Why Suffering Yields Newness

4 min. read

I haven’t met many people who like suffering. If anything, our frailty, pride, and sense of self seeks to avoid suffering. But maybe the willingness to alleviate and evade all suffering at all costs is misguided.

I’ve been thinking a lot about newness, new birth, new experiences, and so forth lately. Partly because I and my family have been thrust into a season when we can continue to mourn what was, or open ourselves to something new. Partly because the lens through which I see life demands that I always be on the lookout for newness. And partly because of the things being made new in and through the small community with which we share life and Sunday brunch.

A Different Way to View Suffering

Our Sunday brunches are a time for people with different stories and different outlooks to sit around an open table, sharing food and conversation. It’s a time to read selected readings from scripture and other sources, ask questions, discuss thoughts. Some call it “church.” Some call it “community.” It’s both of these things and so much more. For all of us who experience it, “newness” is the best descriptor. It’s also time to join in the ancient practice of Eucharist (whether individuals are followers of Jesus or not, everyone is invited to the table) and bear one another’s burdens. And it’s in the act of sharing communion and burdens that suffering creeps in.

Some of the readings we’ve discussed in recent weeks indicate the idea of suffering being a necessary and unavoidable precursor to newness. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.
— Jesus of Nazareth, from John 12.24-25

Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure.
— Rumi, Sufi mystic and poet (1207-1273AD)

Both of these quotes are speaking into the context of community. Suffering feels like something intended to be experienced in isolation. But we are learning to look differently at suffering: as something that is for and part of the community.

Do you want to experience real relationship? Do you want to practice authentic community? Then prepare for suffering. It’s necessary.

Whether you are a follower of Jesus as the Son of God or not, to embrace life fully means to expect suffering. The suffering may be of our own making, or imposed upon us by others. But various texts, accounts, and my own experience tells me that to suffer is to move through to an area of newness.

This is also a reasonable concept.

Suffering is Natural

Recently, a very good friend of mine, Brian (great name … and he spells it right!), and I were discussing the section of Acts in which Saul encounters the risen Jesus and what immediately follows. My friend is a non-theist and our discussions are one of my greatest treasures. My friend remarked that Jesus’ statement about showing Saul how much he will suffer could be misread as a coercive declaration. But when we acknowledge that suffering is necessary in order to experience newness, then the statement is simply a statement of divine disclosure. And he’s right. It’s a transparent statement of fact. To suffer is natural. To participate in things being made new in life means that suffering will occur.

And then I think of the one making this transparent disclosure about suffering: Jesus. Jesus suffered immensely: physical and mental torture, betrayal and denial from his closest friends, lies and manufactured accusations hurled at him, persecution from the very religious leaders who should’ve celebrated him. And Jesus never avoided the suffering; never pushed back violently against the persecution; never tried to defend himself against the lies. He endured it all, and so experienced something altogether new.

This process is very similar to the waves that batter a high-peaked shore. It may take millions of years to see a change. But the persistent suffering endured by the shoreline from the battering waves reveals something that was previously hidden, unknown, undiscovered.

From Ruin to Treasure

Maybe you are suffering right now. Perhaps it is due to broken relationships, job-related pressures, financial hardships, something of your own making, or something else entirely. I can relate: I’ve suffered through all these things before. Maybe you feel isolated by the church, or community, or co-workers, or family who are part of this suffering. Maybe, just maybe, you could embrace the suffering as something that is bringing newness into your life, and something that will make things new for others as well.

Or you could be in a period where you know that newness is around the corner, but you see the potential suffering that will happen if you step that direction. Maybe you see the potential to step away from what’s expected of you by family, by society, by the institutional church, by your boss. Maybe you could decide to accept the suffering as necessary; as good, even. It’s good, because newness is on the way.

Does all this mean we simply accept suffering and injustice silently? Good question.

As I look at Jesus, he allowed the newness after the suffering to retrospectively out-narrate the suffering. All nonviolent civil disobedience is doing the same thing. By enduring the suffering, something new will eventually come that out-narrates the previous injustice.

And this is why suffering yields newness. Embrace your ruin: there is treasure there.