The Gift of Complexity
“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”
I like complex things. The stranger, the darker, the more tangled the plot of a good story, the better—as long as it eventually becomes less strange, at least somewhat enlightened, and less entangled. I don’t want it all tied up with a bow, no. I want to dig in deep and ask the questions that no one else will. I want the themes and characters to be addressed with the nuance that they deserve. I don’t want it whitewashed with a “happily ever after” if it wasn’t earned… and even then, I don’t often want the happily ever after, because life doesn’t work that way.
Life is complex. People are complex.
Oh, we try to simplify it, try to put people in boxes with personality typing or archetypes or occupation or interests and hobbies. Don’t get me wrong, I love personality typing, but I’ve realized that people are far more complex than any system we use to try to understand them.
At the end of the day, we only have our stories, and we are the only ones who can tell them to any degree of honesty.
Some of us have been pressed on every side since birth, it feels like. We’ve endured abuses and trauma, bullying and backstabbing. Some of us have been pressed down by trials, suffering, losses, and grief. Some of us have been perplexed beyond explanation by the events of our lives; it makes no sense, but that’s how it is, and it is all you can do to move on. Some of us have endured more knocks than a human should reasonably take.
Our lives are complex. It is not enough to say, while enduring unbearable suffering and pain, “Oh, but it will get better, because God is good.”
Yes, God is good. Life, though, is sometimes not good, and there is no guarantee that life will get better earthside.
It’s okay to admit that, I think. Admitting that you are suffering, pressed down, beaten, and nearly crushed is not a moral or spiritual failure. It is the human condition, on this side of Christ’s return.
Oh, how we long for Christ’s return! We long for redemption, restoration, and wholeness. We long for an end to this trial on earth, the loved ones who are diagnosed with cancer, the surgeries that are unending, and the pain of rejection from those you thought were friends.
The end goal, Christ’s return, is a great reason for hope. But it is not a reason to wipe away our present sorrows. I have felt the stigma of suffering, the glances that say, “Surely you should be over that by now,” or “Jesus is coming! This is not the end of the story.” They’re not wrong; however, they are not compassionate, either.
Christ entered into our sufferings, wholly, completely. Hebrews 4:15 says that “Jesus was tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” He was tempted to despair. He was tempted to end his mortal existence because the pain was too great. He was tempted to escape the pain, there in the garden of Gethsemane.
“Yet, not my will, but yours be done.” (Lk 22:42)
By strength of will—of heart? Of soul?—Christ endured great suffering on behalf of the humanity which he, the Word made flesh, had created with a breath. Our bodies, too, share in his sufferings. The apostle Paul wrote that he had no greater desire than "to know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and to share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death." (Phil 3:10)
To know Christ is to know suffering. It’s a hard thing, and so counter to the prosperity gospel messages that proclaim blessing and wealth to all who believe. The life of Christ is not self-aggrandizement but rather suffering with humanity in great darkness and moral complexity.
Franciscan monk, Richard Rohr, says, “The Divine Mind transforms all human suffering by identifying completely with the human predicament and standing in full solidarity with it from beginning to end. This is the real meaning of the crucifixion… The cross was the price Jesus paid for living in a “mixed” world, which is both human and divine, simultaneously broken and utterly whole.” (The Universal Christ, 146)
What, then, is our hope in Jesus Christ? Not here, not now, not even in the life to come (though surely that!), but in the life past, in the crucifixion, in the suffering in the garden and the touch of every crippled, damaged person along the path to Jerusalem. Our hope is God With Us in our suffering.
Wherever you are, you are not alone. You have not suffered in vain. Christ suffers with you; he bears your pain alongside you; he may not remove it, not just yet, but he bears the cross.
The hope, of course, is also resurrection—life with Christ as he rose from the grave, scarred as he was with the marks of his humanity. Our suffering marks us; we are changed and transformed by the wrongs done to us and the trials of a broken world. We would be weak, atrophic people if not for the strain of suffering to strengthen us, allowing us in turn to strengthen others who walk through the same valleys of death.
We are complex people with a complex Saviour who wore the same skin we do, walked the same roads we do, endured the same pains we do—for what? For the sake of love for one another and for this creation, we bear these marks; he bore the marks. It is a gift, this complexity of being human, to us and to our Christ. What else can we do but bear the cross and follow him?
Photo by Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on Unsplash
