The DNA of Suffering

Today, while walking back from the grocery store, I read a section out of Tim Keller's book The Reason for God. He was addressing the common argument against God about how or why a good god could allow so much suffering to happen. In his answer he finishes by explaining that the reward of Heaven is not some consolation for our earthly suffering, but a transformation and reconciliation of that suffering that makes it new. He emphasises with a quote from C.S. Lewis:

"They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not
knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that
agony into glory."

Something familiar about this caught me. I stopped reading and in a moment I knew what it was; Darkness and Light.

In prior posts I have used certain analogies and language given to me by God in scripture such as: turning deserts to gardens and darkness becoming light. These references have haunted me and caught me in a place where I had to review my position on suffering. As I have explained, I have a past that continues to wreak havoc in my mind. Through the years I have healed to an amazing level of functioning, but never felt fully healed. When challenged by God to revisit this past and imagine the possibility of a new level of healing, I was resistant, defiant and confused. As you journey through my posts, you may notice that I have been learning a lot. And though the visitation to some of my darkest places was (to say the least) unpleasant, a pattern of theology has emerged that I could only know through watching the transformation of my darkness into light.

"Impossible," I said. "Darkness and light are mutually exclusive. Evil can have good come out of it, but it does not become Good. They, like light and dark, are mutually exclusive." Perhaps a bit like agony becoming glory as Lewis mentioned. How does this happen? How can it be? Today, I was bestowed a culmination of my questions into answers provided by this journey. I would like to share with you what I found.

There had to be a paradigm shift. I viewed suffering as many of us do. I, as a follower of the Way, wanted God to rescue me from suffering. We see it scripture all the time, right? Deliverance from the fiery furnace, shutting the jaws of the lions in Daniel's den, and so many others. What happens is that we 'tunnel vision' ourselves on these examples. So when the lions start working their way up our legs we begin to wonder: "Why has God not delivered me? Is He a bad god? Am I a bad follower? What went wrong?"
OR
We opt for tunnel #2: We see that suffering is sometimes allowed in scripture. Job suffered, Christ died, Elijah was banished, but in the end all things are restored. We see that the suffering is justifiable so long as we get something good to make up for it. Suffering without explanation or tangible restoration is unacceptable.
OR
Tunnel #3: Suffering must have meaning. Sure, Paul was beaten a lot and Stephen was stoned but it was not in vain. Keller mentions this in his book as well. We always try to make things like suffering and death be 'not in vain'. Meaning must be brought to suffering or else what was the point?
We opt for these three common viewpoint because suffering is just plain old suffering. Just like darkness is just dark and deserts are not gardens. Suffering does not change. You either make the best out of it or it is pointless. Good can come from it, but there is nothing that changes Evil into Good, right? I thought so, too. I knew that all the Evil in my past was never going to be anything more than just pure Evil. I could remove and better myself, but nothing would ever change the essence of what I was or did. The past is the past. Suffering stays the same. The cheese stands alone.
I'm sure you may have heard the concept of 'freedom' in Christianity applied to suffering. Yet, so often, we make it to be "freedom from suffering" and not "freedom in suffering". I wanted to experience freedom FROM my past because I figured there was no way to experience freedom IN my past. The difference is simple but crucial. How in world can something so mutually exclusive as darkness and light be made into each other? Darkness gets a new DNA. Suffering gets a new DNA. God works on a whole new level and creates new realm of possibilities. Even agony BECOMES glory.
We get so stuck on measuring God by our circumstances. I do this all the time. God is only good when he rescues me FROM suffering or at least gives me some restoration or AT LEAST an explanation. If I get none of these, then God is just a bad god who doesn't give a damn. But He has opened my eyes. I got to journey back through some of the most painful and gut wrenching times of my life so that I could learn this lesson: like water into wine, God has changed the DNA of my suffering. Freedom IN suffering is like nothing I can describe. It is other worldly. It is a concept so foreign to our humanity that we miss it constantly in scripture.
Keller and Lewis are suggesting that what God does to our suffering is different than just rewarding us later or making it up to us with Heaven. Its as if God, by giving us His Spirit and bestowing on us abilities to transcend the rules of cause and affect, transforms our suffering and darkness into the very thing it can not be: joy and light. Not just making the best of it, but changing it.
This explains so much when you think about it. The disciples, apostles and martyrs, those listed in the 'hall of faith' (Heb 11) and others; they found a way to somehow transcend their suffering. It was as if they had a secret. The way you do when you get old enough and spankings don't really hurt anymore, but you try not to let on so that the parents don't change tactics. Okay, lame analogy. But I just see all these guys (and gals) looking into the face of their earthly suffering and NOT saying "This is gonna hurt, but at least I get to go to Heaven". They seem to look at it as if it DOESN'T hurt. I know they suffered. I know it hurt. It killed them. But they had a manner about it as if they knew something their captors did not. Suffering was not just suffering. They had joy. A joy that freed them from the despair brought on by suffering. It was more than hope and more than optimism; it was peace. It was joy! It was everything suffering is not and yet the suffering happened. They knew something, like the kid who knows the spanking won't hurt. They took it because darkness while remaining darkness was also light.

So, are you confused yet? This is some pretty incredible stuff. Impossible really. I wish I had better analogies or a magic way of providing clarity. All I can do is tell you what I saw. I went back to darkness. Nothing changed about my past. All events and outcomes stayed just as they were. The only thing that changed was the threat of the outcome. I am no longer afraid of the dark. Who can be afraid of the dark when enlightened to that fact that it is actually light? My past is still a wreck. It will forever remain a tangle of awful and terrifying experiences. But I no longer feel the weight of it. The daggers of shame, grief and depression that have loomed over my healing have burst like fireworks into butterflies. Agony becomes glory. When Christ transformed me, He transformed my sin and suffering along with it. I do not have to default to the "old rules". Suffering has a new DNA. It is made up of Joy.