Happy We Hurt?!

Thirty-eight years ago I heard black evangelist G. P. Holt say words about the origin of the Bible that remain lodged in my brain until this day. Brother Holt said, "The devil wouldn’t write the Bible if he could, man couldn’t write the Bible if he would, and so God wrote it." I love it! Profoundly simple but simply profound! I’ve thought about those words many, many times over the years. The Bible is unlike any other book or compilation of wisdom and teaching mankind has ever seen, bar none. It’s wisdom is "other worldly." To borrow words from the apostle Paul, "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Corinthians 3:19a). God just doesn’t think about and see things the same way humans often do. The Lord made that truth crystal clear in Isaiah 55:8-9 where the Bible declares: " ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.’ " One particularly striking example of how God’s thinking is different from ours is in the way He thinks and speaks about hurt and pain. The human perspective is narrow and negative. Almost all of us almost always see any pain as altogether bad. We don’t like to hurt. We don’t like headaches or "heartaches" or backaches or earaches or "tummy-aches" or any other kinds of aches! If you’ve ever had any of these you know why! Pain is . . . well, painful! It hurts. We don’t feel good when we hurt, and it’s difficult to ever see any good in it. We are trained to avoid pain. And if not avoid it, relieve it. And if not relieve it, manage it. Take a pill, see a doctor, undergo a procedure, take a medication. But get rid of the pain!

How different, then, to read from the Bible in Romans 5:3-4: "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope." This passage does what other New Testament passages do – it strings together and places in close proximity words our human brains don’t normally think of as belonging in the same sentence. Really now, who in their right mind "glories" or boasts about "tribulations" (pressures, pain, problems, etc.)?! I didn’t say who doesn’t talk about them. Ask some people, "How are you?" and they will tell you, and tell you, and tell you! As Franklin P. Jones said, "Untold suffering seldom is." But most people don’t boast about burdens and they aren’t happy because they hurt. How diffferent, then, to hear Paul’s words. Verse 3 in the Easy to Read Version is clear – "We are also happy with the troubles we have." Note carefully, not happy to be in pain. But happy, as the passage makes clear, because tribulation and trouble can be productive! They can produce things like perseverance, character, and hope. Now friends, I’m not a hypcohondriac, and I’m not asking anyone to act like some folks who don’t feel good unless they feel bad. I’m just reminding us that spiritual muscles are like physical ones – if there is no pain, it is almost certain there will be no gain. Peter wrote that Jesus "suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). The cross is God’s reminder that pain can be redemptive. Hurts help us if they cause us to come and stay closer to God. You can be happy about that.

Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN