Thread by @jonpyle

The magnitude of suffering MANY MANY families are experiencing right now is just overwhelming.

Buffering = when videos pause because they haven’t fully loaded yet. My grief is buffering right now.

The burden of pain, for myself, for my people and for everyone really, is so substantial that it’s stuck. It can’t process.

And I feel a creeping dread. Because I know the video has to keep playing sometime. And I don’t want to experience a lot of what is next. Heavy.

Perspective: our current suffering now somewhat resembles the suffering much of the world has endured every day for their whole lives... although for many in the non-Western world, it’s probably gotten worse.

The tide of pain is rising, overtaking the elevated shores of comfort and privilege that our forefathers painstakingly built and maintained. Often at the expense or directly on the backs of those deemed beneath us.

I don’t believe this is a judgment from God. I don’t believe we’re being punished for our sins or our parents’ sins. Suffering is simply a part of life that afflicts all.

But when you build your culture and pledge your life to constructing a society that’s sole purpose is to provide a comfortable existence, the inevitability of suffering FEELS like a reckoning.

Experiencing the anguish, far too familiar to the mothers of Liberia and the children of Kyrgyzstan, seems like a harsh rebuke from God. When in reality it is merely suffering, as inevitable as death, catching up.

And the vast majority of churches in America are WHOLLY unqualified to credibly speak to the grief their people are experiencing. Completely devoid of a useful theology of suffering.

People need a safe place to suffer.

A community where they are seen, loved and embraced while they navigate the “messy middle” part of their testimony.

Not forced beyond it. Not fed empty platitudes that fail in comparison to the depth of pain inside. Simply a place to hurt.

As followers of Jesus, we love the end of the triumphant testimony. After all, Jesus (and His infinite love and grace) will win. We are obsessed with the win.

So much so that we manufacture happy endings at the expense of the absolutely necessary, awful and holy suffering.

We can’t skip the suffering. Suffering isn’t just buffering. We can’t wait for the whole video to load and fast forward to the end where we get the perfect ending with a pretty bow. Life doesn’t work like that. We have to experience the transformative pain to shape us.

This is what James meant when he wrote “consider it pure joy...” about suffering.

So... followers of Jesus, now is when we can develop and live out a robust theology of suffering to help guide people in the midst of their darkness, doubt and despair.

We have to! The only other option is to choose irrelevance and death.

The Church ain’t gonna die, but many churches will cease to exist. Not because they didn’t believe enough or pray enough or preach enough or read the Bible enough.

But because in the face of incalculable misery, they were weighed in the balance and found wanting.

This morning I read about Jesus and Lazarus. And the famous verse “Jesus wept”.

Even though Jesus knew He would raise Lazarus from the dead... He wept. Jesus knew it wasn’t the end, yet He wept.

Jesus wasn’t hopeless. His tears were not in opposition to hope, but rather an acknowledgement of the pain. Experiencing grief is part of the journey to hope.

Jesus saw the suffering of Lazarus’ sisters (and His good friends) Mary and Martha. Instead of immediately saying “don’t worry, I’m gonna raise your brother from the dead,” Jesus participated in their pain. He gave them a safe place to suffer. That is love.