While We Suffer Let's Learn Love
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Let’s start by going back together. Back to when you were a preteen, teen, pretween, in between, wherever. That time. You know what time I am talking about. When puberty had just hit it’s crescendo; when sleep was readily available and taken always, when whatever was in the fridge somehow sounded and tasted great, when people suddenly started looking really good (and you were suddenly worried you looked really bad).
No matter who you are, no matter your generation, no matter your race, your gender, your socioeconomic status, we all had those “awkward years.” So picture yourself… there.
You go to school, wherever school was for you. In your homeroom, the teacher tells you about the upcoming exam. Not any old quiz or pre-test; the “test” test. The one which accounted for a whole heck of a lot of your final grade. The one that required a lot of studying, a lot of late nights, a lot of avoiding fun stuff in exchange for infinite moments of boredom. A lot of nagging from your mom or your dad or your inner voice, and/or a whole heck of a lot of procrastination.
You start jotting down notes at a furious rate as the teacher speaks. You feel good about it. Whether you are normally an avid, bookworm-ish Type A student or the class clown who didn’t know where his/her book was let alone ever opened it, you were ready to get ready. Today was different, if you were a slacker every other day. And even if you were a straight A student, you too were getting prepped the best and most perfect way you could.
When… out of the blue, you are handed another test. An entirely different test. A new principal comes in: stern, hard, callous, cruel. Relishing the sudden dread of twenty ish kids having to take a test they are simply not ready for, one iota. All of the kids in the room, no matter what kind of person they are, what kind of home they are in, what kind of friends they have, what kind of student they might otherwise be, are all united in being entirely unprepared for this brand new test.
Sit here for a moment. In the awkwardness, in the nervousness, in the sudden and fierce dread of not being properly informed or prepared or ready for this brand new huge test.
I’ll come back to that in a bit… now let’s talk about Beautiful Boy.
2018’s Beautiful Boy is a whopper of a movie. Telling the tale of a father and son’s tumultuous relational hardship in lieu of the son’s battle with addiction, it pulls no punches in showcasing the true horror, manipulation, and degraded humanity that is at hand when someone plunges into drug dependency. Timothee Chalamet doesn’t have to work hard to express the sandwiching of adolescence-to-adulthood catastrophized by burgeoning addiction; in interviews Chalamet himself stated that he thoroughly researched the experience of younger adults who become lost in the web of dependency.
While the film leaves you on a hopeful place (via text, not in the final shots), something about its context intrigued me. It’s not uncommon for films to be shot from a middle class, white context. This film was no exception. So, too, is it pretty standard for some sort of drama to unfold that is privileged in some sort of way; the wealthy husband cheating on the wife with a more “attractive” misstress, the go-getting single mom who yearns for adventure overseas, the young kid who is “picked” on at class for being different and artistic. This is textbook Hollywood because the Hollywood archetype is white, middle class (or higher), male (if you are a director or writer) artistic leaning people.
So, then, what was different this time?
Namely, that the exploration of Chalamet’s cause of addiction, the reason, as it were, that he yearned for “something more” which propelled him into methamphetamines, weren’t delved into. And I actually think this is by design.
See as odd and cryptic and morbid and dark as it may sound, I think suffering is in our DNA as humans. From the go-getting and arguably most privileged Jeff Bezos’s, Donald Trumps, and Bill Gates of the world to the lowest castes of India, the malnourished and deeply colonized in Africa, the abandoned rural white Americans, the latino families whose very sons, daughters, fathers and mothers are separated, adversity is universal. Tribulation skips no man or woman.
Now, a HUGE disclaimer here; there is a massive distinction from the levels of suffering and anguish experienced by people. There is simple no way to ignore this truth; some do just have it harder than others. That being said, comparing others’ levels of suffering does seem a bit foolish. If not foolish, at least, not helpful in producing what Paul calls perseverance.
If anything, I’d argue, we ought not to say “such and so is more persecuted,” “this group has it worse,” etc. etc., particularly if you are not in the aforementioned groups.
In 2020, it seems that the political landscape and polarizing sides have compared “measuring sticks,” in some sense, of one group’s relative suffering compared to the other. Yet another disclaimer; I happen to be more liberal so read the following with a grain of salt.
The right, particularly the religious variety, is very concerned about the suffering of unborn babies. The suffering of small businesses who have been unfairly penalized in lieu of the riots and unrest. The suffering of a cultural group whose more old fashioned family and meritocratic values are being undermined and ridiculed routinely by the elite progressive left.
The left, particularly the secular variety, is very concerned about the suffering of people of color. The suffering of workers who are not treated well and/or payed high enough. The suffering of the world itself as the expanse of global warming’s negative implications for our continued existence seems more and more daunting every year.
These are both caricatures, of course, but it simply points out how we are apt to see one form of suffering, have deep and rich compassion for it, and utterly turn a blind eye to the other side. Full disclosure, as a more liberal person, I do think I ignore the implications of rejecting the nuclear family, or at least, not admitting the importance of a healthy and intact marriage and how that benefits kids and their subsequent lives (and the subsequent lives of their children).
Regardless of your perspective though, regardless of the genuine pain you have experienced, regardless of the way both your perspective and experience have shaped you as a person, the raw and total truth is that suffering is real. And, not only is it real, but the way we respond to our own very often reflects how we will respond to the reflections we hear of others.
Now… back to the illustration.
Go back to being that awkward, dorky, smelly, frightened kid who just got that huge test. Scanning through the first page, none of what the normal teacher taught you is remotely in the text. If your teacher was a science teacher, all of the questions are now history. If your teacher was an English teacher, all of the questions are now math.
You simply don’t know how to answer, but you answer the best way you can. Recalling all that you can, the best you can, unsure, nervous, and frustrated, you answer blindly. Turning the next page, somehow the test gets harder. The angst inside deepens; not only is this unexpected test unexpectedly getting harder, but now you realize all the effort you put forward earlier was for nothing.
The principal who gave the test looks on with delight; we all know this kind of teacher. Flustered, you sneak a quick peak at other people’s tests and you see… different tests. Strange, but you still see the same apprehension in the other test-taking teens. Behind him you see a jolly, Buddha like caricature of a superintendent who is looking at you and all of the other students with equal parts love and interest.
What in the world is going on? Why are all the tests so different? How in the world will I pass it?
What is the point of this illustration?
Simply put, the test is the suffering we endure in our lives. The true and false questions about whether you are worthy, the multiple choice questions about what to do about that failed business or that post-grad degree. The essay portion explaining why you cheated on her, or why he cheated on you. The extra credit questions… well, some have extra credit portions on their test. Those questions are easier and those kids get them all right, and they seem to be given to the same kind of students. If you get the extra credit test, you don’t question it. If others question why you get extra credit questions and they don’t, you question them.
Yet, it’s still all the same; the test you got is not what you expected. Such is the experience of our suffering. While for some, say, as an example, a person of color getting pulled over by a police officer or a rural, poor white worker whose job gets shipped overseas, a certain kind of suffering is expected, the way it hits us is rarely if ever what we anticipated.
As I said before, tribulation skips no man or woman. Our tests come whether we want them too or not. Hardship is universal. How we handle it, however, is not.
So then, while we suffer, let’s learn love.
Paul says to rejoice in our suffering. He’s crazy.
I hate suffering. I also hate that I kind of love suffering. As someone who can dwell in the morose a bit too much, I see suffering as kind of sexy in it’s own way. In fact, often in the past, in attempts to woo a woman I found attractive, I attempted to portray my particular kind of suffering as uniquely “broken,” “shattered,” or “in pieces.” It’s very weird to explain, and even reading this back I am not sure if I articulated it the way I want to. I guess I am kind of crazy like the apostle Paul too.
In a podcast Ian Cron broke the terrible news to me about my cringey mating plans. Even though I tend to view my own angst, strife, and troubling circumstances with Shakespearian lenses, I am, in his words, “just another bozo on the bus.” My suffering isn’t extra special. Extra valuable. Extra important. Or even extra in it’s dosage. I am, after all, just like Timothee Chalamet’s character in a Beautiful Boy, a middle-class artistic leaning white guy. There is most definitely others who have suffered far more than I ever will.
That being said, it’s still hard as hell to rejoice in my suffering. It’s bizarre to receive cryptic and passive aggressive emails and think “thanks God for giving me an opportunity to be a better person.” It’s counter intuitive to receive closed door after closed door in significant relationship and feel “well, at least this will help me draw closer to Jesus.” I don’t know about you, but my initial response to suffering is to medicate the crap out of it or, in the worst of my worser moments, spread the suffering vicariously or directly to others. Just being real.
And yet, in reality, the best people in life are often than those who have best handled suffering. When I look at the heroes of my life, from the more artsy and athlete celebrities like Damian Lillard, John Mark McMillian, Sufjan Stevens, etc. or the more aspirational spiritual giants, like Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Rogers, and Thomas Merton, the way they are all united is their responses to suffering.
While they are all imperfect, broken, and human in their blemishes, they consistently used suffering as a very avenue to grow. When Damian Lillard was swept out of the first round of the playoffs, a richer embarrassment in lieu of his team being the higher seed, he merely strived to work harder, play better, and trust that things will work out better in the future. And they did. When John Mark McMillian reeled over the loss of a close friend in a car accident, rather than relish in the cynicism of the unknown reason for his buddy’s passing, he wrote the song “How He Loves.” When Mr. Rogers was mocked and ridiculed for his tv work on a kids show, both for it being “adolescent” and for his “phony” kindness that others deemed staged, he doubled down in delivering content that was both wholesome and entirely genuine. Now he is an icon of what kind and true masculinity can be. When Martin Luther King Jr. was mocked, spit at, beaten down over and over and over and over again, he got up, again and again and again and again, all in an effort to win over his opponent with love rather than to settle for the hate he received in his body by them. He transformed the hate he endured and channeled it instead as a conduit of the love of God, winning over millions in the process (and, truth be told, enraging millions of others as well).
As you can see, how we respond to suffering is how are defined. For me, I have decided that I want to be defined by the way I respond to the suffering of others. Maya Angelou’s quote is the theme of my life; “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I want people to feel as if I heard them in their suffering. I never, never, never want someone to walk away from knowing me thinking that I didn’t acknowledge or empathize with their suffering. And yet, I know that in some ways I have failed in this way. But I follow someone who hasn’t now and who never will.
Paul also said love never fails, and I think he had Jesus in mind when he wrote it. For Jesus, the way He engages with the suffering of others is the very way He enters into their life and brings healing. A big part of the “doing” of His love is showing up to the pain of others and not dismissing it. Rather, that in allowing them to address it and process it, they are then given capacity to overcome it. The reason love never fails is because Jesus never fails, and the reason Jesus never fails is because Jesus never leaves. While we may run away from Him, He never runs from us. His love is readily available, more than able to embrace the darkness of whatever suffering we are feeling or causing.
I am pretty sure Biden will win this election. Truth be told, I voted for him and so I obviously hope he does win. But even if you are Trump supporter or a Biden supporter, if you are black or white, straight or LGBT, religious or nonreligious, we all suffer. This is unavoidable.
So then, instead of rejecting the felt experience of the suffering of others, or, worse, being the cause of the suffering of others, let’s use the very suffering we endure as fuel for love. It is hard, it is ugly, it isn’t sexy, it isn’t glamorous, but it is right, no matter where you stand politically. And it is the best way to pass “the test” of life.