Suffering

Review: The Deepest Place

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The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope, Curt Thompson, MD. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023.

Summary: Drawing on the experience of Paul, described in Romans 5 and using the insights of neurobiology, a psychiatrist explores how hope may grow out of suffering as one learns one is secure in the presence of God and of a caring community.

Suffering can touch the deepest places in our lives. Often the result of some trauma, suffering rewires our brains to respond in ways to protect ourselves or suppress the ongoing pain. We may not even be aware of why until it threatens our jobs, our relationships, our finances, and our health. Curt Thompson has met many sufferers in his psychiatric practice. Through an understanding of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and drawing on insights from the Apostle Paul of how we may be transformed through suffering, Thompson offers us a process, illustrated by a number of patient stories, of how people experienced such transformation at the level of rewiring their responses to anxiety-triggering events.

Thompson frames his account around Romans 5:1-5:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,  through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (NIV)

Crucial, in all human experience, according to Thompson is the forming of a secure human attachment, the lack of which is a source of suffering. When we have such an attachment, we can receive and know that we are loved and flourish, even through suffering. For the Apostle Paul, this secure attachment came through being justified by faith, knowing that he was at peace with and secure in God. This in turn allowed him to face rather than run from suffering, persevering, forming character and deepening hope.

But knowing these things in our heads is not enough. It is practicing different ways of thinking, responding, and bodily reacting. It involves bringing our awareness of what we suffer into a place where we are seen, soothed, safe, and secure (the 4 S’s). Thompson works toward this both in his personal work with patients and in confessional communities where people are able to “confess” the situations in which they suffer and experience the 4 S’s with others. The more they experience this, the more they can relinquish the behaviors that covered up their suffering. Like Paul, who speaks of standing in grace, there is a bodily integration, a standing in the 4 S’s that occurs. As people experience caring acceptance when they reveal what brings them pain and shame, they glimpse the glory of God, even as they most openly face the causes of their suffering.

But this process of facing suffering is hard and painful work. For some it is so hard, they turn back. But knowledge of the glory of being accepted and loved by Jesus can sustain us, especially when memories are reinforced by counselors and a caring community such as the confessional communities Thompson works with, and those memories become more embedded. Over time, as we persevere, character is formed, as we keep practicing Christ-formed and sustained responses to suffering supported in community. In Thompson’s practice, he and counselees “do the work” and “then pause and notice the work” which embeds it more deeply. They assess progress using the acronym FACES which stands for flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable, qualities that express increasing integration of our character.

Progress in being seen, soothed, safe and secure over time in one’s suffering, persevered in over time, not only forms character but contributes to an embodied hope as our responses are rewired and we increasingly taste Christ’s glorious acceptance, building our anticipation of what’s to come, coming full circle around to increasing glory.

Thompson is honest that not all complete the circle or cycle. For some, facing suffering is too hard, and they retreat. some find it too hard to be loved, when all they’ve known are people coming to hurt them. Thompson discusses the rich young ruler who not only shrinks back from giving away his wealth but in finding eternal life through Jesus’s invitation to be in relationship with him, the one who “looked on him and loved him.” We keep loving those not ready to accept the invitation to be loved, even as we enfold those who do in communities where they are seen, soothed, safe, and secure, allowing them to do the hard work with Jesus of seeing their suffering transformed into hope.

I appreciate how Thompson frames this work with the wisdom of Romans 5. His narratives of patient stories elaborates what this looks like. He also helps me understand why it is hard for many to understand the place of grace in which they stand, that they are secure in the love of Christ. They know it in their heads, but haven’t yet had it transform the wiring of their lives, the patterns of their memories. It helps me understand why believing people often inflict pain on others. In the words of Richard Rohr: “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.”

What Thompson describes is a process of transforming discipleship at the deepest levels of our lives, making it possible not only to transform suffering but transmit healing to others. I cannot help wonder if this is the healing needed for a church that seems so angry and fearful, one so enamored with control and power, that clings to national glory and demonizes the other because it has never experienced the greater glory of the love of God toward all people in Christ. I wonder….

Review: Even If He Doesn’t

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Even If He Doesn’t, Kristen LaValley. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, (Forthcoming February) 2024.

Summary: A memoir of facing suffering and all the questions of why and where is God and does God hear.

If we pray and devote ourselves to God and God’s mission and do what is right, God will protect and bless our lives. Right? And if we suffer, we have gone astray from that formula. Right? Kristen LeValley grew up with those kind of ideas until devastating traumas forced her to go deeper and question these verities, the same ones Job endured from his friends. She and her husband were forced to leave a church where they ministered. She miscarried, witnessed a murder, and faced a high risk pregnancy with twins and a resulting two month stay in a NICU.

This book, while discussing the other traumas, focuses on her high risk pregnancy. After a miscarriage she learned that her and Zach would have twins. Then came the ultrasound that changed everything. One of the babies was not getting enough blood through the umbilical cord. The baby could die and her death would send a rush of blood through the cord of the other baby, possibly killing her as well and endangering Kristen’s life. The recommendation was to cut the cord of the baby not getting enough blood to save the other.

She wrestled with trying to come up with an explanation. Was it her fault or God’s? Was there some purpose in all this? She couldn’t find answers to any of these questions and the book recounts her dawning understanding that God nevertheless was present. Suffering, in revealing her inadequate theology, was an invitation to know God better. Facing a terrible decision, she discovers wisdom in the form of simply continuing the pregnancy, despite questions at every appointment about terminating the life of one child. Still, she had to face the question of “what if He doesn’t?” which brought her to the question of will I trust him if one or both of my babies die?

In a series of short chapters, combining personal narrative, sometimes heart-breaking, she takes us through her process, how God met her amid the messiness of her trauma. Along the way she notes how unhelpful the constant questions about terminating the pregnancy were on one hand and, equally, the valorizing by pro-life Christians of her decision to carry the twins to term. Neither comprehended the valley she was going through.

At the conclusion of each chapter, she summarizes the “shift” in her beliefs through her painful journey. I liked this at the end of a chapter titled “The Sacredness of Shared Pain”:

THE DISTORTION:

The reason someone is suffering and
their response to that suffering determines
the level of compassion they deserve.

THE SHIFT

Compassion, given freely and without restriction,
reflects the heart of the Father to those who are
hurting, regardless of how that pain happened.

This is a valuable book to read both for the suffering and those who walk alongside the suffering. No cliches. Just an unvarnished account of pain and the ways the author came to understand God anew.

I love this statement toward the end about God being glorified in our suffering:

“We don’t have to tie things up with a pretty bow to make sure we’re presenting God in the best light. We don’t have to justify our heartbreak to prove that God is still good. We don’t have to find a target so it will make sense. We don’t have to defend God’s goodness by dismissing the pain of our experiences” (p. 187).

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Sarah’s Laughter

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Sarah’s Laughter, Vinoth Ramachandra. Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Langham Global Library, 2020.

Summary: An exploration of suffering, whether through illness or physical decline, human or natural evil, and the embrace of grief, lament, doubt, questioning and more, and what it means to hope amid our struggle.

I thought a long time after listening to an older, respected teacher began a talk with words something like this: “As one gets older it becomes clearer that there is much in life that is hard, and that hurts.” This new work by Vinoth Ramachandra carries a similar message and it comes as a stark challenge to a lamentless church that proclaims a form of Christian life that moves from victory to victory.

Ramachandra has seen the hardness of life first hand, witnessing the bloody civil war in his native Sri Lanka, and the complicity of global powers that profited from the arms sold that perpetuated the conflict. He observes the staggering consequences of climate change for the poor of the nations and the unique vulnerability of the poor in our present pandemic. And he has grieved the loss of a wife to cancer. So much suffering leads him to ask two questions of God. One is “Why, Lord?” The other is “How long, O Lord?” They are questions that do not beg a theoretical explanation and this book is not an attempt to offer one. Rather it invites the unvarnished expression of our pain and doubts and questions, even as do the “psalms of darkness” in scripture. We both wonder about the existence of God and rage at what seems the unfairness of it all to the God we doubt. His message comes as a special challenge to many Western churches (at least white churches) where lament is not a part of either the liturgy or the life of the church.

In subsequent chapters he explores the anguish of Job, an anguish that both questions and seeks God, and is not answered by friends who can only muster arguments of divine justice and retribution. He explores the testimony of scripture and theologians to the grief and pain of God, the tears of God, the suffering of God with us culminating in the “handing over” of his son who “dies both at our hands and with us.” He wrestles with the realities of natural evil from animal predation to natural disasters, from which he observes the poor dying in disproportionate numbers, while reminding us that human evil is far worse.

Ramachandra considers what it means for the church to live as a community that holds grief and hope together. He believes that this is a creative place, one of forgiveness, of making meaning, of pursuing justice, and of anticipating a new creation. It is also a place of waiting. Ramachandra calls us to a faith that “is about faithfulness in action rather than knowing all the ‘right doctrines.’ ” It is a life lived both with all our questions and griefs, and yet in faithful and hopeful actions that follow in Christ’s steps, both to the cross, and beyond.

This is a far cry from “happy, clappy Christianity.” Ramachandra writes a book that unflinchingly looks at the hardest realities, the hardest questions we may ask and the most painful cries of our heart. And yet he also explores the possibility of a life still lived toward God, by faith and faithfulness, where doubt and belief, lament and joy live together. This book is for those whose life is hard and hurts. Inevitably, that will be all of us.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Shaped by Suffering

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shaped by suffering

Shaped by Suffering: How Temporary Hardships Prepare Us for Our Eternal Home, Kenneth Boa, with Jenny Abel. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020.

Summary: A study of how suffering may shape a person for eternity with God, based on 1 Peter.

There’s a lot of suffering in the world. Even in ordinary times. Illness. Injury. Chronic pain. Broken relationships. Depression. Death. That’s just a sample. We want to know why this happened. We want to know how this can be reconciled with the goodness of God. That’s not what this book is about.

The authors have a more focused purpose. They are writing for those who believe, and particularly those whose trust in Christ includes a hope beyond this earthly life, in the words of the creed, a belief in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” They believe suffering forms us in this life, and prepares us for that eternity. They write:

   The qualities we most admire in people are seldom forged in times of ease but in times of adversity. All the heroes of the faith suffered in some way, whether in an internal or external, chronically or as a result of a single crisis. Some suffered even to the point of death. While no sane person eagerly runs into the arms of suffering, believers in Jesus today often avoid it at all costs. Our most earnest prayers are too often, “Take this painful thing away” instead of “Use this for your glory” or “Keep me safe” instead of “Embolden my faith in this danger or threat.” This book takes a hard look at our perspective on suffering and challenges us as believers (myself included) to see it more as God would have us see it: from an eternal perspective. (p. 2)

The book follows 1 Peter, a book written to Christians facing imminent persecution under Nero, making this “the Job of the New Testament.’ They begin with Peter’s assumption of the inevitability of suffering and the hope of restoration (1 Peter 5:10). They consider how suffering purifies as fire does gold in a crucible. They explore the meaning of hope beyond death and the present joy amid suffering in the anticipation of that hope.

Contrary to our inclination to avoid or wish to escape suffering, the authors explore how we might prepare for suffering. The invitation to suffer is a call to imitate Christ, learning submission both to God and earthly authorities. Perhaps for me some of the most challenging words were in a chapter on ministering to others, and the call to intercession that “prays through.” Ultimately we live for eternal glory and as called people.

The discussion, closely following the text of 1 Peter, is mixed with stories both from Christians in history, and from the authors’ own lives. This is what enables the writing to transcend the nostrums that are singularly unsatisfying to those who suffer. Boa and Abel help us listen to an apostle intimately acquainted with suffering, one who knew he was destined for more. At present we face a pandemic and economic collapse. We all want life to go back to the way it was. What if it doesn’t? What does it mean to lean into Christian hope when the way to it is through suffering? This book, and perhaps the study of 1 Peter, may be for such a time as this.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Living in Bonus Time

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living in bonus time

Living in Bonus Time, Alec Hill. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020.

Summary: The President Emeritus of InterVarsity/USA recounts his experience of surviving cancer, how he experienced disorientation and growth, and reframed his purpose in life in light of his “bonus time.”

I still remember the day when I opened the video from then President of InterVarsity/USA, Alec Hill, and heard the news that he was stepping down from his position to fight a rare form of cancer, Myelodysplasia Syndrome (MDS) that could take his life within eighteen months. I work for InterVarsity and Alec had energetically led us in fourteen years of growth. He communicated personal concern for us as a couple when my wife faced a cancer diagnosis for us. I was stunned, and joined with thousands of others in prayer for him.

alec hill

Alec Hill

This book describes his journey from that time onward. The first part of this book describes a journey of descent.  A bone marrow donor match was critical to his survival. As it turned out, his brother Grant was an exact match. For Alec, this meant toxic chemo and full body radiation to destroy his white blood cells, while Grant received injection to boost his stem cell production. Hill describes the side effects of this treatment, including the risk that any infection could kill him, requiring isolation from all but his wife Mary, and scrupulous sanitizing of surfaces. He also describes the struggles with depression and the “dark night of the soul” through which he went, and his struggle to hang on to the disciplines that had sustained him in health. He struggled with why this had happened to him. Had he done something to cause it? He warns against the prosperity preaching and false messengers who unhelpfully approached him. And when the treatment worked and his blood counts rose and health returned while friends in treatment died, he wrestled with survivors guilt.

The second part of the books focuses Hill’s transition to new realities as he realizes that he is among those who survive cancer. He describes the lessons of control–over-control like that of Steve Jobs, who thought he could out-think pancreatic cancer, or under-control, which becomes passive in the face of cancer. He recognizes that appropriate control involves humility, trust, gratitude, and rest. Cancer forced him to learn dependence on others–family, friends, professional caregivers, and other cancer patients. In this section, he also discusses the challenges caregivers face and the needs caregivers have for self-care. Perhaps the most significant chapter in this book was his one on identity. He talks frankly about the experiences he faced in self-perception, bodily changes including those affecting sexuality, social roles and spiritual identity. He writes:

Cancer is a watershed event that divides our lives between BC (before cancer) and AD (after diagnosis). If given a choice between our BC and AD selves–what we look like, how we feel, how we perceive others regard us–most of us would gladly select the former.

The final part of the book describes how Hill came to terms with “bonus time” (a phrase he draws from soccer, where at the end of regulation time, the referee can extend the play with bonus time. He identifies how survivors often show growth in grit, spirituality, and boldness (e.g. why am I afraid what people think when I’ve had cancer?). Surviving cancer can lead to a clarifying of purpose as one faces one’s mortality. He proposes that clarified purpose comes through surrender of control to reliance on God, assessment of our responsibilities, resources, capabilities and calling, and attentiveness that requires slowing down. For Hill, it meant a shift from executive leadership in a fast-paced collegiate ministry to the thoughtful mentoring of young leaders. He concludes with a pair of chapters on redeeming the time and on wonder that get to the most important aspects of bonus time–savoring one’s life, loving, living freely, giving of himself, and delighting in wonder.

No two cancers are alike. Neither are cancer journeys, some of which end one’s life and some that pass through the valley of the shadow of death into survivorhood. One thing that is true is that one is not the same–physically, emotionally, mentally. There are bodily changes, fears of recurrence and survivor guilt, and chemo brain. But there are also the opportunities of additional years of life and the question of how one will live those years. Alec Hill has given an incredibly honest, but also life affirming account of his journey. He takes us through his process in the hope that it will be helpful to others. In this, he practices something he learned through cancer–no one survives alone, but rather with a host of others who walk with one on the way–including other survivors. He supplements his own story with those of others, questions and scriptures for reflection, and a helpful bibliography organized around chapter topics.

This is a wonderful resource for cancer survivors and caregivers. It should be noted that Hill’s Christian faith pervades this memoir, not in a preachy way, but rather as what sustained him and helped him as he clarified what life in the bonus time of surviving cancer would look like. Hill’s aim is not that people imitate him, but rather through his reflection questions and insights, discern their own paths in “bonus time.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: 12 Faithful Men

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12 Faithful Men

12 Faithful Men, Collin Hansen and Jeff Robinson, editors. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018.

Summary: Twelve thumbnail biographies focused on pastoral leaders who served faithfully through suffering.

Pastoral ministry is not for sissies, contrary to some popular stereotypes. The hours can be long, you often encounter people at their worst (and sometimes at their best), your call is to be faithful to God’s word, and a shepherd of God’s people. Sooner or later, conflict and criticism homes in on you. Pastors not only help the suffering. If they are at all faithful to their work, they are the suffering.

This is a book to give courage to pastors. It consists of twelve thumbnail biographies of faithful men (I would hope a companion volume on faithful women is forthcoming–there are a host of examples). Some are quite familiar: Paul, John Calvin, John Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards, John Newton, Charles Spurgeon. Some you may have heard of: Andrew Fuller, Charles Simeon, J.C.Ryle. And some like John Chavis, an early Black preacher; Janani Luwum, the Ugandan archbishop martyred under Idi Amin; and Wang Ming-Dao, a Chinese pastor who led the house church movement under Mao.

What they all have in common is that faithfulness in ministry led to some form of suffering. A number went to prison, including Paul, John Bunyan, Luwum, and Wang Ming-Dao. Others faced controversy with their people, including Calvin and Edwards and Simeon. Spurgeon struggled with the black dog of depression throughout his ministry. Chavis, highly educated and even a tutor of white children was barred from preaching, though licensed, simply because he was black.

Each of the biographers in this volume explore the ways these men were formed through suffering. For Paul, suffering portrayed what he proclaimed, focused him on eternal things, authenticated the integrity of his ministry and destroyed self-glory. Calvin came to understand through the suffering of exile the call to exile we all share. Prison plunged Bunyan into the scriptures such that Spurgeon comment that if you cut Bunyan, he would bleed “bibline.” Fuller learned through the heartbreaks of the death of his wife and son, and another wayward son, to give comfort to all who struggled with similar circumstances. Simeon pressed on despite great opposition in prayerful, humble expository ministry from which might be traced the University and Colleges Christian Fellowship in the United Kingdom, InterVarsity/USA and the ministry of John Stott, Kent Hughes and others.

I appreciate the inclusion of examples of African American, Chinese and African examples and would hope that the western Church might hear more examples of Christian faithfulness around the world. In a culture where it seems that the most common prayer is that things would go “smoothly,” the honest portrayal of the various forms of suffering that is the lot of faithful pastors is both a bracing word, and a welcome balm. I suspect many pastors wonder if they are alone, and if they have done something wrong if they are not “prospering.”

The biographies are short, rather than exhaustive, averaging about fifteen pages, making this ideal for devotional reading. While more lengthy and definitive works have been written about many, the focus on the theme of endurance through suffering and God’s provident work makes these pithy biographies welcome support amid the press of pastoral duties. Buy two of these, one for your pastor, and one to understand and pray for her or him (and other faithful pastors around the world).

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.