Forgiveness within Lament and Suffering

Lament and suffering are both the way of God and of humanity.  It has mystified humanity in every age.  Why would a good God allow such cosmic misery in His “good” world?

In this short article my aim is not to presume upon an understanding.

I believe God has made it beyond understanding for good reason.  Life, when it is both going well and going poorly, and all in between, is a TEST whether we like it or not.

It is a test of the HEART.

A heart open to God—open to learning, 
open to resilience, open to surrender—will overcome.

Such a heart is THE secret to life.

~

Such tests are a bridge between 
death in despair and life in hope.

When given a choice, it is wise to go the way of life.
Death is a choice many make but it always leads to misery.

The way of life is in exploring curiously 
the appreciative aspects of undesirable situations.

~

SUFFERING IS A BROADER ISSUE THAN WE THINK

Suffering is a condition of this life, whether we like it or not, and it is a far more varied experience than we ordinarily see.  We suffer loss, yes, and we grieve.  We suffer mental health maladies, certainly.  But we also suffer pride and self-sufficiency when life is well.  We suffer greed when we’re unsatisfied with what we have.  We suffer when we are held captive to addiction.  We suffer when we do not suffer difficult people graciously.  We suffer when we live extravagantly or idolise comfort.  We suffer when we reject God.

Broadly speaking, we suffer 
whenever we are not close to God.

But as people we only view suffering 
from the lens of unavoidable pain.

The paradox is God uses 
unavoidable pain as the gateway to heal us!

We also suffer when we make foolish choices, and just like there are a thousand opportunities a day to choose for love, there are a thousand choices we make that deny this holiness and spurn His wisdom.

We suffer in this life even when it isn’t apparent to us, and all this suffering grieves the heart of God.  In plenty, our suffering grieves God because we go our own way and thumb our nose at God.  In want, our suffering grieves God because He would have it fixed, but we must first come to an important heart landing, which is the purpose of suffering itself.

SUFFERING AMBUSHES US & RANSOMS OUR ATTENTION

There is a time when suffering insists upon being felt.  Where reality must be honoured and can no longer be denied.  Where the truth of our lamentable or sorrowful situation insists on being faced and possibly processed.

However painful this reality is, 
all of heaven rejoices 
when a person faces their truth.

Where pain enters our existence, where it cannot be denied, even when we endeavour upon denying it, suffering ambushes us and ransoms our attention.

To the uninitiated, there is anger, for “how dare a good God allow this suffering?”  And in the grieving process, there is anger anyway.  Part of the mystery of suffering is discerning a healthy anger of grief as opposed to the vilifying anger of something else, and who really knows if these two among other varietals of resentment aren’t all the same in terms of the process.

For guidance on anger within suffering itself, we cannot go past the Bible.  So many of the psalms, Job, the prophets, and even Paul in the New Testament (2 Corinthians) feature Bible writers in the anguish of grief, at times angry, and at times angry toward God.

God uses the unavoidable pain in suffering to grow us.  Such growth has only one dependency—we need to draw near to God (James 4:7-8) in surrender when ambushed by pain.  God shows favour to the humble (James 4:6) when they come near to Him.

When our peace is ransomed, our challenge is to pay tribute to God by drawing near to God in surrender to get our peace back, which is finding our way to forgiveness.

ANGER IS A COVER FOR & CONCEALS SORROW

Anger can seem to last a long time, and part of the humbling aspects of suffering is God allows it—it is not for humans to force those who are still struggling in anger to bypass it.

In our anger we learn something vital about ourselves, and that is that we can only ACCEPT what we cannot change.  Anger teaches us something we couldn’t learn otherwise.

Anger isn’t just “a waste of time.”  It teaches us something we can only learn for ourselves.  We must learn futility has no point.  We must learn this the easy way (through observing it in others) or the hard way (through butting our head against a brick wall long enough to see the futility in it).

A key step in reconciling anger is digging deep 
enough into it to find the truth below it.

The truth below the anger is found in 
the sadness that lingers fathoms below it.

Once we begin to explore what we can only accept which we cannot change, we can enter our essential sadness—the truth of our lament that we can now accept as our truth.

In this sadness, in sitting in the sadness, we are given the keys to reconciling with it, and forgiving it.

All this process requires is humbling.
We must be humbled, or we learn nothing.

~

ANGER MUST BE PROCESSED IN ORDER TO FORGIVE

To forgive, we must cast off our right to ourselves, we must cast off our right to cling to what is right in our own eyes, and we must certainly cast off the will that says, “I insist on retaining my resentment at what has been done to me!”

There can seem so much satisfaction in clinging to that resentment that says, “I will REMAIN angry at this injustice done to me!”  But the anger stands in the way of real satisfaction, and of the opportunity to grow THROUGH what was or has been done to us.

Have you ever noticed the word 
ROUGH in the word THROUGH?
Going THROUGH is ROUGH 
but it is also necessary.

Seeing how anger is a cover for and concealer of the truer sorrow we have experienced helps us to process the anger.  Anger conceals part of the essential truth buried in the sadness that needs to be faced to be understood.

The anger must be entered curiously 
for the sadness to be plumbed.

Making peace with our anger is the expression 
of hope that healing is possible by entering the sadness.

~

FORGIVENESS IS SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Let’s not forget a truth that will change all our lives if only we will let it.

We WILL be robbed in this life—that’s the point!  Jesus spoke about this in John 16:33 (quoted below).  The point is not about being robbed.  The main point is BEYOND being robbed.

The main point is accepting 
that we WILL be robbed.

LIFE will rob us!

There is no folly, only mastery of life, in “considering it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds,” (James 1:2) because contained within this are the materials of our growth!  Not only the materials of growth, but the materials of joy!

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.” 
—John 16:33 (NIV)

“Take heart!”  “Consider it pure joy [that you will grow!].”

There is nothing more certain than we DO grow through trials that we come to accept and move beyond in a greater joy for the wisdom bestowed within us.  Nothing can defeat us even though we will succumb to the battle on occasion.

The point is not about lamenting the hurt or suffering the indignity of loss.  We WILL lament.  We WILL suffer.  The point is what is beyond the lament and suffering as we work our way THROUGH it to forgive what happened to us.

The moment we recognise that forgiveness is the key to moving on in spiritual growth is the moment we are freed of that which is folly.  Again, to forgive, we must cast off our right to ourselves, we must cast off our right to cling to what is right in our own eyes, and we must certainly cast off the will that says, “I insist on retaining my resentment at what has been done to me!”

Forgiveness isn’t just about forgiving people, it’s also about forgiving circumstances, situations, even God.  It’s about coming to an acceptance of the actual life we have been given.  There’s no point grumbling about how we look or how we move or what we lack or anything else we don’t like.

Remaining in unforgiveness over these and other things only reinvests in the bitterness that keeps us mired in death.  Life is in the forgiveness that accepts and has joy in living with it.

In such life is power to truly live.

Forgiveness says, “I’ve realised that accepting this thing or circumstance or situation or person is the starting point for entering my life more abundantly, the life that Jesus modelled for me to have when He died on the cross for my sin.”

THE “HOW” OF FORGIVENESS

On the surface, making peace with injustice feels like an impossible thing to do, but not only is it possible, it is the genius of the gospel at work.

The world thinks Christian principles are folly, but there is a reason why Christian faith is still exploding in the world two millennia after it originated:

... the Christian faith construct heals life!

The gospel way of Jesus is a THIRD way of responding—it overcomes dejection and the destructive.  The “how” of forgiveness is a third, more unnatural, way of responding.  By neither denying our pain nor getting angry about it, we move on in an acceptance of it.

In peacemaking terms, the reason humanity resists forgiveness is we prefer the more default responses of denial and/or anger.  Denial and anger seem to make more sense and occur naturally as cognitive and emotional responses.  But the denial must be avoided whilst the anger must be processed.

~

When a Christian understands that forgiveness is central to their life in Christ, they really do HAVE the gospel, because they understand what God in Jesus has done.

In doing so, in seeking to forgive, a Christian HAS the keys to their own healing, and they can traverse any suffering toward their eventual healing in the model acceptance that Christ makes possible in what He did at the cross and through His resurrection.