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Suffering is
the universal human experience but a theology of suffering is strangely lacking
in evangelical theology. Some of the reason for this may be that suffering is
not understood or accepted in Western culture. It rarely is seen to have any
redemptive purpose and our technological agenda means we continually strive to
eradicate any trace of it. We'll simply invent another device to overcome any
limitation, including, if you are the great baseball player Ted Williams, death
itself if cryogenics holds any promise. So, Western Christians are immersed in
a world that pursues pleasure while looking away from pain and one can't help
wondering if that orientation guides theological thought. It certainly seems to
have done so in lots of popular theology – health and wealth, purpose driven
life, even the fixation on sexual sins to the virtual exclusion of social
justice. Much preaching, too has devolved to therapeutic self-help, how to have
a better life. Other than the occasional sermon on 'why bad things happen to
good people' I can't remember any sermon on a serious study of suffering, other
than the one I preached in Africa,where one is confronted with human suffering
of unrelenting proportions.
In the absence
of a comprehensive theology of suffering, Christians are left to their own
devices to somehow reconcile God's goodness and power. Some of course, lose
faith. Here in the west we tend to spend a lot of effort on 'why?' which is not
far from the question put to Jesus, 'Who sinned?' But Jesus didn't go there.
Sudanese Christians often take a more fatalistic view, akin to their Muslim
neighbours, that God willed it so, and leave it at that. Rwandan Christians
that I spoke to following the 1994 genocide were sure that God loved them
enough to be correcting them for their laxity. That was a hard sell to a
Western missionary. I think we can notice two things: that there are a variety
of somewhat conflicting ways Christians use to make sense of suffering and
those responses often seem to be as culturally conditioned as they are rooted
in Biblical revelation.
You might think
that pastoral training would take some pains to explore a theology of
suffering, but not so. It is possible to get through a complete theological
curriculum without ever encountering the issue and I daresay, many students do
just that. The last systematic theology book I purchased, by Millard Erickson
while recognizing social sin, lists the effects of sin on the sinner as, “ enslavement,
flight from reality, denial of sin, self-deceit, insensitivity,
self-centeredness and restlessness.” Obviously suffering is at least entailed
in all these consequences but suffering itself is not explored as part of the
human condition. Western theology has been much more interested in the forensic
aspects of the fall and redemption than affective aspects. The only place where
suffering appears in Erickson's index is in “suffering as part of our union
with Christ.” To be sure, such suffering is real. But only considering
suffering at that juncture omits the redemptive role suffering plays in
bringing people to Christ and overlooks that Christ has redeemed suffering, too
as sinners witness Christian fortitude and come to faith.
Thanks Doug for a great article.
ReplyDeleteDon Rogers