Nobody likes to suffer. Suffering is painful. However suffering is sometimes preferable to the alternative. And sometimes suffering is the only way for things to be better. Consider the person for example whose appendix has burst. His stomach must be cut open and his insides cleaned or else, in short order, his entire body will become septic and his life force completely ebb. A little painful surgery prevents death, and in a similar fashion oftentimes a little suffering in life prevent the death of the soul. Years ago a religion teacher once spoke that the worst trial one could endure was a life of no trials. Consider Job, whose life at the onset of his story seems to be one of nonstop merriment. His friends, so attuned to his success, conclude when God allows the devil to cause Job to suffer that Job must have deserved it. The real interesting thing about Job’s story is that God allowed Job to suffer so that He could make Job greater in the end than he was in the beginning. We ought not then pity any man who suffers, particularly a great man who endures trials. Obviously the universe considers some men worth building or it would not try to break them down.
Naturally, the presumption for a man who is suffering is that there is something wrong with him. When I recount stories from my life, people sometimes recoil, assuming that to draw near to me might mean that the lightning bolts of trial might strike them too by association. However, suffering might not mean there is anything wrong at all. Pests are not attracted to things that are already spoiled. Consider “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” which depicts an honest, forthright, and humble man thrust into the public sphere of Congress who does absolutely nothing to earn the spite and ire of his compatriots but who attracts their constant campaign of character assassination, not because he is evil, but precisely because he is so virtuous. Yes, trials often follow the wicked. It is often by the wicked that the wicked are punished, but the virtuous also make themselves a target by living righteousy. Sir Thomas More wrote to his daughter Margaret that sometimes we must stand fast in our virtue at the risk of being heroes. Shortly thereafter King Henry VIII cut off More’s head because More refused to accede to his edict and permit a divorce so that Henry could marry Anne.
In order to build something up, sometimes you must break it down. Likewise, the human body takes in materials and breaks them down in order to build itself up. We don’t need celery or cereal or crab legs, but our bodies break down our food into constituents and then reassembles the contents to build things it needs. If you want to strengthen your muscles, you must tear them lifting weights in order to convince your body to build your body for future lifting requirements. Seeds either must be submerged beneath soil or pass through a digestive track and be buried in manure in order to grow. In 2014 at Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park, a ranger told me that they realized that putting out fires was reducing the sequoia groves. In order for the new trees to seed and have fertile soil wildfires must rage and pave the way for a new generation of saplings. None of these are particularly pleasant pictures, but the prospect of growth only occurs under those conditions. Something must be broken before something better can be built.
Why do good men suffer? Why does God allow it? It’s actually a very simple but profound situation. There are many wonderful and decent people in the world. All of them are relevant. Without the average individual, there is not enough for the renowned to flourish, but many people, however relevant, are redundant. The failures are remembered because they tried, the victors are remembered because of their achievements, but the vast majority of people are forgotten amongst the throngs of average. When someone capable of rising above the background noise is born, the world, the universe or the Master elect to offer them a chance to rise up and rise above. Many of these people come from inauspicious circumstances. Joan of Arc was a teenage farm girl. Bailien of Ibelin was a blacksmith in English France. Simon Peter was a fisherman. Abraham Lincoln was so poor he had to borrow books to read at home because his parents could afford none. Yet, we know these names because these people did something with their lives. We also know Henry Tudor (Henry VIII) and Adolf Hitler and Ghenghis Khan and Marcus Brutus and Hernando Cortez because they also did something, something terrible.
The process seems simple. Difficult circumstances arise that invite a man to choose. Often the choices are simple. Sometimes they cut right to the character of the person. In that moment of choice, the man commits to a life path that irrevocably leads to a rendezvous with destiny. They were available and capable, and so the universe affords them a time for choosing. The process tests the commitment of their mettle, the steel of their convictions, the disposition of their specie, the application of their chiasmata. With each choice, the man commits deeper and deeper to his actual eternal disposition and a character is born. When the character’s casting call comes he struts and frets his hour on stage, and sometimes performs spectacularly in a way that dazzles the audience of mankind and reverberates through history. If the man is inclined to diligently apply himself, ultimately all of history knows his name and holds it for better or worse for the rest of human history.
Some are ultimately broken by the process. We should not pity them. Most men are not chosen. Most men are forgotten. Those chosen to be built who break against the weight of their trials are still often men we remember. King Saul was chosen. He broke against the commandments of God when, rather than slaughter everything, he retained some of the kine for sacrifice instead of obeying. King David was chosen. He broke against the commandments of God when he lusted after Uriah’s wife, had Uriah slain and lay with her against the prophet’s will. King Solomon was chosen. He broke against the commandments of God when he boasted of his riches to the queen of Egypt, thus precipitating a war in which Egypt lusted after Israel’s riches. Yet, we remember these men. We remember them being broken, but we also remember them being built, being chosen, being brave, being good, being loved of God, and because they were chosen by the universe we all know their names. We do not remember the rest of the kings of Israel or Judah for the most part. They occupied space in the line between men who mattered.
Those who survive the process are refined in the furnaces of affliction. It takes time to make a man great: time and patience and practice. IN a world that does not reward virtue, it also requires unwavering commitment and more than a lion’s share of moral fiber. The great man must prove every minute of every hour of every day that he is true and loves the truth and cannot be shaken or bought or swayed from his true purpose. It’s not about money. He cannot be bought or bribed. And, because it must be honest and from within, God must take away His hand and allow the creature to do from the will alone an endeavor which quickly loses all relish. When Elijah fled Ahab into the wilderness, he was fed by the ravens, but eventually the ravens failed and God sent him to Zarapath. There, he invited a widow woman to feed him and, to his great dismay, watched the son die anyway despite his promise. Although he raised the boy from the dead, by the time he reached the mountain where he challenged the priests of Baal he still wasn’t sure he was doing God’s will. Having seen the fire come down and consume his sacrifice and the soldiers subsequently slaughter Ahab’s priests at Elijah’s command Elijah still didn’t think he had achieved a rassafrassin thing. He still felt abandoned. So God sent an earthquake, a whirlwind, and then finally a still small voice, but it wasn’t until Elisha came that Elijah’s soul seems finally satisfied.
It is hard to stay the course when you are not sure you’re on course. People will conclude that, because things are awful, that you must be doing something wrong. Job’s friends ridiculed him and invited him to repent because clearly all that suffering was a punishment. Even Peter in Acts heals a man whom everyone assumed was infirm because of some sin because sometimes the infirmity is so that Peter can show he is Christ’s apostle. God does not put halos on His servants and the universe does not bedeck its favourites with plumage. All too often it is EVIL that rewards its disciples with gold, silver, silks and titles. Yesteryear, wicked men twirled their mustaches and wore dark overcoats. Now they clothe their naked villainy in odd old ends stolen forth from holy writ and seem saints when most they play the devil. Evil has become fashionable. The Chosen must continue forward anyway without that reassurance, because it makes their faith more noble to press on without any assurance that they are in the right. Because when it comes from within, that’s the only time it’s truly real. You can bribe a man or threaten him, but only if he decides to do it no matter what is the cause of Evil actually threatened. Wrote CS Lewis:
“Our cause is never more in danger my dear Wormwood than when a human no longer desiring but still intending to do the Enemy’s will looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, asks why he has been forsaken and still obeys.” [Screwtape Letters Letter #9]
And that, my friends, is why Henry VIII had no choice but to execute More, because he stood by his convictions and refused to bow his head to the will of a fallen man.
The devil will also rage against the man and bring suffering. Sometimes the man beset with trials is doing everything imaginable correctly and the devil cannot abide it. He will throw whatever he can at the man to dissuade, distract and discourage. He has no body, so he tries to wear down and break ours. He has no conviction or faith, so he tries to sow doubts in ours. He has no virtue, and so he will try to convince men that we are suffering because we earned it. He teaches of Karma so that men may presume that we are reaping what we sow even if it is not so. Notice that karma is nearly always thought of as a negative with those we do not like. Sometimes people discard and disregard us because they are more interested in fantasy than in reality. Sometimes men suffer because they are doing what is right and because the pests find the fresh fruit the most appealing.
So if you see a man suffering, particularly a man you perceived as good, maybe the universe is refining him rather than scolding him. Perhaps the universe has chosen him rather than forgotten him. Perhaps he should be reminded that some of God’s favorites go through longer and deeper troughs because it is in trial periods much more than in prosperous periods that men grow into what God would like them to become. Wrote the poet “Good timber does not grow in ease; the harsher the gale the stronger the trees.” Up on Charleston Peak outside Las Vegas there stands a Bristlecone pine that is around 4000 years old. Fires, the great Flood, drought, logging, insect infestations, etc., have failed to hurt this tree, and it even withstands men carving their initials into it. It has grown in a way to withstand the winds. The trials it endured killed other trees. For Raintree (as it’s known by the natives) those trials made it strong. So next time God sends you blessings disguised as trials, try not to despair. Like Job, God might be paving the way for your to be better and have more than in the beginning. Clearly God thinks that you might grow into something spectacular.
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