In 2023, my wife and I were contemplating whether we would sign up for a missionary training program. One of the core values in their brochure immediately convinced me of my need for such training— “suffering is normative.”
Reading that, I knew God was going to teach us lessons in suffering that I had not yet learned. I had already read my Bible plenty. I knew that Jesus had called us to take up our cross and follow Him. I could have told you that the Son of Man had no place to lay His head, and that followers could expect the same. But I had not experientially lived it out. I was weak in this area.
So, we committed to move our family to spend a year learning how to embrace this value. We hope that the lessons we learned will yield fruit for both our life overseas and back home in Spokane.
“Suffering is normative” is phrased intentionally. It is different than “suffering is normal.” Normal says, “It happens that way”; normative says, “It is meant to happen that way.” “Suffering is normal” might be what you tell your kids when they scrape their knee or cut themselves on a glass table. “Suffering is normative” is what you tell followers of Christ in preparation for their Christian journey. Suffering was a pattern, standard, and rule set forth by Christ, in which we as Christians are expected to follow suit.
This suffering does not come at the hand of a cruel and sadistic God. Christianity is unique among all religions because it declares that our God is not a passive bystander in the pains of suffering. He willingly entered into suffering in the most profound of ways. He set the pattern we all submit to.
Suffering is normative because Christ was hated first. Suffering is normative because the Son of God agonized underneath an unjust governmental tyranny. He bore the torture and shame of crucifixion. Suffering is never easy or pretty, but it is always met with His all-sufficient grace.
There was undoubtedly something special for our family about spending the entire year focused on this particular aspect of the Christian life; it was the difference between being seasoned with the occasional thoughts of suffering and marinating in it. We learned to walk out our worst-case scenarios, and then we were reminded that God’s grace would meet us in those very moments. We spent much of the year meditating on 1 Peter and Acts. In 1 Peter, we were exhorted to endure suffering; in Acts, we saw the early church live out the realities of suffering.
The year was also spent immersed in missionary biographies. We learned of faithful saints who counted the cost and of many who paid the ultimate price to bring the gospel to the nations. These men and women of different generations taught us the fragility of our own generation. We have much to learn from them.
While God does not fault us for being born in our era, He does expect us to be aware of our cultural downfalls—even in the church. You and I ought to be able to look back at our ancestors and previous generations and acknowledge their sins—without unduly smearing their names. We should also be able to look at them and see their strengths, and hopefully then our own sinful proclivities.
We live in the most comfortable generation that has ever existed. We’re allergic to discomfort. We have neck pillows for our cushioned airplane seats. And the soles of the shoes I am wearing as I write this feel like a cumulus cloud.
We—no, I—have idolized comfort over the glory of God, and this is where biographies become helpful. We enter into a world of old, where our temptations are juxtaposed against theirs. Our weaknesses are exposed because they are set in contrast to their strengths.
In Christian biographies, we witness how these redeemed saints have a different expectation of suffering than we do. We witness how John Paton, after losing his wife and newborn baby to the environment of the New Hebrides, was able to say, “But feeling immovably assured that my God and Father was too wise and loving to err in anything that he does or permits, I looked up to the Lord for help, and struggled on in His work.” We see how the Puritan John Bunyan was able to endure 12 years in prison over his refusal to simply stop preaching. Or we see how David Livingstone, missionary to Southern and Central Africa, was able to say after many years spent suffering, “I never made a sacrifice.”
Reading these biographies strengthened our trembling knees and put an iron will in our hearts as we counted the cost of “preach[ing] the gospel, not where Christ has already been named” (Romans 15:20) in our own lives.
The temptation is to believe that this lesson is necessary for missionaries only. However, our theology of suffering inevitably has far-reaching implications in how we live for the Lord here in America. Could it be the reason that our schools aren’t more evangelized, that we aren’t bolder witnesses at work, and that some of those who are closest to us still haven’t heard the gospel from our mouths? Is it because we have a deflated theology of suffering?
We must consistently be willing to revisit what our expectations are as followers of Christ. Christ bore His cross and called His followers to do the same. This rule of life was first followed by our Savior, and now we are invited into it. His grace will meet us there.
A loving community making disciples of Jesus Christ.
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