Today, April 3, is Good Friday, the solemn day when Christians everywhere remember the suffering, crucifixion, and death of Jesus Christ. Now, roughly 2,000 years since Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, humanity seems determined to avoid even mildly suffering, prioritizing comfort and convenience above all else – but at what cost?
Socrates is often credited with observing that “life without experience and sufferings is not life.” His point is as relevant today as it was in ancient Greece. The uncomfortable truth is that suffering willingly embraced for a greater purpose is critical to a meaningful life.
Suffering Is Inevitable
Let’s face it: Suffering is an inescapable part of life. Estimates indicate that at least 24% of Americans – more than 60 million people – suffer from chronic pain, and more than 23% of American adults have a mental illness. These issues don’t even begin to cover the extent to which humans experience distress.
Take Saint Thomas More, who knew a thing or two about suffering. After refusing to legitimize King Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn when the king declared himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England in direct opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, More was imprisoned in the Tower of London in April 1534. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to death – but before he was beheaded, More penned A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, a book exploring suffering, temptation, and persecution.
More makes the case that suffering loses its sting when linked to a higher calling: “If our hearts were truly not in this world but in heaven, all the torments that the world could devise would give us no pain.” The martyr understood that the question is not whether suffering will occur, but how it will be met.
The Discipline of Suffering
While the experience of suffering can be emotionally or physically painful, the effects don’t have to be. Consider the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspective:
“The discipline of suffering, of great suffering — do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness — was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”
Treating suffering as a discipline doesn’t eliminate the pain, but it does transform it. One of the most universal examples of this takes place in hospitals around the world: childbirth is excruciatingly painful and exhausting, but in the end, a beautiful child is brought into the world. While not all suffering carries the same weight, purpose can be found in all suffering with the right mindset.
On this Good Friday, the faithful and the skeptical alike can learn from the example of Jesus Christ: suffering can become a force for good, if only one has the mindset and discipline to endure it.
