Suffering: Redemptive Power of Suffering  

By Janina Gomes  

There is a paradox at the heart of Christianity - the cross of Christ. Jesus was crucified and died for the sins of humankind. According to St Paul, it was necessary for Jesus to have been incarnated, crucified and resurrected that others may believe that their own suffering and death can be overcome.

Analysing the concept of suffering in Christianity, Mircea Eliade in The Encyclopaedia of Religion , quotes St Paul, who in his letter to the Romans, explains humanity’s plight - bondage to sin which makes a human being a miserable wretch craving for deliverance from death.

In Christ, however, a human being achieves true freedom through the spirit. The prospect of overcoming sin, suffering and death is available to those who decide to remove their previous self-understanding and their past existence from one of ego-centrism to radical surrender to the grace of God.

Many questions arise concerning the role of suffering. These questions include: How is there suffering in a world created by a good God who cares for and loves His creation? For the Christian the quintessential question is why does God’s plan include the suffering and death of His own Son? Paul sees the death of Christ not only as a propitiatory or vicarious sacrifice, but as a colossal cosmic occurrence.

The writers of the Christian Gospel depict Jesus as the Messiah who has been sent into the world to bring about repentance and salvation and to usher in God’s kingdom. Jesus is portrayed as a being who by his suffering, crucifixion and resurrection becomes the symbol through whom all human beings may hope for a similar fate for themselves.

As C S Lewis says when he analyses the problem of pain, pain is not only an immediately recognisable evil, but an evil impossible to ignore. He says God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. He says pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Another interpretation of Christian suffering put forward by a Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama is that Jesus Christ is the centre of all people and things, but he is the centre who is always in motion towards the periphery. He affirms his centrality by giving it up.

The theologian Michael Rodrigo says, that Jesus’ suffering among the people is the passion. Christ is being re-crucified today as a corporate community, especially among the poor who manifest him. His Passover from sin to holiness is seen in the passion and death of the people and his resurrection is seen every time they band together in the hope of new life and community building.

Jesus suffers in the suffering of the poor: When, for instance, proper prices for raw materials are not paid, just salaries not given, buffer stocks nor raised, when pesticides rejected in other countries are dumped in the poorer and more vulnerable communities, when poisonous inputs are so easily available to the illiterate that they die an early death.

Thus he believes that the crucifixion of Jesus relates to freeing men from every form of slavery, from ignorance, destitution, hunger, oppression, hatred, and injustice which continue even today. His followers therefore, must work to liberate the poor, the outcast, the worker.

Individually suffering is also seen in much of Christian writing as having a disciplining function. As Paul says “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character and character produces hope”.

Eliade also states that in Christianity, suffering is seen as something that is both inevitable and welcome - something to be confronted rather than avoided. Thus Paul exults: “ Most gladly, therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest on me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distress for Christ’s sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong”. Christianity thus believes in redemptive suffering, where suffering is not seen as good in itself but has a value.

Christians throughout the ages have found meaning in their own lives and sufferings by seeing it as patterned on the sufferings of Christ. We have only to look at the cross and the resurrection of Jesus to realise that suffering is not in vain but that it leads to glory and final redemption.

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See also: Suffering , God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul

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