How on Earth Do I Suffer Injustice Joyfully?

One of the Bible verses that has entranced me for over twenty years now is this from James 1:2 —

“Consider it pure joy, my fellow believers, whenever you face trials of many kinds…”

Of course, this is followed up with key verses, arguably the rest of the letter, that unpack this seemingly absurd utterance.  That’s the wisdom of James.  I think that the context of the whole document is James 1:2 — for trials are common to the human experience, and it’s only godly wisdom that gets us through — indeed, it’s the way to get through.  

Faced with trials we could do worse
than read James from first to last,
then think and pray, reflect and lament,
allowing God’s Spirit to do His work
in and through us.  

But most of us aren’t that disciplined to trust God at His Word.  We generally prefer what seems to be our default way — either suffer every bit of the pain with complaint (which is not altogether bad) OR we deny the pain and completely bypass its purpose.  

Pain has a purpose.  C.S. Lewis said this:

“Pain insists on being attended to.  God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts on our pains.  It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  

When pain enters our life it’s as if the quietest sound is deafening.  And grief keeps us in this state for months if not years.  It changes us, transforming our sensibilities, making us in part more prone to pain and in part more empathetic.  

Once pain has gripped us and has held on, once we’ve been contained by pain for any length of time, once we’ve been forced to be conformed to it, it breaks us or it breaks us open — the latter is part of the biblical process that James speaks of: it humbles us and makes us greater.  

Being broken open with faith in God is a form of the ‘deeper magic’, as C.S. Lewis would put it, that brings the power of the gospel to life IN our life.  This is the life that Casting Crowns refer to in their song, Praise You In The Storm.  

Against human expectations in suffering, expecting God would pluck us out of our peril, realising that’s not how life or God works, we stand on the precipice of a choice — to praise Him anyway.  

In praising through tears of brokenness,
we are broken open, and in that very moment,
His grace works in and through us!  

It’s here we recognise that suffering
takes us to a place of learning
what we could not learn otherwise.

What I describe above is one expression of the extension of James 1:2 through the remainder of the chapter and perhaps the whole book of five chapters.  

God’s wisdom is applied in faith —
i.e., it is something we must DO —
that operates absolutely opposite
to the world’s wisdom that
makes ‘common sense’ but doesn’t help.  

Rare is it that any of us would take God at His Word and set our faces like flint at the task of enduring — not so much without complaint, but with repetitive composure that continually turns back, gritting one’s teeth in audacious hope underpinned by a joy borrowed from better times.  

A joy borrowed from a future hope having transcended our suffering is a faith that must be APPLIED for that hope to be realised.  

Injustice cannot be righted by simply railing against it, which is our human default response.  Paradoxically, suffering joyfully is the best hope of righting injustice.   

12 Steps Integration in Daily Christian Life

Integration of the 12 Steps into one’s life is the spiritual task and opportunity of this moment, of any moment.  

Ordinarily, in church and in AA tradition, the 12 Steps have been taken as a process, as a linear set of stages along a continuum of growth towards God and the purposes of God — which is always the purpose of our lives.  

But I submit to you, that these stages, these steps, are the will of God concurrently that it is possible to bear these steps, all 12 of them, simultaneously, to reflect on them, and to do an audit of oneself against these steps of wisdom — to bear them in mind and in our hearts each and every day.  

Imagine oneself going back to Step 1 (we admitted we were powerless over our deepest problems — that our lives had become unmanageable) even if one has been in the faith 50 years.  This demands humility, to engage in honest self-reflection, as we admit our common human weakness that, no matter how long we’ve loved God, our lives without Him and His help are fruitless — and more pertinently out of step with His will for us.  

To imagine ourselves leading a life that is unmanageable, a life that runs awry without God, a life that MUST recommit one’s will and life to this Lord who leads us to fresh experiences of our salvation.  

We who are saved for all eternity
still need to be saved from ourselves.  

Taking Step 1 in our stride on a daily basis, we acknowledge in Step 2 a Power greater than ourselves (Jesus) can restore us to sanity — the basis of our hope.  

With hope in regaling our desire to go where only God can take us, we decide to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.  This is a commitment that can only be made when we’ve properly laid the foundation of Steps 1 and 2 — to recognise just how much we NEED God.  

The problem with most Christians is too often we don’t recognise how much we NEED God — how poor in spirit we are without Him.  

The very next decision to be made in turning our will and our life over to the care of God is to get to work on identifying WHERE we’re out of step with His will.  

PSALM 139

Doing this on a daily basis is such a healthy task.  I often evoke God’s voice through reflection over Psalm 139:23-24 — “Search me, God, and know my heart… test me and know my anxious thoughts… See if there is any offensive way in me… and lead me in the way everlasting.”  

The psalmist has already said right at the top that, “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.”  When I ask God to show me, knowing that He knows me, God never fails in showing me something for which I can repent.  

Let’s get this straight:
repentance, daily and momentarily,
is the will of God for your life and mine.  

There are many ways to conduct Step 4 — we made a searching and fearless moral inventory.  This involves daily analysing our resentments, the root causes of our bitterness, or to thoroughly identify our fears, or to acknowledge the role of the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, lust, gluttony, anger, envy, sloth, greed).  

JEREMIAH 17:9 — AN ESSENTIAL, HEALTHY TRUTH

To imagine the opportunity for us to take inventory, each day, being honest about the previous day or the past morning, to go deep into the fissures of our hearts where the sin lies deeply, as Jeremiah 17:9 mentions “the heart is deceitful above all things… and beyond cure.”  

What Jeremiah acknowledged is healthy to acknowledge for each of us: only when we give over our will and life to the care of God are we fitted with His Spirit in being honest about our biases, prejudices, and self-centredness.  

In taking inventory we take our time allowing God access to those deepest fissures of our hearts, we note them down, receiving from Him a portion of his pleasure for the fact we are undertaking an honest audit of our soul, through the simple prayer, “God, search me and show me where I’m not honouring and pleasing You.”  I think you’d agree, we need to be praying this constantly if we’re putting His Kingdom and His Righteousness first in our lives (Matthew 6:33).  

Then there is the Step 5 of trust to commit these deep truths to God and to another human being, to simply confess them in all honesty, and find ourselves liberated once again by the fact the enemy has nothing on us, no guilt, no shame, no fear when we are honest before Him, before our Lord.  

Having taken inventory, and having shared this inventory with another person before God, we are being equipped to ask ourselves a question, Will I undertake the opportunity to reconcile these matters?  Will I be prepared to right these wrongs, to make amends?  

I therefore make a list of all persons I have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all — this Step 8 is such a powerful commitment to arrive at.  Such a resolve is inherently healing for us to engage in — we have taken the step of entering godly sorrow of 2 Corinthians 7:10 — ​“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”  

Worldly sorrow leads to resentment, fear, bitterness,
and everything that led us to sin comes from sin.  

Being now prepared, and even undertaking these matters of reconciliation, we make amends the same day that we took the first step, unless it would be that we would endanger the other person, or another person through indirect means of making these amends.  

We can do no harm in making amends —
to do so would betray our benevolent action.  

If we are called to holding our peace because our confession might harm another person, in restraining our will to make amends, we otherwise hold it within us in trust, reflecting deeply, asking God to come into us and school us in a fresh portion of humility.  

We ask Him to make us ready
to make amends at the right time.  

Having made amends, we continue with the resolve to make amends any time the Spirit leads us, committing to this way ever more.  This is the will of God for a Christian — to live within the tension of continually making amends in the power of God.  

It is therefore encumbered on us as true believers to live these steps during each of our days, ensuring that whatever the moment calls for, that the right step would move forward out of line, the Spirit would grab our attention making us aware, and convict our commitment.  

Living the steps in our day-to-day is the ultimate commitment to God to the Lord Jesus wherever he would lead us.  

If only we can have the humble insight to focus on those places of dishonesty, namely deception, accommodating, compromising, minimising, turning away.  

The task is simple.  I must take on this opportunity for God to show me all the little crevices of dishonesty in my otherwise honest life and I must be prepared for Him to show me little glimpses that might shock me in a moment, but will otherwise free me to live the life I ought to live bearing with others, as others bear with me.  

What does God require of me and you, other than to do justice to love mercy and to walk humbly with my Lord?  This is a daily charge.  To maintain our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation (Step 11) and take these steps to others as opportunities avail themselves to us (Step 12).  

Broken Open by Teary Gratitude

I’m often befuddled by how impossible it is to write on the experience I’ve had countless times — joy in suffering.  It frustrates me that I cannot seem to communicate how it works.  

So I’m trying again.  

It seems that there is a place for deep gratitude amid great suffering, and when we contemplate that gratitude is possible in the worst pain, it then becomes possible.  I might even venture to say that with great suffering there is also the entry of deep gratitude.  But this I think is not a universal experience.  

Joined with the coalescence of gratitude and suffering — their being together in the same person and season — is this idea of being broken open by pain, rather than simply being broken by it.  

I recall those times 20-22 years ago when I felt very broken by what my life had become.  These times, many nights, and certainly some whole days, I was a sodden mess, but not always without hope.  

The reality of my being resurrected from the pain of my life seemed real — I had hope — but my life was still so full of pain.  I had hope, though there were times I simply gave up for an hour or a day.  

Somehow as I gave way to teary gratitude — recognising I wasn’t alone, that God was with me, that I knew God was for me and not against me — I felt a perfect and paradoxical 50/50 mix of being afflicted and being healed.  

And there have been so many single days in each month since when the black dog would return, inconsolable would I be on those days!  But, always have I been resurrected mostly the following day.  

This is why I sensed that God was with me, for me and not against me.  It was because there was the deepest meaning in my deepest suffering.  

I do feel inept and embarrassed to talk about such things when others simply for the life of them cannot attest to such an experience.  I wish everyone could feel that sense of God being absolutely present and real in the grips of the worst pain on this earth.  

All I can say is, when you’re trapped in the pain of an excruciating season, invite gratitude into your heart if it isn’t already forcing its way in.  

Allow that gratitude to soften your heart in thanks that seems bizarre.  

When you do this, you may find you’re not simply broken by your suffering, but you begin to be broken open by it in a way to be healed. 

~~~~ 

Acknowledgement: in part, the penny dropped when I watched this recent video from John Ortberg.

The Gratitude-Entitlement Continuum

Entitlement is a funny word.  In a concrete sense, it depicts what we deserve — what we’re entitled to.  But when we take the word from noun to verb — from “you’re entitled [to this]” to “I feel entitled [in an absolute sense]” — we run in a cross-grain direction against life and we become a nemesis, an avenger, to all.  

Against all this is gratitude — that sense of being that feels absolutely NOT entitled.  It operates at the other end of an imaginary continuum, where feeling unworthy and undeserving can be attributable to a joy that comes only from God — where we acknowledge that everything we receive is a gift.  

Paul puts it plainly like this in 1 Corinthians 4:7:

“What do you have that you did not receive?  And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”  

Everything we have we received.  And only for a short time!  So why do we foolishly think what we have is ours?  And why do we covet more?  Well, of course, it’s natural to strive for “more for me.”  It’s evidence that there is something wrong inside us for which we need God.

Everything we receive comes from outside us.  It came from another person or situation, or in our life’s case or in the world’s case, these came from God.  

The only right response is to be thankful.  

If we can receive everything with thanks, we live gratefully.  

Turned upon itself, living thankfully is the result of a humble joy that attributes everything that one has as a gift; gifts received and gifts given from us as the overflow out of the abundance of joy that we enjoy.   

This is where entitlement is a very unwise way of living.  

When we feel entitled, we feel as if we’re deserving.  It comes across as selfish and is selfish.  It steals joy from others and ourselves.  It robs us and others of peace.  And if we genuinely feel entitled, we won’t be motivated by the joy and peace of others.  And we won’t be a gift to others but a burden.  

Entitlement and gratitude exist on a continuum and both are at the extremes.  

Let me leave you with a life-changing wisdom from M. Scott Peck:

“Life is difficult.  This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult.  Instead they moan more less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy.”

— M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, p. 13.

But, life is difficult.  And with an entitled mindset we only make life harder for ourselves and others — anger begets anger, and fear begets fear.  But with gratitude for the abundance we have, we make a difficult life just a little easier because we have not only accepted what we cannot change, we have embraced everything as a gift — even suffering, because in suffering well we find meaning.  

While anger begets anger,
and fear begets fear — in entitlement,
kindness begets kindness,
as peace begets peace — in gratitude.  

Being grateful comes from a humble certitude that abides by the reality that life is difficult, yet it is full of reasons to be thankful.  

Being grateful comes from accepting that everything we have we received — none of it is due to our doing alone.  

Being grateful will keep us from being entitled.