The Illusionist

Have you noticed that no matter how hard you try to "get over" suffering, it always seems insurmountable?
Have you noticed that suffering seems to make you feel all alone?
Do you sense that God has withdrawn when suffering comes? You look for Him, but He has disappeared. Just when you need Him most, He seems to be no more substantial than smoke.
In times of suffering, we squint to catch a glimpse of God, strain to touch Him somehow. We may even find ourselves questioning whether God exists. Suffering seems to steal away what little confidence and joy we might have had in knowing Him. One moment, we believe that God will use this suffering in our lives, just as he did for Joseph, and then suddenly, as if it were just an illusion, that belief disappears, right through our fingers.

Has God really abandoned me to suffer alone, has He mysteriously disappeared, or is it just an illusion?  Was any of it ever real or have I just been deceived?

An illusion is a distortion of what you perceive, or, as I like to think of it, a really neat trick. I stared at a black dot in the center of blurred colored images and the colored images disappeared; I saw several spirals spinning around when apparently, they weren't really moving at all.
The Illusionist tricks us by creating a distraction, by drawing our attention away so that we miss what he is doing. He appears to work magic, when all he has really done is mislead us, made us see what he wanted us to see. Our brains are tricked into thinking we didn't see what happened right before our eyes.
Is God an illusionist?
I read these statements in the Bible about suffering, and for just a brief moment, I wonder if this is not some elaborate illusion as well.

"but to the degree 

that you share the sufferings of Christ, 

keep on rejoicing; 

so that also at the revelation of His glory, 

you may rejoice with exultation." 

1peter4:13

"The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit 

that we are children of God, and if children, 

heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, 

if indeed we suffer with Him 

in order that we may also be glorified with Him. 

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time 

are not worthy to be compared 

with the glory that is to be revealed to us." 

romans8:17-18 

"For this momentary light affliction is producing for us 

an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison." 

2corinthians4:17

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, 

and in my flesh I am filling up 

what is lacking in Christ's afflictions 

for the sake of His body, that is the church." 

colossians1:24

Can there really be joy and glory associated with suffering? It seems impossible to even think about rejoicing in the midst of suffering, much less experience it. I'm certain that my pain in suffering is not an illusion, but I can't imagine a reality where pain and rejoicing coexist.
Outrageous words like these in the Bible make it very difficult, at times, to believe God, to trust Him to be true to His word. It is hard enough to believe that a loving God would allow suffering, but then I am asked to accept that He is the source of it, or that suffering can be so...so...exaltingly joyful and glorious!  If this is true, then what is wrong with me? Why is it that I never seem to know joy in suffering? I don't get it. Am I not spiritual enough?

No, I'm not so ready to make that conclusion.
I would rather question God's credibility, than my own behavior, make it His failure, not mine. If this is God's illusion of joy, than I'd prefer to create my own version. If it were up to me, I would certainly make a world where pain and suffering doesn't exist, where everyone lives happily, where no one ever suffers disappointment. I would trust myself to do a better job at making the world a better place, trust myself to be more compassionate than God!
(I speak sarcastic nonsense).
Let's be honest.
We might be too shocked to say such a thing out loud, but we feel totally free to judge God as if it were true, don't we?

Suffering provides the perfect stage for an illusion, for a game of smoke and mirrors, but the Illusionist is not your Heavenly Father. Flesh creates a house of mirrors, so that we focus on an illusion of suffering rather than on the real thing. This illusion distorts our view of hardship and puts God in our blindspot. This illusion makes us feel and think that we are all alone.
In order to walk by the Spirit, the flesh has to die. God puts suffering in our lives to accomplish that death, but flesh is quick to substitute its own brand of suffering that counterfeits God's brand. That's why, so often, our "suffering" never produces the joy that the Lord promises to give us. God's tool of suffering seeks to bring about the surrender of our rights, our longings and our pursuit for fairness. This effect of suffering, in God's hands, achieves true death to self. Flesh would have us believe that suffering attacks our basic human rights, that giving up our rights IS suffering. It's like holding a mirror up and seeing the image backwards. When I follow this reasoning, I wander into the realm of suffering that God did not prepare for me, where I become bogged down in self-pity, anger and bitterness over denied longings and unfair treatment. Honestly, how much of your suffering is rooted in these things? Do you see what I mean? Much of my suffering has been because I have refused to surrender my rights. If I'm insisting on my rights, I'm not dying to self, if I'm not dying to self, then I'm suffering according to the flesh.

The Ishness of Suffering

Weakness was an easy topic for me to write about in the last chapter; easy for me to admit that I know what it is. However, as I consider this topic of suffering, I find myself hesitant to say that I know what suffering is. I'm embarrassed to claim that I suffer, even though I think I do. It would seem like an insult to those who truly have suffered. How can I claim to be a sufferer, when I know that I can always find someone else who has suffered more than me?
This is my dilemma, my quandary, my reluctance to write about suffering.
Suffering is a difficult subject.

There are many debates on whether God is responsible for suffering in the world; whole books have been written to answer the argument, "how can God allow bad things to happen to good people?" If that is your question, you might prefer reading one of those books, because I will not attempt such a thing in this one chapter. My purpose in writing about suffering is only as it relates to walking by the Spirit, and taking up your cross daily.
So how will this be different? Why do I think that a chapter on suffering is so important for you to read, that I will risk the Lord bringing suffering into my life in order to write it?

When I was clinically depressed, I felt locked inside a room of pain and suffering, and all I wanted was to be out of there as fast as I could. I thought suffering was wrong, thought I had done something wrong to deserve it, which only made me sink deeper into hopelessness. I begged God to take it away, again and again. I hated the pain, absolutely hated it! I felt miserable, blamed others, whined enough for three lifetimes. "Why was God picking on me?", I thought. Self-pity oozed like sticky goo from every pore of my body. It was gross!

Why do we feel so wronged by suffering? Why does it hurt our pride and make us angry?
I believe the root of the problem is that suffering challenges our value system, makes our flesh feel undervalued. Think about it. If you have something you value, what do you do with it? You take care of it, pamper it, love it; you certainly don't inflict pain on it. For that very reason, equating discipline with love is so important. If a child is disciplined without love, he will conclude that he is worthless. When I look at suffering through the flesh, I find myself doubting God's love. If He loved me, He wouldn't hurt me, if He valued me, He wouldn't let me suffer.

In taking the flesh's side, I was completely blinded to God's purpose in suffering, or more truthfully, I didn't care. In siding with flesh, I only felt anger at having to suffer and resentment that I couldn't be rid of it instantly. What really scared me about suffering was that it seemed like it would never end.
Then one day I had one of those "oh, I get it!" moments, when it suddenly clicked, suffering isn't meant to be fast. How is this good? Well, it's not good, if you are hoping to never suffer, or want the "get it and be done with it" approach to suffering. Suffering is not a fast food restaurant or a buffet dinner. I couldn't choose when I would suffer, how long it would last, what good would come of it, or by what means it would come.  I can choose, however, to either suffer my way in the flesh, or God's way in the Spirit.

Joseph found that God used his suffering for good, even good for those who inflicted his pain, Job acknowledged, in his suffering, that he can't receive the good from God without being willing to take the bad, and Jesus, apart from gaining our salvation, learned obedience through His suffering, which He endured silently. And then there was Jonah. I've just recently discovered how much he suffered. My suffering looks very much like Jonah's.

Jonah, after choosing to disobey God, finds himself caught in seaweed at the bottom of the sea, then "rescued" by a big fish that swallows him up, where he has to live three days inside a pool of stomach acid and decaying fish. That had to have hurt, and stunk, and been unbearable. I imagine that he would have preferred to be anywhere but there.
That sounds like terrible suffering!

Life was also unfair for Jonah. God was denying him the very thing he wanted, to see evil people get what they deserved. On top of that, God forced him to be the means of their salvation, He refused to give Jonah what was right.
Jonah suffered so much he wanted to die.
I call that suffering.

Then the sweetest little shade plant grew up right next to him, just to give Jonah shade. That made him so happy. Finally, something good happens to him. It isn't much, but after the miserable time Jonah has had to endure, it is precious. By some cruel twist of fate, a worm comes and attacks his plant. Jonah is forced to watch his precious, beautiful, shady plant wither away, right before his eyes!
Such suffering for poor Jonah! Such loss, and discomfort he must endure now. The scorching heat and hot, hot winds are so unbearable, worse even, because he could have had that plant. Jonah despairs of life itself.

Changing up the perspective here may seem funny, might even seem sarcastic. Believe me, it's not meant to be! It's not funny that I don't need to know what Jonah felt; it's not funny that those words came from my heart. That's exactly what my "suffering" has always looked like, my suffering in the flesh.
I have brought so much suffering on myself by disobeying, by wanting to be treated fairly, by seeking my own happiness, by spitting on God's compassion.

Suffering in the flesh only wants compassion for itself, which is, in reality, true self-pity. Through the eyes of my flesh, I see suffering as the withdrawal of all compassion, and that makes me angry, makes me demand God's compassion on me, makes me resent His compassion on others, on the less deserving. Do I have a right to seek compassion for myself? Do I have a right to be angry? Like Jonah, I'm afraid I would answer "I do", and I would be wrong. Compassion is God's right, suffering is mine.

The Ishness of Suffering is that self has to be removed from it.

"For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, 

so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. 

But if we are afflicted, 

it is for your comfort and salvation; 

or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, 

which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; 

and our hope for you is firmly grounded, 

knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, 

so also you are sharers of our comfort." 

2Corinthians 1:5-7