Most people use suffering as an excuse not to believe in God because modern religion has told them that if suffering exists, God is indifferent, cruel or evil. At best, many find solace in believing that He will bring good out of it so they should "praise Him in the storm".... But, what if it goes sooooo much deeper than this!?

Happy July, Reader!

This may sound like a weighty topic for the middle of summer, but unfortunately it seems this topic is resonating lately.

I was talking to Brian Fisher from Soil and Roots the other day about Suffering and he said he had been exploring it in depth recently because somehow He is certain it must be "a critical piece of our discipleship journey". Emily P. Freeman, a wildly successful Christian podcaster, author, and co-founder of Hope*Writers, called June "tearful" in her latest email, hinted at severe "post-professional success burnout", and explained how Summer is "not exempt from the regular pains and griefs of our lives". Sterling Jaquith's latest podcast episode is "4 Ways to Deal with Heavy Crosses" and her Painful Marriage Hope course begins in just a few days.

Is it just me, or is the universe conspiring to tell us something?

Maybe its just that somewhere in our heads Summer promises rest and freedom from the everyday weight of our lives... and then when we actually arrive and realize that nothing changed except for the fact that now we (might) have slightly less to distract us from the pain, it is a rather rude awakening.

With the advent "modernism" in the Church, we have all been told that there is "no difference" from the past and that the only things that have changed were the dropping of some "superfluous bells and whistles" and the language (Latin to English), but this could not be further from the truth.

​Traditional religion focused on experiencing suffering as a means to grow closer to God, recognizing suffering as His call to intimacy with Him, and our opportunity to "die with Christ that we may also live with Him" (2 Timothy 2:11). It is an invaluable means allowed by God to "refine us" and "conform us to His image". Not something to be considered an obstacle to the Christian life, suffering is the Christian opportunity to fulfill our ultimate calling. The Cross is not optional, nor only experienced by the "less fortunate", but rather, precisely what we most need in order to become who we are meant to be.

The Modern Church on the other hand has sought to "focus on the positives", choose joy, and believe that God is working something better than our plans. All our efforts focus on alleviating suffering, escaping suffering, or, at best, waiting it out for the "promise" of future joys to come. There is nothing wrong with any of this. It is critical to be generous with the less fortunate, trust that God is doing bigger things, and learn to smile through the pain, but the biggest and most problematic shift has come in our attitude toward suffering as evil.

Why else do we call it "the problem of suffering"?

From the "old church" to the "new" we have experienced a fundamental shift in our understanding of the nature of God.

God does not exist to make us happy in this life. 🤯 He does not need us, and we do not need to be happy here in order to love God and recognize how desperately good He is. I know it sounds contradictory, but "GOOD" is not the same as comfortable/cozy/easy. God made us because He wants us to have the opportunity to come to desire Him the same way that He desires us.

He desires to bring all of us to Himself (John 12:32)... and sometimes this looks like suffering.

Maybe we suffer because:

• We need to learn that we do not need everything we think we do. It teaches us detachment and helps channel our desires.
• It forces us to recognize that we need God
• It reminds us that this life is not heaven, so we shouldn't get too comfortable here
• It makes us desire heaven more (by reminding us that that we weren't made for this life)
• When we experience reprieve, it shows us that God is capable of miracles and healing
• When we don't experience reprieve, it reminds us that we don't need a miracle as much as we need Him.
• It makes us more compassionate and caring and increases our capacity for joy.
• It provides plentiful fodder for intimacy, imitation, offering and reparation.

Religion (among other things) is an indispensable tool to help us give suffering value.

When Christ's sacrifice on the Cross conquered evil and gave purpose and value to pain, then our suffering too, in imitation of Him, gained the potential to conquer evil when united to His own (formally, in the "Holy Sacrifice"). This is how the suffering of the first Christian martyrs affected so many conversions in the early Church. Our suffering could continue to do the same today if we re-learned to embrace it, and leverage it, rather than running from it, wishing it away, or just waiting for it all to be "turned to joy".

In the Modern church, we have lost the purpose of Religion. We think it's all about us doing God a favor somehow, when we couldn't be more mistaken. We don't want to believe that suffering may not be as bad as it feels. We think that somehow we've "advanced past" the need for a God on the Cross and a Religion that talked about suffering. We prefer to focus on the sunshine and Easter lilies, but all that has left us with is unendurable pain that has no value, and ultimately poses a "problem" to our faith. It doesn't matter how much stuff we have, how much modern medicine advances, nor how much more sanitary and comfortable our lives have become, we can never truly escape the Cross.

And He designed it that way....

Because the Cross is where we find Him.

Ah, my friend, we fear the Cross, but there is SO MUCH BEAUTY HERE. We need a perspective shift, a reminder, a reawakening. We need to remember why we do what we do, and what we are here for.

It all boils down to LOVE. Love of God and love of neighbor... in this is contained the entirety of the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:40)

And there is no greater love then for a man to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). (Be mature here, "man" means everyone, not just males)

We will know we are on the right track when the Cross no longer feels like pain, it feels like love.

This is why we need Religion.

We cannot arrive to this relationship with the Cross on our own. We cannot simply choose that kind of love without grace. We cannot get that kind of Grace without Religion. This is the way God designed it.... Are we willing to accept Him as the Way? and accept that His ways are good?

Religion isn't about which service we attend on Sundays, its about what gives me the tools to pursue God on this deep, visceral level. It is about what transforms the ordinary days of my week also into a meaningful and active pursuit of God, and it provides me the actual means I need to make progress, not just rousing music on the weekend that "pumps me up" only to leave me to fight and work alone through all the ordinary mundane. It's not about maintaining where we are, but actively getting closer. There is no complacency with God. It is pursuit or slipping away. Our hearts desire heaven, but if we do not fill them with God, they will do anything they can to fill themselves with everything else.

PS. I realize that this email is painfully non-explicit, lacking proofs, examples nd explanations, but its already long and if I let myself get carried away, I will write a whole other book!!! This topic is so deep and rich that I will continue writing about it until I die without running out of material, but meanwhile, I invite you to use all the spots where you feel the need to scratch your head and raise an eyebrow in confusion or disbelief as opportunities to contemplate, to question, and to seek your own answers. You might be surprised what you discover.

Meanwhile, If your Summer is proving to be more challenging/painful than you hoped...

I invite you to click any of the article links above to dive deeper into this topic or check out either of the longer form works I've already published on this:

We all have the Cross, I will offer my July that you gain the strength to bear yours well.

Always,

<3