I think one area where the rest of the world can misunderstand Christianity is in the area of suffering. While some spiritual concepts focus on the escape from suffering, Christianity seems to overemphasize its value. We talk about our need to suffer for those we love and how we should embrace the crosses given to us. We fast and mortify ourselves. We esteem the saints who have suffered most, those who have died terrifying deaths. It can come to a point as though the very purpose of our religion is to make us suffer as greatly as possible.
But if that’s the case, why would Jesus Christ even come down from heaven to save us all? If the very purpose of life is to suffer, wouldn’t we suffer most when we’re left alone in our sins until we die and suffer forever in hell?
To whom among those who approached Jesus for healing did He say that it would be better for them to remain sick and just suffer instead of being healed? Jesus may have delayed in helping Lazarus, but only so that he can be raised back into life.
If there is anything we should learn in Christianity, it’s not that we must seek suffering but that we should avoid pointless suffering. Christianity also allows us to see that there are temporary sufferings we can bear in order not to fall into greater ones.
Those who have children never want anything but goodness and happiness for their children. What good parent would want to inflict pain and suffering to their children? But there are some sufferings a parent is willing to bear seeing if such would yield a greater good. Must not all children fall many times before they learn to walk? A mother bears the risk of seeing her child fall because it is better than to prevent a child from learning how to walk.
If there is anything God wants for us, it is our greatest happiness, an eternal joy that no one could ever take away from us. All the lesser sufferings we experience in life are allowed only so that they could bear for us a greater good.
A Christian may suffer then, but not in vain, and only for a moment. We bear our sufferings and we rejoice in them not for their sake, but for the sake of something greater, for the sake of love. And love is the only thing that could make us truly happy in the end.
“If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burnt, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.” – 1 Corinthians 13:3, WEBBE
“Most certainly I tell you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. A woman, when she gives birth, has sorrow because her time has come. But when she has delivered the child, she doesn’t remember the anguish any more, for the joy that a human being is born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” – John 16:20-22, WEBBE
The thing about hope is that it’s a positive force that shines the most when it’s dark. When everything’s going well, we hardly notice it’s there. But when things go against us, when our dreams fade and when we see no immediate reprieve from our troubles, that’s when hope does its best work for us.
"Where Hope Can Be Found"