If you’ve spent a month or more within evangelicalism you will know that Christian “self help” is a massive industry, and there is a lot of money to be made in guiding people from Point A to Point B. Whether it’s the “Five Stones to Slay Your Life’s Goliaths” or some secret formula for spiritual victory like The Prayer of Jabez or The Purpose-Driven Life, there is no end to the attempts to help sincere Christians avoid suffering and achieve that sense of wholeness that they crave.
I would submit that this entire approach is not only wrong, it’s anti-Christian.
If the cross of Calvary teaches us anything, it is that for Jesus there was simply no easier route, no detour or Plan B that he could have followed in order to achieve his goal. As Luke puts it, when the time was drawing near for Jesus to die, he “steadfastly set his face” toward Jerusalem (9:51). And despite several pleas and temptations not to submit to such a cursed death, he rebuked the very suggestions as Satanic.
Now if Calvary was just a one-off event for Jesus to endure that has nothing to do with us, then by all means keep paying that therapist to help you climb your stairway to heaven. But if we’re actually supposed to bear our crosses as well, then we need to not only stop trying to avoid the existential ache we feel but learn how to lean in to it and find our true joy there.
In sum, any attempt to disassociate joy and suffering is folly from a Christian perspective, and is as misguided as seeking to divorce springtime from winter, the crown from the cross, or Easter Sunday from Good Friday. The ache is so woven into the fabric of life that even the cosmos itself feels the burden.
Our job is not to try to avoid the ache and get to Point B, but to allow our hearts to find their joy in the midst of the crosses we bear in this life.
[…] it would otherwise be. People want their Five Keys, Seven Habits, or Twelve Steps. To build upon my last post, they want to be told, very clearly, how they can go from Point A to Point […]