I read the daily readings for the Lenten season from the Book of Common Prayer this morning, along with Nouwen's Show Me the Way; the readings from Nouwen and from the Word were both of grace and discernment--a call to live in the mercy of God in belief of this silly freedom in forgiveness we adhere to. Hebrews 12:1-14 left me a little jaded, though--I still can't quite grasp the concept that God has us go through trials and periods of suffering as a means to better ourselves to be with God. This is something I struggled with when I first read Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfectionism: if suffering is of God because that is the path God chose, then how do those who are forced to suffer great things every day read Hebrews 12:1-14. In some ways, how do I read that passage? Have these great things I've suffered been purposeful so that 'I may be more like Him', or something? I can't help but jump to a Neo-Marxist paradigm when reading this, though: it just seems like a good method of keeping the suffering in society in their place.
Obviously, I need a little enlightenment and Biblical interpretation here. Please, if you can help illuminate this passage in the Holy Word of God for me, I would greatly appreciate it. May we always hope in things unseen...
2 comments:
I re-wrote this three times. The other times I wrote a lot. Erased it, and re-wrote.
But I can't really think of anything better to say than "the first shall be last and the last shall be first."
That probably doesn't help without expounding... but.... yea... it's what I thought when my own neo-Marxist cynicism kicked in. I also thought that I don't know the different. But perhaps God does.
From Oswald Chambers on Paul's writing and suffering: "The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things - tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super-joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in all these things, not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. The saint never knows the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it - 'I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation,' says Paul."
So, perhaps it's not to be "more like God" but to acknowledge that God is most glorified in moments of suffering because of God's life-giving power (e.g. the crucifixion). In those moments, God's glory is made most evident through God's true joy because of the coming Kingdom--a renewed and redeemed creation! Even though the world here and now experiences suffering--us included--we stake our claim in a reign of which we've only barely tasted...and it's already so good! That is why we are to rejoice in suffering--because we know that this is not the end. We know that it's another chance to give glory to God.
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