Elective Suffering

By Greyson Gilbert

Suffering is not a comfortable subject for a lot of people to talk about.

Around 2000 years ago, one man experienced the most intense suffering of all time. Jesus had eaten his last meal with the disciples before he took three of them into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. If you have ever been about to do something very difficult, something that you knew was going to hurt, you know that feeling. The anxiety. Your stomach churns and your insides want to flip upside down as a you break into a sweat. Multiply that by infinity. Jesus knew of the physical pain that he was about to endure. He was 100% man, and like any other man, physical suffering hurts. In addition to that, Jesus knew the spiritual darkness that he was about to enter into. God was going to have to turn his back on Jesus, his only son, so that he would never turn his back on us. 

As Jesus went aside to pray, the scripture says he felt "sorrowful and troubled to the point of death." Jesus three times went aside to pray and came back to find his disciples asleep, when his one request of them was to stay awake. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." The disciples had gotten comfortable. They were weak. They didn't realize the suffering that their master and best friend was about to go through. 

The more I think about it, the more I realize a few things. Alone, the physical pain that Jesus went through is insane. He received 39 lashes with the cat of nine tails, a roman whip crafted of leather, glass, bone and metal. The whip took chunks of skin with every scourge. His back was only raw flesh. One lash alone hurts, much more when the same back gets whipped again, and again, and again, and the crown of thorns was probably not delicately placed atop his head. Among all of this, he was beaten by the fists of Jews and Romans alike constantly. They also struck him on the head with a staff over and over.  Only after the hours and hours of torture did they actually crucify him, and crucifixion is not a quick death. 

The nails in his hands and feet must have sent searing, burning, pain shooting up his legs and arms, as his body was hung in that state of constant, debilitating pain for hours on end. Physically, there was not much more that he could have undergone. 

The craziest thing though, is that he chose to endure all of that. It was elective suffering, suffering that one chooses to endure for a greater purpose.

At any moment he could have put an end to it, right then and there. Or God could have created us without free will, as robots that always worshipped him so as to prevent our sin. But, having known ahead of time what kind of pain he would have to endure on that day, he created us, we sinned, and he redeemed us.

Suffering of any sort is hard. It sucks. But a true test of perseverance is when someone chooses to accept suffering and pain and trials and hardships when he or she doesn't even have to, knowing that it will be worth it in the end. Despite the agony he felt, Jesus chose to suffer so that we would be redeemed to Him. Author Joshua Ryan Butler said it perfectly: 

"Jesus is a lion and the cross is his prey. He is running to the cross as a man on a mission. The cross is not happening to Jesus, Jesus is happening to the cross."

I think that when we embrace suffering and hardship as Christ did, we may grow to become more like Him. In our culture, we tend to forget about the intensity of the spiritual and physical suffering that Christ went through. We also tend to forget about the suffering - the violence and poverty - that is going on in the world right now, outside of our own little bubbles.  

We're so fortunate that we actually have the luxury to choose to suffer if we want to. There is a lot of people who have no say in their conditions. Choosing to do hard things inspires me to serve others in less fortunate situations, and it humbles me. When I submit myself to elective physical or mental suffering I feel closer to the Lord and I feel I can relate just a little better to people who have no choice in their suffering.  The Lord embraced hardship, and he uses hardship to mold us into who he wants us to be. 

I'm not saying that you need to go have a week long "suffer-fest" of working out to grow closer in your relationship with the Lord, or that in order to serve in a third world country you need to go live on a dollar a day for a year (although imagine what kind of difference that would make in how you live day-to-day.). All I'm saying is to remember all that Christ went through, and in little everyday things, embrace the suck, embrace the fires of life, and embrace the growth and fresh perspective that come with it all.