THE PARADOX OF CHRISTIAN SUFFERING: A WILLING SACRIFICE

There is an extraordinary confusion in the modern world about the nature of suffering and its place in the life of a Christian. The confusion is not in Christianity, which has always been perfectly clear on the matter; the confusion is in the world that looks upon Christianity, peering at it through spectacles already cracked and clouded. For the world often accuses the Faith of promoting a gloomy sort of self-abasement, a morbid fixation on pain, as if Christians were meant to be forever flogging themselves in some dark corner of existence. And yet the Christian tradition has always placed at its very center a Man who went willingly to His death, not with the face of one beaten down, but with the face of one mounting a throne.

This is the first paradox of Christian suffering, and I shall take it as the principal matter for our consideration: that in the Christian understanding, to suffer is not to crouch but to stand, not to shrink but to expand, not to diminish but to grow. The Christian does not suffer because suffering is good in itself, but because some things are so good that they are worth suffering for.

Consider the man who finds a purse full of money on the street. He is behind on his mortgage; the bank has sent threatening letters. The purse contains exactly what he needs to save his house. But as he stands there, an elderly woman appears, frantically searching the ground, her rent money lost. Now the world has taught him a certain kind of arithmetic: that his need plus her carelessness equals his good fortune. But there is another arithmetic, the arithmetic of the Kingdom, which says that her need plus his integrity equals his opportunity for greatness. And so he returns the purse, and may indeed lose his house, but has kept something far more valuable.

This is not self-abasement; it is self-fulfillment. This is not masochism; it is heroism. The difference is as vast as the difference between a man who jumps from a cliff because he hates life and a man who jumps from a cliff to save a drowning child. They perform the same action but stand at opposite poles of the universe of meaning.

The modernists, with their crude understanding of psychology, will tell you that this is merely inverted selfishness, that the Christian does good to feel good about himself or to secure some celestial reward. But they fail to see what is obvious to any honest observer: that the Christian often suffers precisely when it would be easier not to, when every natural impulse cries out for self-preservation. He does not choose the path of suffering because it leads to some personal advantage, but because it is the right path, though it leads through fire.

There was once a merchant in ancient Rome who was asked to burn incense to the emperor or face execution. He had a wife, children, a comfortable home. All he had to do was place a few grains of incense on the altar, a simple gesture of civic loyalty, and he could return to them. Instead, he chose the executioner's sword. Was this the act of a man who lacked self-love? Quite the contrary. It was the act of a man who loved his true self so much that he would not betray it even to save his physical life. He understood what our age has forgotten: that a man is more than his body, more than his comforts, more than his earthly relationships. He is a soul, and the soul must be true.

This is where we find the second paradox of Christian suffering: that it is through this kind of suffering that the Christian discovers his greatest joy. Not a thin, anemic sort of joy, like the satisfaction of having done one's duty, but a wild, robust joy that comes from being fully alive, fully human. The Christian martyr facing death for the truth feels more alive than the compromiser who shuffles through a half-life of comfortable lies.

And this is not some peculiar quirk of Christianity, some morbid inheritance from a darker age. It is a profound truth about human nature. Even secular observers have noted that the most fulfilled people are not those who have avoided suffering but those who have suffered for something they deeply believe in. We admire the political prisoner who refuses to recant, the whistle-blower who risks career and reputation to expose corruption, the parent who sacrifices everything for a child. This admiration is not irrational or perverse; it is the natural human response to the spectacle of virtue in action.

Consider the magnificent paradox in the life of any great saint. St. Francis, stripped of his possessions, living in poverty, was nevertheless full of such irrepressible joy that he sang as he walked the roads of Italy. Mother Teresa, working among the dying in the slums of Calcutta, radiated a peace and contentment that many wealthy Westerners would envy. The martyrs of the early Church went to their deaths singing hymns, while their persecutors looked on in bewilderment. These were not people who had been taught to hate themselves, but people who had discovered their true selves and were willing to pay any price to remain true to that discovery.

Now, we must be careful here, for there is a counterfeit of Christian suffering that does deserve the scorn of the world. There are those who seek out suffering as an end in itself, who wear their pain like a badge of honor, who use suffering not as a road to greater love but as a form of spiritual narcissism. This is indeed a perversion of the Christian idea. The true Christian does not seek suffering; he seeks goodness, truth, and love, and accepts the suffering that often comes with them in a fallen world.

The man who stands up against injustice in his workplace might lose his job. The woman who refuses to participate in office gossip might find herself excluded from valuable social connections. The teenager who won't join in the cruel mockery of a vulnerable classmate might become the next target. These people do not suffer because they think suffering will make them holy; they suffer because they have chosen to be holy—that is, whole, integrated, true—in a world that often punishes such choices.

This is the third paradox of Christian suffering: that in a world bent away from God, doing God's will often leads to worldly pain. The Christian should expect this, not because God desires our pain, but because the world is not as it should be. The Christian faith has never taught that following Christ will make you materially prosperous or socially acclaimed. Indeed, it teaches quite explicitly the opposite: "In the world you will have tribulation," says the Lord, quite matter-of-factly (John 16:33).

But then He adds: "But take heart; I have overcome the world." This is not the empty optimism that tells us everything will work out fine if we just think positive thoughts. This is the robust hope that tells us everything of true value—justice, love, truth, beauty—will ultimately triumph, even if the path to that triumph leads through the valley of the shadow of death.

And here we come to the heart of the matter: the Cross. Christianity is the only religion in the world that places at its center the suffering of God. Not a God who demands suffering from others while remaining comfortable Himself, but a God who enters fully into the suffering of His creation. The Cross is not a divine endorsement of suffering as good in itself; it is God's way of showing that He values human beings so much that He is willing to suffer to save them.

And we, as followers of that God, are called to a similar love. We suffer not because suffering is good, but because people are worth suffering for. We suffer not to punish ourselves, but to give of ourselves. The Christian view has always been that suffering accepted out of love—whether for God or for neighbor—has a redemptive quality that transforms both the sufferer and, mysteriously, the world around him.

The widow who gives her last coins does not do so to make herself poorer, but to make the world richer in love. The man who forgives a grievous injury does not do so because he thinks his injury doesn't matter, but because he values mercy more than vengeance. The missionary who leaves comfort and security for a difficult life in a foreign land does not do so out of self-hatred, but out of a love so expansive it embraces people he has never met.

This is the fourth and final paradox of Christian suffering: that in the economy of God, nothing freely given in love is ever truly lost. The Christian believes that every act of sacrifice, every moment of suffering embraced out of love, becomes part of the redemption of the world. Not one tear shed in the service of goodness, truth, and love goes unnoticed or unredeemed.

So let us put aside once and for all the caricature of Christian suffering as a kind of spiritual masochism. Let us embrace instead the truth that Christian suffering is always in the service of something greater: the truth that sets us free, the love that never ends, the God who suffered for us and now suffers with us, transforming our pain into something beautiful beyond imagining.

For the Christian, to suffer for the right is not a demeaning act of self-abasement, but the highest expression of the dignity with which God has endowed us: the dignity of creatures made in His image, capable of freely choosing the good even when it costs us everything. This is not suffering for suffering's sake; this is suffering transformed by love into a willing sacrifice. And in the mystery of God's grace, such sacrifice bears fruit in a joy that the world cannot give—and cannot take away.

-The Seeker's Quill