“Losing” Faith While Others Suffer

During recent months, I’ve had somewhat of a revelation about suffering.  It seems that while suffering in our own bodies can and often does bolster our faith, seeing suffering in the bodies of those whom we love can actually serve to diminish our faith, if we allow it to.  It is such a helpless and despairing feeling to know that our loved one is in pain, suffering in body, mind and soul—and there’s precious little we can do to remedy the hurt. 

As I reflected on where God is in the midst of such suffering, Christ entered my mind and I began to think of those who were physically there to witness his suffering when he was arrested, tried, and crucified.  Anyone who’s read the New Testament will probably remember that Christ’s “tight-knit” group of recruits, his most inner circle, didn’t exactly stick around to watch him bleed out, to witness his increasingly labored breathing, to see the very last expression on his face, to hear the very last words upon his lips, to view his final surrender.  Suffering is hard—and being an onlooker to your loved one’s suffering is, I do believe, even harder.  And the urge to simply run from it can be quite compelling, even impossible to resist.

After watching a loved one suffer tremendously for a long time now, I feel like I have to rethink the story of Christ’s disciples, one that I’ve carried around with me ever since I became “versed” (silly pun intended) in the New Testament.  In my old story, I thought of the disciples as cowards, fearful men who ran for the hills just when their revered leader needed their support the most.  And yes, I know, all but one of them did circle back to their faith, to Christ, but not before he died a most agonizing death without them.  So, were those men of his cowards?  Or is it possible that maybe, just maybe, they could not find a way to bear the sight of their brother and Lord suffering so?  Maybe they loved him so much they had to turn away from the gashes and the bruises and the piercings.  Maybe fear for their own lives was mingled with a fear that seeing their beloved Christ suffer so might well break them apart irreparably, even before any of the Roman soldiers could.

I don’t know what was really in the hearts of those disciples any more than anyone else down here does.  But what I do know now is how very hard suffering, in all its many forms, is; and I think, because it’s so very hard, it’s a good idea to try not to judge others’ responses to it.  Some of us, without reservation, just run right into the middle of suffering and don’t look back, consequences be damned.  Some others of us seem to be repelled by even the faintest scent of suffering.  And still others of us find ourselves somewhere between these two extremes. 

Regardless of how we deal with suffering, something else I’ve come to believe is that if we can find a way to allow ourselves to be a real part of others’ pain, even when it costs us greatly, we somehow receive gifts, blessings, that we might well forfeit if we allow ourselves to turn away and run in the direction opposite the suffering.  I’m thinking now about those precious women who chose not to hide themselves in the dark shadows when Christ was dying, those women who fixed their gaze upon his agony-filled face through it all, those women who stayed the course until not one breath was left in their Lord’s body.  It seems as if they took no thought for their own lives at all and thought only of him—and we see no evidence that they ever lost faith.  And though I feel far from it right now, I want to be like them.  I want to have the type of faith that just won’t allow me to turn away, even when everything in my flesh tells me to.