Quotes about Suffering

Whenever anyone tells you that coronavirus means that God is calling people—perhaps you!—to repent, tell them to read Job. The whole point is that that is not the point.

Jesus's followers themselves were to be given a new kind of task. The Great Jailer had been overpowered; now someone had to go and unlock the prison doors. Forgiveness of sins had been accomplished, robbing the idols of their power; someone had to go and announce the amnesty to "sinners" far and wide. And this had to be done by means of the new sort of power: the cross-resurrection-Spirit kind of power. The power of suffering love.

Jesus had been raised from the dead; therefore, he really was Israel's Messiah; therefore his death really was the new Passover; his death really had dealt with the sins that had caused "exile" in the first place; and this had been accomplished by Jesus's sharing and bearing the full weight of evil, and doing so alone. In his suffering and death, "Sin" was condemned. The darkest of dark powers was defeated, and its captives were set free.

The idea that "suffering is good for you, therefore you need to put up with the conditions we are laying upon you" is at best callous and patronizing. At worst it is unpardonable and abusive. Jesus himself, warning that suffering was bound to come, pronounced a solemn woe on the person through whom it came (Matt. 18:7). Life will throw quite enough problems at us without the church adding more while telling us sanctimoniously that it's good for us.

But if the "servant" is indeed the "arm of YHWH" under the guise of a suffering, bruised, and unrecognizable Israelite, then a new possibility emerges at the heart of Romans 3:21—26. The primary fault of the human race, according to Romans 1, is idolatry. The primary response, from the one God himself, is to "put forth" the Messiah as the place of meeting, the ultimate revelation of the divine righteousness and love.

Love and grief are very close, especially in warm, passionate hearts. Saul shrank from neither. He wrote constantly of love—divine love, human love, "the Messiah's love." And he constantly suffered the grief that went with

We expect God to be, as we might say, 'in charge': taking control, sorting things out, getting things done. But the God we see in Jesus is the God who wept at the tomb of his friend. The God we see in Jesus is the God-the-Spirit who groans without words. The God we see in Jesus is the one who, to demonstrate what his kind of 'being in charge' would look like, did the job of a slave and washed his disciples' feet.

Suffering and dying is the way by which the world is changed. This is how the revolution continues.

It is a tragedy to see the medical profession move from suicide prevention to suicide facilitation. The right-to-die movement presents euthanasia as compassionate. But disparaging human life as expendable is not compassionate. The term 'compassion' literally means 'to suffer with' (com=with, passion=suffer). True compassion means being willing to suffer on behalf of others, loving them enough to bear the burden of caring for them.

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.

But it also crossed my mind that in spite of all, in spite of our fragility and ignorance, we have an incredible advantage over the stars — it is for us that time works, giving us a major opportunity to transform the suffering, aching world into a happy and peaceful one.

Everything is hypothetical in hell.