Facing Suffering and Not Losing Faith
Facing Suffering and Not Losing Faith
Can you have hope in the midst of pain?
Listen in: Facing Suffering and Not Losing Faith
As we continue our new series, Facing Reality and Not Losing Faith, we have a very special guest to talk to us about facing suffering. Curt Thompson is a prolific author, practicing psychiatrist, and expert in the field of IPNB – interpersonal neurobiology – and how it relates to the Christian life. In this episode, we discuss his newest book, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope. Specifically, we ask him this important question: How can you face suffering and not lose your faith? Let’s get to know Curt a little bit, and then see what he can teach us about suffering.
Curt in His Own Words
In our culture, we often ask the questions: “Who are you?” and “Who am I?” The thing about the biblical narrative that is so crucial, is that “Who are you?” is never asked. The question that the Bible asks is, “Who are you in relationship to whom?”
My sense of who I am is always in relationship to others. I've been married for 37 and a half years to Phyllis, and we've got two adult kids, a daughter who's 33 and a son who's 30. Those three relationships have been powerfully formational for me over the course of my life. I am blessed beyond imagination with friendships with people who know everything there is to know about me.
I've got a group of guys that I'm with every Tuesday morning for confession and prayer. We've been doing that for more than 25 years. We’ve been part of a church fellowship here in the Washington area for 30 years. I have a podcast with two friends, Pepper Sweeney and Amy Chella, that are also part of that. And I have a number of friendships, relationships, and included in that are the colleagues that I work with at my practice.
What do I do most days? I'm in the clinic three days a week taking care of patients. It's just unbelievable, the people that I get to work with. Another part of my work involves writing and speaking about the work of interpersonal neurobiology as it intersects Christian spiritual formation. And the third thing I'm involved with is a nonprofit called The Center for Being Known, which has a conference once a year.
The Depths of Suffering
As I was writing my book, I divided suffering into three different types:
Suffering from things that have happened to us at the hands of others
Suffering from what we’ve done to ourselves
Suffering that arises in the process of growing and trying to follow Jesus
As an example of the last category, one of my patients was in a situation that many of us can relate to. This woman tried to honor God by loving her family of origin well, despite the fact that they were toxic. It was one of those days where she had had yet one more moment in which she'd had an encounter with her family, and they had said or done something unpleasant. She said to me, “I can't do this anymore. Why does this keep happening?”
This is a woman who's suffering, but she’s suffering because she's doing the work. It hit me that if we're going to do the work of following Jesus, He is going to draw us into places of healing, but that healing journey may take us to a place where suffering's going to find us. And it can come for all kinds of reasons.
For instance, when someone says, “Why does this keep happening?” or “Where was God?” or “Why didn't my son come home from Iraq?”, we can recognize that those aren't really questions. Those are statements of anguish. I could tell someone why their son didn't come home from Iraq, if I had all the data, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
When my patient says, “I can't do this anymore”, when anybody says this to us, we get anxious. I want to come up with a way to resolve their distress mostly so that I won't be anxious. Instead, what we want to do is to hear it for what it is. My impulse is to just get rid of her grief when what God is saying, no, Curt, what she doesn't need is the absence of her grief. She needs the presence of you. God says in Isaiah, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you”.
One of the main points of the book is to help us understand that the way we can enable people to have courage to face suffering is if they don’t have to do it by themselves.
The Formation of Hope
Hope is anticipation of well-being in the future. The things that I'm hoping for are going to be those things that enable me to have the experience of well-being. Christians have words for this, that we will have joy, that we will have peace, that we will be loved. We often hope for material things. Because we are made in God's image and hardwired for relational connection, what seems like material desires are actually hopes and longings for a relationship.
Hope takes work and it is formed in the context of relationships. If I'm in crisis and I am looking for hope, a good first step is to read the first five verses of Romans 5, and remember that Paul was writing to a community:
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
When you read those verses, it’s tempting to think “How can I, on my own, move from suffering, to perseverance, to character, to hope?” That’s not the way human beings work. The first question is, “Who are the people who are your cloud of witnesses?” It’s understandable how many of us got to that default, because so much of our story taught us that we were alone. That we didn’t have parents or siblings or friends who cared about us. This is what it means to live in a fallen world. You’ve learned, maybe not consciously, that you are alone.
What is powerful for people is when they can acknowledge that they are worthy of receiving Jesus' love. The hardest thing that I've seen for a lot of people, for understandable reasons, is to hear from somebody, “You're okay. You’re loved.”
You might say, “I'm aware that Jesus loves me, but I still feel unlovable.” That’s the part of you that I actually want to have more conversation with. That's not a part that I want you to get rid of. What you need in that moment is for someone to be the body of Christ to you through their eye contact, their voice, their presence.
Some Takeaways from the Book
I encourage people to be curious about and to pursue community. That's the first thing. I want them to know that where and how they are suffering is something that Jesus honors. Whether we are suffering because of things that have happened to us or because of things that we are doing to ourselves, Jesus doesn't walk in the room and say, “The only reason you’re suffering is because you’re not getting your life together.” He’s WITH US in this. And when we are WITH others in their suffering, we are the embodied presence of this hope. We literally are the gospel when we are with those who are hurting.
I want people to recognize that there is work for them to do when it comes to their suffering and the formation of hope. If we want hope, God takes that very seriously. He wants human partnerships. If we are going to rule the world as kings and queens, if we're going to rule over angels one day, then we need to be practicing our job. And that means we have to work at this. We will heal to the degree that we are allowing others to come closer, and that we are willing to come close to others in vulnerable communities.
We appreciate Curt taking the time to be part of WYITW! Find out more here: