from Why Does It Have to Hurt? by Dan McCartney
Suffering as Jesus Did
What is this “certain way” that we are called to suffer? Above all it is, as we mentioned earlier, suffering in Christ. It does no good to try and bear our suffering ourselves; we must cling to Christ. That sounds easy enough when you are not suffering. But it is not so easy when you are actually suffering. How can I respond to God when he appears to be abusing me?
Peter has told us that Jesus left us an example (1 Peter 2:21). And how did Jesus respond to God when he appeared to be abusing him? He prayed honestly, and he prayed using the Psalms. He forthrightly tells God in Gethsemane, “I do not want to go through with this,” although he is also able to say, “Nevertheless, not what I want, but what you want.” And at the apex of his grief, abandonment, and pain on the most devilish instrument of torture the ancient world had devised, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” This is no pious utterance; it is a cry of anguish. It is not a request for an intellectual, theological answer explaining the necessity for the atoning death – Jesus knew that already. It was rather a cry from the heart, using the very words of the Psalms. The Psalms were Jesus’ resource in time of suffering. If we are going to suffer in Christ, we ought to respond the way he did, by the Psalms. And the Psalms are apt. No other body of literature in the world so completely runs the range of human feelings. The Psalms are not just expressions of joy, elation, trust, thanks, and hope; they also express anguish, despair, anger, pain, confusion, and sorrow to the dregs.
Praying the Psalms
Thank God he gave us the Psalms. Many of them deal with the child of God suffering and crying out to God. There is even a special class of psalms that scholars refer to as “psalms of lament,” which sometimes have a special metrical form distinct from other psalms. Just a quick look at the psalter shows that Psalms 4–7; 10–13; 22; 25; 28; 42–43; 55–57; 59–60; 64; 69–70; 74; 77; 79; 86; 88; 102; 123; 139; 137; and 140–143 all cry out to God in distress. We also have great poems and prayers that are like psalms in Jeremiah, Lamentations (especially), Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Habakkuk, and many other places. In addition there are also a number of psalms of thanksgiving in which the psalmist was in difficulty but God delivered him from suffering (9; 18; 30; etc.).
What do we learn from these prayers in the Psalms? First, we find total honesty. We sometimes get really mad at God– and it does no good to hide the fact. We must face reality. Unfairness is rampant – and we sense its wrongness. Trying to extinguish this anger and sense of wrongness is not Christian piety; it is Stoicism or Buddhism. And even if God had not given us the Psalms and the example of Jesus, we certainly could not fool him who looks upon the heart.
The second lesson is that such honest crying out to God is in fact an expression of faith. It is just at these worst of times that God seems most silent. “The heavens are like brass” at times. As we saw earlier, in Psalms 88, the psalmist never resolves to an expression of hope the way the other lament psalms do. But his very crying out is still an expression of faith. Job remained faithful, God says, even though his own despair at times was very deep. When you are suffering so much that you cannot with easy confidence say, “I trust you, God,” this psalm is a great gift. It is a reminder that faith can be hidden and yet still be genuine.
Third, they remind us that God is still God. With the exception of Psalm 88, all the psalms of lament have a turning point, where the psalmist shifts from his despair to his voice of confidence in God. Sorrow is transformed, not into happiness, but into a confident, joyful hope. This is what makes these psalms of such comfort in times of distress. As we read, we can, like the psalmist, move from despair to hope, from distrust to confidence, and from agitation to repose as we remember who God is.
All of these psalms I named earlier can be of great comfort to the sufferer. In the next chapter I am going to focus on six psalms in particular, focusing on faith (13; 27), hope (22; 42), and love (73; 131). But before we look at these psalms, we need to point out that we do so in union with Christ and as part of his body the church, not because we by ourselves have any claim on God.
Sharing Christ’s Suffering by the Psalms
The Psalms are very inspiring literature and have been of great comfort to many people because they are so expressive of the human predicament. But what makes the Psalms especially important for Christians is that Christ prayed these Psalms. Some of the Psalms are clearly stated in the New Testament to be about Christ. Some of them Christ himself uttered (most notably Ps. 22 on the cross). But since he teaches his disciples in Luke 24:44–47 that the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms are about him, we ought to understand all of the Psalms as in some way related to him. If we are in Christ, if we are covenantally linked to him, then we can also pray these psalms. This is how we are to suffer as Christ did, by praying these psalms as expressions of our own faith, hope and love.