the problem of pain

I may or may not have stolen the title for this post from a c.s. lewis book.

I have not read this book, and this post is not about that book.

but I like the title anyways.

Pain sucks. for the past 2 months I've been dealing with chronic joint pain. It started out in my knees, but has progressed to just about every joint in my body, from my neck to my toes. Last week I was diagnosed with rheumatory arthritis. which is essentially the immune system going haywire to the point that it attacks the body's joints, causing inflammation and pain in the joints.

This is not fun.

But this post isn't about that.

This post is about responding to that.

When the realization that I will be taking pills for the rest of my life to deal with this, and that even then, nothing is guaranteed, I was angry. Angry at God for allowing this to happen to me. Haven't I been faithful? Haven't I done work for your kingdom? How am I supposed to get up early and have a quiet time if i can barely get out of bed and ready on time because of the pain. How can I stay in shape and take care of my body? Why God? Why do you hit me with this on top of everything else I have going on in my life?

And to be honest, I still go back to this massive self-pity party sometimes, I still have moments where I let myself get angry at God because of this. But I was quickly reminded of what my friend Derek would say.

"This is not how God intended it to be."

And he's right. When God created the world, everything he created was good. There was no pain, no suffering and no death... until the fall. But now we live in a world that is corrupted by the fall. Our relationship with God, with others, with our environments and with ourselves have been corrupted by the fall. This includes pain. God never intended for us to feel pain, but we were selfish, we chose to be selfish, and the resulting world is broken because of it.

And Christ has redeemed our spirits, but not yet our bodies. So while we've been given spiritual freedom in Christ, our bodies our still bound to this world. Following Christ doesn't mean you are less likely to get cancer, or AIDS, or arthritis. We have to deal with these things like the rest of the world. Though we should deal with it better than the rest, because we have eternity to look towards. We should have hope for freedom from this broken world.

We often don't.

We feel like we're entitled to more.

That we've earned the right to a good life.

That's nowhere in scripture. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that we should expect to live a life free of pain. That if things go like they should, we'll live a happy, pain-free life. In my opinion, that is the problem of pain. That we are surprised when we encounter it. That we are unprepared to deal with it because we've grown up in good neighborhoods and with bad theology. I hope I learn to deal with it better, and learn to trust God despite it.