In this post, I will attempt to define pain. That is not an easy task, however, because to define is to categorize, and to categorize something as personal to an individual as pain seems rather ill-informed to the depth of pain an individual can experience. For example; “The Readers Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary” defines pain this way: “The unpleasant sensation or feeling resulting from or accompanying some injury, derangement, physical strain, or obstruction of the physical powers”. Yet all of us who have experienced pain know that there is more to it than just that sentence. So, unlike this dictionary, I will not define this four letter word. Instead, I will embark on a step by step analysis that I suppose one might find an acceptable substitution to a definition, at least I hope that to be the case so you don't view me as completely incompetent... So, let's begin.
Earlier this month I pulled up to the airport in Detroit. In the car with me was my Father, my mother, and my little brother. I got out of the car, hugged them all, received some encouraging and loving words, a sly slip of cash from my father, and a much mistier set of eyes. I, in that moment, experienced what one might call “pain”. It was very hard leaving my family. My senior year of high school I was skating through the neutral zone in one of my hockey games. I turned my head back to where a pass from one of my teammates was coming from. As that happened, someone on the opposing team blindsided me with a shoulder to the head. It hurt. I felt “pain”. Over the summer I read a book that transformed my life. It prepared me for the study of God that would come from attending Moody. The first night I was here in Spokane, a few of my housemates, including my RA, labeled the author of that book a “heretic”. That “pained” me. In late October, I got a text from my friend back home letting me know that the girl who I had left behind and who I became close to over the past summer had made some “negative decisions” with another guy one night. She had moved on, and that was “painful” for me.
I’m sure, at least I am hoping, that you caught onto the trend of what I’m getting at with the numerous instances of pain I’ve had in my life. We cannot give pain one distinct label. It isn’t an emotion or a feeling that can be limited by such a category. How do we define pain then? How can we even know what I am talking about it? How is it that you, the reader, relate with my stories? Well, one reason is because it is a universal theme in the world; terrible, horrible, sad, and “painful” things happen to us all. More importantly, however, is the fact that pain is a part of a cycle that is engrained within the human soul. There is a greater mechanism that pain is tied to that makes the awareness of it always applicable, even if we cannot define it.
Pain, along with a few other words that I will associate with it shortly, is a part of the cycle the Divine uses to let us know that we are alive, that life isn’t defined by darkness, and that the acceptation of balance in life is where we begin to embrace all emotion that attaches itself to any given life situation. Every single one of those experiences that I listed earlier yielded “pain”. Although they were all distinctly different in nature, there was something involved in them that was associated with a certain “lowness’ or “negativity”. The only way we are able to define such a circumstance however, is attaching other characteristics to the experience. There is no darkness without light, no silence without noise and so on. This is where the cycle I mentioned in the last paragraph comes in. The experience of pain is only properly defined by other factors. Pain resulting in the epitome of the negative. There’s pain at the bottom, hope being the step above it, and rejuvenation being the culmination or positive outcome of it all. The pain I felt leaving my family was stifled by the hope that my studies will one day benefit others and with that resulting in something I am not yet fully aware of. The pain from being hit in my hockey game gave me the hope that I could induce payback, the culmination being me scoring my first goal of the season that game. The pain of hearing someone I look up to being called a “heretic” led to the hope of me being able to open minds a bit more, to address what exactly “right vs. wrong” looks like, with this culminated in the incredibly beautiful and progressive conversations I’ve had with my small group of Moody guys (and other relationships and conversations down the road hopefully).The pain that came from hearing about that girl back home led to the hope that there was someone much better for me out here, the culmination still being a bit of a mystery. Notice how pain is never final, hope requires action, and the rejuvenation is not always immediately apparent.
If we look at pain through the lens of where we could potentially go because of it, not where the pain has trapped us, pain can be an incredible tool to help us progress and become motivated. Now how does this apply spiritually? This is where the fun comes in! Right now the world is full of pain, people are suffering daily, there is a large amount of people in the world who don’t even have access to water still, the most basic physical necessity of life. Yet our hope can be found through Jesus’s message that He is renewing all things, and him teaching us that we will go on to do far greater things than him. He is inviting us into the restoration of the world, and through this we experience the hope of justice. Not justice in the “people who have wronged me will burn in hell” kind of way, but justice in the sense that people will be able to have access to life in the most plain physical sense and life in the most beautiful and spiritual sense as well. Leading us to the very beautiful and amazing culmination of heaven being welcomed back to earth, because justice has been served to all who have been wronged, and now we can experience the beauty and harmony of all things living in peace with one another. Pain isn’t so bad after all, is it?!
If we try and define pain, we make it seem morbid. We give it no potential. It is like restricting a caterpillar to one state of physical life, limiting its ability to transform itself into the beautiful being God intends for it to become. Words need the potential to become more. They need to be able to tie themselves to other concepts so they don’t become trapped. God does not want pain and suffering to be in the world. The reason why he allows it however is to let humans experience the beauty of the incredibly transformative process I mentioned above. It is pain that can yield the most beauty, despair that leads to life. All we have to do is embrace and accept the journey.
