We Can Hurt Too The Suffering Behind the Christian Mask
Galatians 6: 2 Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
It is another busy Sunday and there we are all in church. Catching up with people we haven't seen in a week, maybe longer. Inevitably the opening question is usually inquiring how each other is doing. Inevitably the answer is usually "blessed!" We continue on our way to greet more people before the service starts and never stop to consider the cold hard reality of our lives is that we are often too scared, self-conscious, or even proud to admit that as Christians, we too can hurt sometimes. How many people say "blessed" behind their Christian mask, only to go home in the same level of pain with which they came in with? We have a tendency to over-spiritualize our answers to everything, further compounding the problem. "All we need is Christ!" That of course is an over-simplification. It is not God's design to place billions of people on His creation we call Earth and have them not interact! In Galatians 6: 2 we actually see the Apostle Paul teach us that if we truly seek to fulfill the law of Christ then we are to carry each other's burdens. Yet far too often, we put on our Christian mask and hide our suffering and pain. Why should this be so?
Fear. We are by nature a fearful people. We are afraid that somehow suffering is a sign of weakness, as if this somehow speaks less of our walk and our relationship with God. We know in our hearts that the joy of the Lord is our strength and somehow turn that into meaning that if we are lacking joy, we must not be close with the Lord. How do we know this is not so? Jesus Himself said so:
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33
Note that Jesus completely understood that we would have troubles in this life. Additionally, His assurance does not indicate that because He has overcome the world that you will escape tribulation. Rather, He is showing us the way to overcome the troubles. Ultimately, Jesus is that way. That does not remove the fact that we will be faced with times when our joy is fleeting. It does not however speak to the sincerity or depth of your relationship with God! Consider that Martin Luther once wrote, "For more than a week I was close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled in all my members. Christ was wholly lost." According to Martin Luther's biographer, Roland Bainton, Luther found himself "subject to recurrent periods of exaltation and depression of spirit." Luther himself had written that "the content of the depressions was always the same, the loss of faith that God is good and that he is good to me."
Remember beloved, it is the world that tells us that weakness is a character defect, not Christ. In fact, as usual, God has a completely different perspective on weakness. In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, he speaks about receiving a thorn in his flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment him. He pleaded with God to take this thorn away three times and God's answer was always the same and reveals how God views our weaknesses:
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2Corinthians 12: 9-10
It is through weakness that God's power rests upon us! It is not His design that we are to walk around in pain; pretending that everything is all right while privately suffering. You are not alone in your pain and God did not intend for you to carry the burden alone. Historic preacher Charles Spurgeon, a key figure in the nineteenth-century revival movement, suffered so severely with depression that he was forced to be absent from his pulpit for two to three months a year. In 1866 he explained to his congregation the struggle: "I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go [through]." He further explained that during these depressions, "Every mental and spiritual labor...had to be carried on under protest of spirit." Yet we can struggle daily with our hurt, as Spurgeon did, yet be afraid to express it to anyone. That fear may also be related to how others might view us if we were to admit the truth and that leads to the second main reason why we don't let people see the pain behind the mask.
