the bunker mentality...
Sufferology
December 17, 2001 — One of the basic ways that we can examine the fundamental differences between modern corporate Christianity and the true spiritual Christianity of the bible, is for us to intently watch how professing Christians interact with the idea of suffering. The dramatic differences grow ever more stark as we hold those most strenuous and trying of thoughts up to the light of the reality of the Gospel that was preached of the Apostles and of Christ.
I hear from the throats of the American preacher that we are to “be a Christian just where we are”, and that what matters most is how we relate with those that are “unchurched” and not how we relate to truth and with spiritual reality. The bookshelves of the corporate Christian bookstores are filled with the how-to books of comfortable Christianity: How to get along with the family and how to get along at work, and How to proclaim your faith quietly WITHOUT losing your friends or your job or your head.
It is the subtle tyranny of low expectations.
Paul says a strange thing to those of the brethren there in that city of Corinth. He says,
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”
What a strange thing this is for our brother Paul to say if we can merely expect to live a life both pleasant and comfortable among men. It is stranger that Paul did not say that “if Christ be not resurrected, well, we still had a pretty nice, quiet and peaceful life”. The facts of Paul’s life show that he lived a life quite opposed to that other life of comfort so unanimously promoted from the preachers of this wicked era. For it is this same Paul, writing to these same believers in Corinth, who tells us that he has preached this Gospel, approving himself as the minister of God in such things as afflictions and necessities and distresses, and in stripes and imprisonments and tumults, in labours and watchings and fastings. What are these words and experiences that sound so strange to our ears? Why would Paul say that if the dead rise not at all, then “Why stand we in jeopardy every hour?”
Why would he say such things as this:
“I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.”
I do not think that Paul was suggesting that a life devoid of the resurrection should be one lived in lasciviousness and licentiousness. Rather, since those things are ultimately detrimental to a comfortable and pleasurable life, I think that Paul was saying that if there be no life beyond this life, why don’t we live this life peacefully and quietly in the simple pleasures (food and drink and friends and shelters), not engaging in those things that will bring about pain and suffering, discomfort and strife? Do we not know that by proclaiming, believing or living such a lie we, by default, deny the resurrection of Christ?
Is it a comfortable gospel that inspires riots and stonings, tortures and crucifixions?
The lexicon of suffering is so strange to the ears and eyes of the professed Christian masses, that we must, at last, wonder along with Paul what folly has been wrought with this false gospel of comfort that is preached?
Paul had embarked on a life that he himself considered “miserable” and pitiable from a carnal standpoint. He was not encouraged that he had the ear of every man from those of the philosophers on Mars hill to the pagans in Ephesus. He was not satisfied that kings and rulers desired to hear of his doctrine. Paul did not believe in Jesus and the resurrection so that he might live a peaceable life sewing tents. He sewed tents so that he could finance a life of pain, suffering and sacrifice – knowing that through such he might attain to a HIGHER resurrection.
The Word is the spiritual sword that divides that which is carnal from that which is spiritual. Through it Paul teaches us that living a life in spiritual contact with the Father will inevitably put us in perils in this temporal life. That Highest Life of God lived out through a sickly tentmaker named Paul brought him Joy and freedom in suffering, not Joy in freedom from suffering.
From this we learn that suffering is the hallmark of a Christian life lived.
We must learn of it and taste of it now, while it is not too late. Not that we must run to a life of pain. Rather, we know that if we run to a life lived according to God, we will surely suffer those temporal punishments and spiritual benefits that such a life engenders. It is not a religious life, it is an intense spiritual life of contrasting experiences: Spiritual Joy and Temporal Suffering.
Any other gospel preached is a gospel that proclaims that gain is godliness, and from such we are surely to separate ourselves.
I am your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
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