Written by Dawn Rutan
I confess, I’ve become addicted to Downton Abbey, but I didn’t expect it to be a source of theological inspiration. This week’s episode had me thinking late into the night. Earlier in the season, Anna was raped but she refused to tell her husband. Finally John found out and talks to Anna about it. She says she is spoiled and dirty because of what happened to her. John’s response could have come straight from the mouth of Jesus, “You’re not spoiled to me. You are made higher and holier to me because of the suffering you have endured.” (That may not be quite verbatim since I didn’t record the episode.)
We may not use the language of “spoiled,” but anyone who has been sinned against in a significant way has had similar thoughts. Dirty, broken, wounded, victim, marked, abused, hurt, suffering, damaged, incomplete, ruined… They are all words that try to describe how we feel, but they barely scratch the surface. One author I read recently talked about feeling like she had a mark on her forehead inviting people to abuse her as others had. It seems as though the whole world ought to be able to see the scars we carry because they feel so huge to us. It’s as if we have a hole where our heart should be.
It’s extremely difficult then to realize that God doesn’t see us that way (nor do many people). Instead, suffering conforms us to the image of Christ. (See Romans 8:18-39.) In Philippians 3:10, Paul shares his desire “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.” On the cross, Jesus not only bore the sins of mankind but also the results of the sins against us.
“He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.” –Isaiah 53:3-5
Jesus knows the full weight of the burdens we carry, because He has borne them Himself. He says to us, “You are not ruined to Me. You are made higher and holier because the suffering you have endured is making you like Me.”
In his book Shattered Dreams Larry Crabb writes:
“Shattered dreams open the door to better dreams, dreams that we do not properly value until the dreams that we improperly value are destroyed. Shattered dreams destroy false expectations, such as the ‘victorious’ Christian life with no real struggle or failure. They help us discover true hope. We need the help of shattered dreams to put us in touch with what we most long for, to create a felt appetite for better dreams. And living for the better dreams generates a new, unfamiliar feeling that we eventually recognize as joy.” (35)
Crabb points out that when we experience suffering, our tendency is to try to eliminate the pain by eliminating the desire for something better. But this is actually Buddhism, not Christianity. For the Christian, “The way to handle suffering is to discover your desire for God. Then everything, both good and bad, becomes redemptive. It moves us toward the God we desire” (72).
So the question is, are we allowing the pain and suffering of this world to refocus our desire on God and to make us more conformed to the image of Christ, or is it driving us away from relationship with the only One who can bring true healing? Likewise, does suffering push us into deeper relationship with people within the Body of Christ, or are we isolating ourselves from true community? As in Downton Abbey, pain and fear can cause us to cut off the relationships we need. But God keeps pursuing us in love, determined not to let us go too far. May we learn to seek the One who is seeking us.
“O God, You are my God; earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water… Because Your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise You” (Psalm 63:1,3).
