Pain and joy part 2: The role of pain in a broken world

Christians have a strange relationship with issues of pain.  No one enjoys it, of course, but there are some who believe that all painful and difficult things are a sign the devil is trying to attack us and trip us up, while others view it as testing from God.  And honestly, from a biblical standpoint...it's hard to say either are completely wrong.  But what I want to talk about is expanding our view of this, so that we can see the bigger picture God is working on in us through our life experiences.

Let's start at the beginning, to the time before the world saw the introduction of sin and death: God created the world, He created it in perfection, and He created Adam and set him about the task of naming and ordering the entire world. In other words, man was given to the role of being dedicated to hard work long before the fall; it was God's intention for this to be the way we are.  Likewise: when God created Eve, Adam immediately knew that unlike all the animals he had spent God only knows how much time seeing and naming, this one was for him, to the point where he had the reaction that continues to be men's natural reaction to seeing something beautiful: he sang a song about her.  And in bringing them together, God blessed them and told them "Be fruitful and multiply."  So God gives Eve a very unique gift: she and Adam are one, and she can bear children.

Don't misread me here: this isn't some kind of "And that's why women should stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" line, because that's not what I'm saying: my point is about the fact that things we do like going to work, pursuing dreams of building things, and desiring to get married and start families are things that God built into our very beings from the very beginning of creation.  And it is into this that sin brings the greatest fractures and destruction when it appears.

Pain enters the scene in the Bible in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve have sinned, eaten the fruit of the tree in the garden that God had told them not to, and as punishment God cursed them.  He didn't kill them--the first act of grace--but He did bring punishment upon both of them, relating to the roles God had given them in the world.  Eve's curse was pain in family and relationships:

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,    and he will rule over you.”--Genesis 3:16

God had gifted them with procreation, the ability to create new life, and in their state of perfection having children would have presumably been an utterly joyous moment* especially in the knowledge that they, as people created in the image of God, are bringing a new person who will be just as much a unique image of their Creator into the world.  Of course, any parent can tell you that certainly, giving birth is always an occasion filled with joy...and any mom will tell you, it is filled with a lot of pain.  More, perhaps, than the average person might consider reasonable, but there you have it.

In that pain, God is giving a signal: "Here comes something that is broken."  That may seem harsh, and I can tell you...I love babies, man.  They're the best.  You give me a baby and I can just sit there and play with him forever and not be bored, because to me it's funny to just watch how everything in the world is absolutely fascinating to them.  But at the same time, any parent, anywhere, will not disagree with this fact: a baby is the most selfish creature on the face of the planet.  It wants what it wants, when it wants it, and if it doesn't get it, well, you're gonna hear about it.  God is saying "Along with this joy, comes difficulty: you have the blessing of raising offspring, of seeing new life from your life grow and mature, but you are going to experience battle after battle along the way."

Adam's curse is on the task God had set before him: instead of a world he is the ruler over being cooperative and unified in desire to obey God's great will, now just as Adam rebelled against God now nature rebels against him:

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”--Genesis 3:17-19

Adam will still work.  He will organize, plant, grow, and eat the fruit of his labor.  But instead of that work being full of the unadulterated joy that comes with oneness with God's purpose, Adam reaps what he's sown: weeds choke out crops; insects, disease and weather attack everything that he's done to feed his family.  And even as we've left the rural life, moved mostly into cities and working in offices, stores, and other places strife and turmoil of various kinds follows.  We work hard to make the best life we can for our families, but debt consumes a large portion of that.  We put in as much time as we can, but the fear of missing out on the lives out our children and growing apart from our spouse presses on us.  And of course, the same troubles of disease and disaster plague us, no matter where or how we live.

And as we go into this, as we fear it coming, as we escape from the latest cycle of frustration and loss, we often find ourselves asking the same question: why?  What are we supposed to be getting out of this?

Probably the best word I've heard used to describe what we get out of the trials of life--if we're listening to God, that is--is brokenness.  We've all heard the phrase "pride goeth before a fall," which is an abbreviation of Proverbs 16:18: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."  It's a basic idea most people subscribe to in one way or another as being true, and yet we live in such a way that shows that in our heart of hearts, pride is absolutely a central part of our lives.  We believe that we're good, we're strong, we're smart, and we're capable of getting whatever we want out of life.  We believe that we control our own destinies and that we can be good enough to please God (or whatever version of God we conceive of as pleasing to our whims).  Brokenness, in contrast, is the knowledge that we are not able to achieve what we really want, what we really need to be--which is, to be righteous.  A man is broken when he sees his failures and owns them, and cannot blame another.  But this is not a broken in the sense of "lost."  God breaks us, so that He might put us back together the way we are supposed to be.

“And you said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire.  This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live.  Now therefore why should we die?  For this great fire will consume us.  If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die....”--Deuteronomy 5:24-25

God took this rebellious, thick-headed bunch of Israelites out of Egypt and spent 40 long, arduous years breaking them: of their attachment to the lives they had as slaves in Egypt, of self-worship and desire for nothing more than a full belly, and makes them His own people.  And when He speaks to them...He scares the hell out of them.  The closer the Israelites get to God for real, the more fear rules over them, because in His presence the incredible reality of their own inadequacies, their sinfulness, their total unworthiness comes to the surface.  It's the reason the prophet Isaiah falls to his face as though he's dead in his vision of the throne of heaven: he knows how incredibly unworthy on his own he is to be in God's presence.


Brokenness is God’s design for us—it is the true, right view of ourselves and God.  “Humility” is a part of it, but not the extent of it.  Brokenness teaches us both our own innate sinfulness, and God’s great holiness, both convicting and uplifting.  I want to borrow some words of wisdom from the "prince of preachers," Charles Spurgeon, that I ran across in doing devotions while working on this:

God’s great design in all His works is the manifestation of His own glory.  Any aim less than this were unworthy of Himself.  But how shall the glory of God be manifested to such fallen creatures as we are?  Man’s eye is not single, he has ever a side glance towards his own honor, has too high an estimate of his own powers, and so is not qualified to behold the glory of the Lord.  It is clear, then, that self must stand out of the way, that there may be room for God to be exalted; and this is the reason why he bringeth his people ofttimes into straits and difficulties, that, being made conscious of their own folly and weakness, they may be fitted to behold the majesty of God when he comes forth to work their deliverance.  He whose life is one even and smooth path, will see but little of the glory of the Lord, for he has few occasions of self-emptying, and hence, but little fitness for being filled with the revelation of God.  They who navigate little streams and shallow creeks, know but little of the God of tempests; but they who do business in great waters, these see his wonders in the deep.

This is why Jesus came walking out to the disciples on the boat while the sea was rough and bad weather was around them; this is why Jesus slept peacefully as the disciples panicked in that boat; this is why Jesus’ parable of the two houses, one built on rock and the other on sand, makes it clear that both houses are hit by the storm.  Jesus desires us to understand that that storm will come, in one form or another, and we all walk through it.  It is not avoiding the storm that God promises, but rather than in passing through it we have a better understanding of who God is and what our relationship with Him is about.  

God allows pain to enter our life to break us of our views of self as good enough, smart enough, able enough. He has given us the capacity and indeed the drive to make plans and build, but He will only endorse His plans and designs. All other things, He either disrupts or allows to continue just long enough to show their futility, and in the process, forms us into a stronger, holier, more Christ-like people. The enemy has his owns designs for these troubles, disruptions, and problems that invade our lives: he desires to drive us to despair, to anxiety, to fear God and/or be angry with Him. God’s plan is to wrest our hands from the controls of life and lead us to trust Him.

Next time: God uses pain to show us that we are not in control.

*I'm not saying that pain as an idea or a sensation didn't exist; after all the verse says that the pains will increase greatly, implying that before it would be much milder.  But I don't want to get bogged down in semantics here or speculation about specifics we probably won't know until we reach a time that blog posts like this are utterly silly in the face of being able to truly know God in a way unimaginable to us today.