When we go through suffering we often compare our suffering to someone else’s. We do this for a few reasons I think. Sometimes we are just trying to be polite as we confront someone who has suffered what we perceive as ‘more’. Sometimes we think it can help us get a perspective on our suffering by comparing it to others. Sometimes it’s a matter of pride, other times it’s a matter of self-pity.
Generally speaking, in the instances I mentioned above, this practice has been used as a kind of coping mechanism. We compare to cope. With a little bit of self-awareness I think we could all acknowledge that this is what we do – again, generally speaking. Having been reminded recently of our tendency to do this I thought I would revisit a quote by Paul Grimmond in his book, Suffering Well. For the Christian, we tend to compare ourselves to those who are suffering physical persecution overseas. This happens quite a lot in my experience. But listen to what Grimmond says here,
“It is right for us to stand beside those who suffer greatly for Christ in other countries. But we do not serve each other when we say we don’t suffer, because it reinforces the idea that suffering for Christ is always about physical persecution. As a result, we fail to teach each other to live without shame in the face of the more subtle pressures in our culture. Secondly, because Western culture has become obsessed with general suffering, we find ourselves spending much of our time defending how God can allow cancer and natural disasters. We spend much less time teaching each other from the Bible that God calls on us to live such godly lives for Jesus that people will dislike or even hate us for it.” P.98
Grimmond is building his argument off a bible passage from Mark 8, pointing out the relation between Jesus’ call to “cross-bearing” and being “ashamed” of Jesus. Here is what he says:
“Even in the greatest of all discipleship calls – Jesus’ call to take up our cross – the emphasis is not on physical hardship but on the danger of being ashamed: ‘And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”’ (Mark 8:34–38).” p.95
With all this in mind we would do well to remember that our sufferings can be a means of encouragement to others. Not the kind of encouragement that says, “cheer up, things aren’t so bad when you think about…(insert comparison).” Instead of minimizing (by comparison) our suffering, let us embrace our suffering with full acknowledgement of the Lord Jesus’ lordship over our lives, as our moments of trials and tribulations are opportunities to stand for Him firmly in the gospel. In our sufferings we have the opportunity – perhaps we might even say the platform – to speak the gospel into the lives of those who are watching us, whether Christian or otherwise. We would do well to speak the gospel in our suffering. In fact, if we were after a comparison, we would do better speaking the gospel in suffering, then comparing suffering to suffering.
Grimmond, P. (2011) Suffering well: the predictable surprise of Chrsitian suffering. Kingsford, N.S.W.: Matthias Media.
Bigvai and Shiphrah 