Suffering is interwoven with the tapestry of life. It’s hard to appreciate the picture without seeing suffering as a complementary shading or outline. Remove one single strand of suffering and likely nothing changes in your tapestry or life. You probably couldn’t tell the difference in the picture. Remove all the strands of suffering from your tapestry, and the image on the tapestry is distorted beyond recognition leaving the wall-hanging in shreds. What once was beautiful is now ruined.
Suffering, some believe, plays a significant role in character development. We are who we are because of the fires that we endure. Once you remove something from your life, for good or for ill, those experiences no longer shape you. Something else does. Who’s to say but that that “something else” would be better than what the suffering produced?
An urban legend tells the story of a man who stumbled upon a chrysalis in which a caterpillar was beginning to break itself from a chrysalis to emerge as a butterfly. He watched the process unfold as the creature struggled and painfully broke free from the chrysalis. The creature anguished over the process of breaking free. The newly born butterfly finally found its freedom and majestically flew away with the beautiful colors on its wings. The man found a second chrysalis and couldn’t bear to rewatch the struggle. So, he pulled out a knife and cut some slits in the shell-casing so that the butterfly could easily emerge, devoid of all the painful struggle. To his horror, what emerged was a disformed creature unable to survive outside of the chrysalis. It died shortly thereafter. Part of the struggle to break free gives the butterfly its strength and beauty.
While I am no Entomologist, apparently a lot of truth is wrapped up in this story. In the struggle the butterfly’s body releases certain chemicals to its body giving it the beautiful wings and strength to survive outside the chrysalis. The message is clear in that pain and suffering help create strength and beauty, not only in the butterfly, but also within us. If we want to embrace the transformed beauty, then we must also embrace the pain and suffering that helps form our beauty.
Western thought, particularly in America, struggle with the theology and praxis of the enduring pain and suffering. We tend to avoid any discomfort by looking for alternative approaches. We medicate or self-medicate. We throw ourselves into entertainment or leisure just to escape reality, even for a moment. We marvel at our grandparents or great grandparents when we hear their stories of the Great Depression, or how the Jews endured the horror of the holocaust and the concentration camps, which is beyond our ability to comprehend.
A mindset of avoiding pain and suffering eventually undermines a healthy theology for pain and suffering. God is directly linked to the source because we fundamentally believe good things happen to good people, while bad things happen to bad people. Suffering, then, is the result of bad choices or being a bad person. If you experience pain and suffering, then the supposed reason is that you have, at worse, done something wrong in your life and now you are being punished for it, or at best, you are being taught a life-lesson. Good luck trying to find an answer to the lesson you’re being taught. The problem, of course, is that Job’s friends used that same argument to accuse him of a secret sin. In the end God was not buying what they were selling.
So maybe pain and suffering are linked to sin and are used to punish us. Maybe, but not always. And maybe pain and suffering are acting like a schoolteacher teaching us a valuable lesson on life. Again, maybe, but not always, and what’s the lesson to learn? Maybe pain and suffering are developing character within us. Sure, as long as we are willing participants. Or again, maybe dark forces are at work in this world, and we are the pawns and casualties of their overreach. Possibly, and sometimes likely. And sometimes God is inviting us into a participation of Christ’s sufferings, for as both Paul and Peter both state, if we get to share in the glory of Christ, then we get to share in his sufferings as well (Rom 8:17; 1 Pet. 4:13).
Stick a pin in that thought as we will come back to it . . .
In 2 Corinthians 4:10-12 Paul oscillates between death and life when he says,
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death . . . so then death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
Something is going on with death, while at the same time something is happening in life. Those two concepts are working together in tandem, not necessarily working against each other.
Focusing on the word death, our English translations provide only one possible generic understanding while the Greek has two words to signify two meanings. The difference is nuanced. The first Greek word for death is Thanos, a word made popular in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the villain in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. With the Infinity Gauntlet holding the Infinity Stones, Thanos snaps his finger to kill half the population of the universe. He is appropriately named. Thanos, or Thanotos, appears in Romans 6 when Paul talks about dying to sin. It’s a specific point in time like when our nurses call a Time of Death.
The other Greek word is Nekros, a word given to a James Bond henchmen and assassin in the movie, The Living Daylights. Nekros, in the Greek, sets itself apart from Thanos, as the process of dying. Instead of a specific point in time, Nekros is a duration of time. To say it another way, my mother died (thanos) on July 5, 2024, but looking back it was clear she was dying (nekros) since March when her health started declining. Thus, in our hospice ministry, while we engage our patients in death, far more times it is in Nekros than it is in Thanos.
Come back to that pin as the analogy embraces suffering.
Imagine for a moment stepping into the first century and providing care while your loved one is dying. Morphine and Ativan are centuries away from being discovered. Water downed alcohol is available though not always effective as a numbing agent, while certain narcotics were known and used, but not for the general public. No effective means existed to manage pain or numb the body. Your loved one is transitioning, and instead of a quiet peaceful dying process, it is filled with moaning from pain and fear for what is happening. Through death your loved one is suffering. And that is Paul’s point.
Paul roots everything in Jesus. Here it is no different. The death he speaks about is his participation in the death of Jesus. Yes, the apostle will eventually be executed, but that is not the death he has in mind. He views the sufferings that he endures as his participation in the sufferings of Jesus, and to that end he dies a little every day. The phrase, “. . . we are being handed over to death” (v. 11) sounds eerily like the gospels description, “they handed (Jesus) over to be crucified.” The life, then, is not about Jesus’ thirty years on the earth, but about his resurrected life. The suffering and death Jesus experienced was never the end of the story, but a way to demonstrate that life is lived beyond suffering and death. Therein lies the hope and beauty found in suffering. Paul may die a little every day, but Paul endures suffering in order to model a resurrected life. Said another way, “I am suffering, but I am still here with you, and I remain here until that day when God calls me home.”
As hospice employees, we live in a context of death, both in Thanos and in Nekros forms. How we deal with the suffering that comes with death speaks to both who we are and the faith we hold dear. Sometimes we succeed. Other times, we fail.
I remember visiting a church leader in the hospital. While the hospital staff did their best to serve him, he was a difficult patient to deal with. He was “that patient,” being rude to the staff by making one derogatory statement after another. He demeaned the nurses and demanded immediate attention and satisfaction. Honestly, I was embarrassed by his behavior. I believe his family was too. For while he was suffering, he sucked the life out of everyone who entered his room. I’m sure they were glad to see him discharged.
Over the years, my mother and I had many heart-to-heart conversations, and one of those was how she approached suffering, especially if she had to enter the hospital. In short, mom tried her hardest to avoid being “that patient.” She painted a smile on her face, even when she felt like weeping. She raised the pitch of her voice to compensate for the depression she felt. She thanked the nurses and staff, often befriending them. Mom could often be a difficult person to deal with, but she also wanted to represent Jesus in the best possible light for people who might never meet him otherwise. Thus, she breathed life into her context of nekros until the day God brought her to thanos.
Pain and suffering help create strength and beauty within us. If we want to embrace the transformed beauty, then we must also embrace the pain and suffering that helps form our beauty. For if we want to experience life, then we must also endure death. How we do so speaks volumes to who we are and to our faith.
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)