To cope with this reality, we desensitize ourselves and detach ourselves from others who are suffering. Pain is inevitable none of us is able to opt out of it.Īs a minister for fifty years, I’ve spent my life helping people in pain, and I’ve never had to look far to find it. The type varies – it may be physical, relational, mental, emotional, financial, social, or spiritual – but it all hurts. Almost everyone is living with some kind of pain. In my experience my pain is most often assuaged in comforting others, as best I can, who are in more pain than I am.īecause we live in a world broken by sin, life is painful. We are all human and too often seek only relief from the pain we feel.

I also agree with Warren’s five points, but I think we live in a lonely world where the church and those in it often seem so distant when we struggle with our pain.

Perhaps the most difficult thing is to stay sensitive and just listen or stay silent when there is nothing to say. I agree with Warren when he says (though I am not in ministry) “One of the great challenges in my ministry has been to stay sensitive while witnessing so much distress.” There is too often too little we can do to help those in serious pain, yet we still have to be sensitive to that pain.” I know my first reaction to the suffering of others is to run from it because I am confronted by helplessness, my inability to help. Who determined its measurements-surely you know!” (Job 38: 1-5) The answer seems to be “who are you to question me.” God goes on to suggest that the beauty found in the universe is answer enough. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man I will question you, and you make it known to me. We are left with the answer God gave Job, Pain often confronts with what some regard as the most difficult theological problem, if good is all powerful and all good why is there suffering and injustice. The title suggests a pedestrian discussion of a painful experience, but is in fact one of rawest most honest accounts I have read of the experience of grief and pain. Later in life he wrote a book called A Grief Observed. Lewis seems, in the text, to realize the limitations of this view of pain but also seems to think it an important thing to understand. It is an insightful book that give philosophical/theological insights to pain and its purposes. Lewis that I read was The Problem of Pain.

Rick warren the purpose