Friday, March 03, 2006
Redemptive Suffering
The Bride of Christ needs to learn how to receive mistreatment - how not to have to defend herself. God is her husband and defender. Mistreatment can be seen as "redemptive suffering" which should not be despised - it counts for something. God will use it to form and mold us - exposing weaknesses and faultlines. Mistreatment is a test which contains an avenue of transformation - it takes you to a place of "leaning on your Lover" Not defending myself - an opportunity to lean on Jesus and let Him purge my soul of weaknesses. There is something better than being right in life - being free from pride and dying to self-protection.
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I think you would agree that just because we are in the will of God does not mean that life is now easy and everything goes the way we want it to. God is not in the business of making our lives everything we want it to be. No, rather He is fully committed to making us every bit like Jesus which is not necessarily a comfortable or pleasant process. Thus the use of the word "sufferring". I think christians in general have a very unrealistic fake view of who God is, what role He intended to play in our lives and how important our own opinion is or isn't. Mistreatment comes from many directions but ultimately it is God who directs the ebb and flow of a committed life. So, can we not assume that mistreatment from whatever direction, can be used by God to form us and make us? Then can we not equally presume that God allows mistreatment in our lives for the same purpose? I am not talking about discipline or the results of our own not-so-great decisions and/or actions. I am talking about out-of-nowhere even undeserved mistreatment from our fellow human beings.
"Mistreatment is a test of your maturity".
Mistreatment = suffering.
Test of maturity and resulting growth = redemptive.
I think we agree - we're just using words defined differently. More on the "Leaning" part later...
Perhaps it would be helpful if you tell me what you understand "mistreatment" and "suffering" to be. It is absolutely true that Jesus took upon Himself the sins of the world and paid the penalty for that sin so that we could be reconciled to the Father and to rescue us from eternal death (separation from God). But nowhere do I see that we will escape suffering and mistreatment in this world because of His death, in fact, if anything there is a promise that we will suffer. But lets start with clearly delineating these two words. Mistreatment and Suffering.
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