all-good God could not allow suffering in His creation. Even Christians often doubt God’s sovereignty and goodness when life appears cruel and difficult, especially when they believe they are walking up tightly and free of guilt. Job is a case in point that though all suffering springs from the fall of man to disobedience to God, not all specific sorrows fall upon us due to a particular sin in our life (though indeed, as we have discussed, this is often the case), but rather precisely because of our obedience to the Lord. Therefore, as reformed theologian Joel Beeke sustains, “Job is an example of the suffering of the righteous people of God in a world dominated by Satan and full of wicked men. This suffering climaxed in human history in the crucifixion of the righteous Son of God, and the suffering of all the righteous must be seen in light of their union with Him in His death and resurrection.” This last point is vital, taking us back to Philippians chapter three in which Paul reminds us that to know Christ is to share in His sufferings (v. 10). Dostoevsky insisted that “to love is to suffer, and there can be no love otherwise.” Job’s love for God abounded as he was stripped one by one of all his earthly comforts. How can we know the honesty of our love, if loving is always made easy to us? How can we know the genuineness of our faith? Job’s devastating sufferings—from the death of his children and loss of his property to the physical torment he endured—never caused him to lose his faith. He knew who his Redeemer was, he knew that He was a living Savior, and that one day He would stand on the earth and Job would see Him face to face. He understood that man’s days are ordained and numbered, that suffering is both a purifying process from God as well as a call to trust and submission. May it be our prayer that we too, when overcome by pains and trials, declare along with Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last He will stand on the earth. And after my skin has thus been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God; I myself shall see Him, and my eyes shall behold Him” (19:25-27).

What precious examples we have of men who did not flee from nor medicate their sufferings, but received them in faith for the purification of their souls and glory to Christ. What precisely, then, am I suggesting in what I have compiled in probably too many words? I am suggesting, along with Solzhenitsyn, Spafford, Job, Peter, Paul, and many others, that the purpose of suffering is to be conformed to the image of Christ; that it should be received and accepted, not avoided and medicated. That suffering is, in fact, good for us. That without it, we would not mature, but rather be consumed in our depravity. That we are to “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:3-5). That rather than searching for an escape from pain and sorrow, or for a superficial coping tool to drown out the pain, we would be better allowing our suffering to shape us, purify us, cultivate wisdom and good character within us, experiencing for ourselves that “just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:5). To ultimately set our hope in the Lord and in the life to come, looking to Him as our refuge and strength, knowing that we are not on this earth for comfort and mere pleasure, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds to the image of Christ—which brings the truest joy and comfort and pleasure that most do not know of.
And what about, you may ask, not only immediate trials, but the painful and traumatic memories that darken our days and we can’t seem to erase? What do we do with these? I am suggesting we feel them! That we allow them to shape us, mature is, grow us in our understanding of the human condition and the depravity and sin and weakness that is in us all; to humble us and instill gratitude in us; to lead us to seek comfort in Christ alone, and to comfort others with the very real comfort which we receive from Him. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). This is a very beautiful reality.
As I am navigating this very process myself—living with very painful memories that seem to be ingrained in the front of my mind against every power of my will—I have come to agree with Jung when he said, “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” How can we be admirable or have anything to offer if all we ever experience is comfort and ease and pleasant feelings? Aren’t the people we look up to most the ones who have endured unspeakable difficulties and have come out better for it? Don’t we live more full and grateful—indeed substantial—lives when we know both darkness and light, pain and joy, sorrow and happiness? I can now live with a present pain in my heart, yet not despair, but have even more joy and gratitude in the Lord, knowing the depth of my own sin, the grace I’ve been shown, the abundant joy in Christ, and the hope that is to come.
At the forefront of our minds we must always have a remembrance that this world is not our home, but we have a lasting home that we look to as we walk as pilgrims here, clinging to our Savior. He is our God, our Guide, and our Hope. He Himself is our purpose. He Himself is our peace. He Himself will “perfect, restore, strengthen, and establish us.” May we never neglect the reality that “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast” (Hebrews 6:19). Without this hope, I don’t have much to offer. With it, I have a world of treasure.

~

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life,
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

But Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
A song in the night, oh my soul!

(Horatio Spafford, 1873)