speaker-0: couldn't he just have made this perfect world, None of us suffer any pain or any difficulties of any sort. Would that not be a better situation?

speaker-1: the big question. My thoughts on this are that

speaker-0: in that moment you weren't miraculously healed and walked out the room in a new body. have you had a conversation with God about that? How does that conversation usually go?

speaker-1: We've talked many times. Generally speaking, I do the talking. what I've found about God, is

speaker-0: Welcome to Bible After Hours.

speaker-1: yeah

speaker-0: we are here in the Black Horse and we're going to be talking to Tony tonight, We set this podcast up to explore what the Bible is all about, its impact and relevance on modern day life, Western culture. And we thought we'd put it in a pub with some mates and an audience. Why not? So hopefully we'll have some good fun, but we have got well quite interesting topic tonight quite serious topic on suffering it's gonna be a deep one tonight. I think we'll see

speaker-2: I think it will go quite deep,

speaker-0: Yeah So we are in the black horse mentioned this is our new venue so if you want to come along in the future then do come along to Northfield and As last time we are also filming it which is a new experience for us all If you haven't seen any of our previous ones, then you can check out our website, is BibleAfterHours.com. We are on all the socials, so you can find us on there. Do follow us and find us on YouTube or whatever and give us a positive rating. Our podcasts are on all the usual platforms. We have our dictionary corner. Pete? Hi,

speaker-2: Hello?

speaker-0: thanks for coming along again.

speaker-2: Thanks Luke, it's good to be here.

speaker-0: Looking forward to it. Last session we did was on wisdom and doing life well with Andrew and Rosie.

speaker-2: It was indeed.

speaker-0: So that was all around the friends that you choose and the wisdom of the Proverbs.

speaker-2: We tried to write our own proverbs as well, didn't we?

speaker-0: We wrote our own proverbs as well, And things like how to make good decisions, well worth checking out. So we welcome anybody to come along and join us here or check us out online. Now we have some house rules which Pete do you want to go through?

speaker-2: We do, so our house rules, three of them. The first one is know yourself. So everyone comes with their own preoccupations, their backgrounds, their hangups. So please be aware of that and please come with an open mind. Secondly, nobody knows everything. So hopefully we can listen to each other and learn something. And finally, don't shoot the messenger. Please be kind and have fun.

speaker-0: Is everybody happy with the rules of the game? Yes, good. Brilliant, the topic is on suffering Pete people have been asking us to cover this for some time It's one of those popular topics one of those regular questions that come up Why does God allow suffering and I think it's probably one of the most googled questions about God So hopefully we're gonna go cover quite a lot of stuff today First we thought we would ask the audience a question around suffering. what was the question and what were the responses?

speaker-2: So the question was a rating question. We had to give a rating out of five stars. The question was how much suffering do you feel that you are facing at the moment? You could give your amount of suffering one star two star three stars four stars or five stars

speaker-0: full 5 stars of

speaker-2: Five stars are the most serious suffering. No one naught percent of people said five Probably a good thing

speaker-0: That's probably a relief. People suffering that much.

speaker-2: The most common answer was actually the lowest number of stars as well where around half the people said actually the lowest amount of suffering, which is good, good for our audience.

speaker-0: Indeed. If you did this at the end of the night, whether that would have changed.

speaker-2: And then some people with their art, so somewhere in the two, three or four styles.

speaker-0: Right, so we've got, what is it, 11 % on 4 stars. So we've got some people in the room who feeling like they're under the kosh tonight.

speaker-2: Possibly. I think it's really important as we start this topic to mention this because actually when it comes to suffering, sometimes it's good to have a theoretical conversation, to have some answers, to do some thinking. Sometimes if one of your friends or you is suffering, actually they don't want a really technical heavy answer, they just want someone to hold their hand, someone to cry with them, someone to share their pain. And actually, there's a real balance there. There's a famous Christian author called C.S. Lewis. He wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, lots of things. He wrote two books about suffering. One was The Problem of Pain, very theoretical, very Oxford, Cambridge academic arguments in an accessible way. The other book is called A Grief Observed, and it's a book just after his wife had died. Two

speaker-0: Imagine very

speaker-2: very different aspects of suffering. And I think that it's important to remember both of those things. And actually, if... Something that comes up that's in the conversation tonight comes up if you're listening to the podcast actually Talk to someone if something triggers in you or something. There's something that arises You know don't get don't go away without addressing those things in a sensible way because this is that this is a it's a theoretical subject And it's a deeply personal subject as well

speaker-0: Right, we're going to endeavour to cover all aspects of it tonight, but yeah, the personal I think we're going to kick off with probably first with Tony and then we'll go more into the theoretical maybe in the second part of the evening, both of which are important, but really I think that the personal experiences of people probably speaks most to this topic. So we're going to welcome Tony.

speaker-1: Thank you.

speaker-0: Good to have you along. It's a It's very brave of you to come along. This is a scary situation.

speaker-1: I'm fine so far.

speaker-0: Well, we appreciate you being here. You're part of our wider church and I think I actually remember hearing you doing a talk on suffering some years back. That obviously stuck with me somewhere in my brain.

speaker-2: It stuck with me as well.

speaker-0: we were discussing topics that we could do, this one stood out and so we thought we'd come and ask you and you were brave enough to say yes. So we're going to go through go through your experiences of life and then your contemplations on suffering as well, which is a topic, I think, that's maybe closer to your heart than maybe some other people. So I'd be interested to know, Tony, firstly, just a little bit about yourself and why is suffering something that is in any way of an interest to you?

speaker-1: So, yes, I've been coming to Birmingham Vineyard for quite a long time the reason I suppose why I'm here now talking about this is because suffering hasn't been an academic thing to me. If you are listening to this rather than watching and you don't know me, I have a genetic disability called pseudo-chondroplasia, which is every bit as fun as it sounds. But I inherited it from my father, who also had it. And interestingly, when mum and dad were planning a family way back in the prehistory of the 1960s, they were told that it could not be inherited. But that turned out to be wrong. So I have that disability. And what it means in practice is that the growth plates on my arms and legs as a child did not work properly. So I have short arms and legs. And also, for added fun, my joints are effectively deformed in my legs especially. And I've got very bad arthritis because of that. So I use a wheelchair and chronic pain is kind of the music playing in the background of my life. I think it's fair to say.

speaker-0: I going to say, this must be a, it's in every waking moment of your life, this condition affects you, right? In both in pain, in how you access the world, interact with the world. Has it shaped you in some way or another, do you think? I assume it must have.

speaker-1: Yes, I mean absolutely and obviously it's difficult to imagine the kind of person I would be if I hadn't have had it because there's no frame of reference for that. But it certainly made me think about things that I probably would not have thought about before and I would like to think that I am a more thoughtful and empathetic caring person than maybe I would have been. And I've certainly spent a lot of time wrestling with some of the questions that we're going to be talking about this evening.

speaker-0: Yeah, so when we first chatted, you also mentioned that you were thinking about writing even a book about the whole thing. So there's obviously a lot of thoughts that have gone into this topic. How does this sit with your faith? Because you're a Christian, right? So you're living daily with both those things, with the tension of having that faith and belief in a God that is all powerful and all loving, whilst at the same time sort of dealing with the day-to-day suffering that in your instances sort of baked in from the beginning.

speaker-1: it is interesting to believe in and worship a God who I know has the power and has the love to click his fingers and at any moment radically heal my body. And I believe there are reasons why that has not happened yet. probably won't happen this side of my death But I guess ultimately I became a Christian when I was 11 and it was the first time that I heard the gospel of Jesus in a way that I recognized and I know that that evening in my bedroom I said yes. to Jesus and this feeling went through my body which is very difficult to describe but it was the most intense sense of being loved and the presence of God and it's something which absolutely couldn't be manufactured artificially. So I know and there are many other instances in life where things have happened that only really make sense if God is real. So the fact that I am living this disabled life is nowhere near enough to counteract the weight of evidence that I have in my life of the presence of God, the love of God, the reality of God.

speaker-0: And yeah, obviously in that moment you weren't miraculously healed and sort of walked out the room in a new body. have you, I guess, have you had a conversation with God about that? How does that conversation usually go?

speaker-1: We've talked many times. Generally speaking, I do the talking. what I've found about God, and I don't know if... I suspect this is quite common experience of people asking God questions, is some questions he's good at, but he's absolutely rubbish at the why question. He just does not speak or he gives me an answer. through the Bible, through scripture. But I have to come to the place in my relationship with him where my disability is not the biggest deal. It's not the only thing in the room. It's not the massive centerpiece of our relationship, my relationship with God or my relationship with my lovely wife, Maddie, for that. that point. It obviously makes a big difference and it changes things, but life is about a lot more than my disability.

speaker-0: Yeah, I guess it could it could easily be your identity.

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: So we're obviously talking about suffering tonight do you see yourself as an expert in suffering? Where do you sort of put yourself on that spectrum?

speaker-1: So I absolutely don't see myself as an expert in suffering. It's interesting, when I have talked on suffering in church, I've been aware, even as I've been speaking, that there are people in the room listening to me whose suffering has far eclipsed my own. So I'm absolutely not an expert. And my suffering is pretty much exclusively around physical pain. and being barred by the realities of life from doing many things I want to do. But I don't suffer particularly emotional pain or mental health issues, you know, and the Bible talks about being persecuted for belief in and living out a life following Jesus. I can't really say I've experienced a whole lot of that. So it is confined to that one area.

speaker-0: Yeah, okay. And how does your situation impact, those around you Is there any more sort of things you want to talk about through day-to-day living and relationships you have

speaker-1: So I think the most massive impact it has is obviously on Maddie, my wife. And I think one of the very few things that I would say is a benefit of being disabled is it, when it comes to finding a partner, if you've got a significant disability that is obvious visually, it pre-screens out a whole load of of women who, you know, just maybe aren't quite right for you. And you end up with just the most amazing, lovely people who would even consider sort of taking me on as a husband. the reality is my disability. has a massive impact on her because there are so many things that we would want to do together that we just can't. And there are lots of things that she either has to not do at all or find someone else to do with. It's just a constant thing that's there and she has to cope with when I'm in a bad mood because I'm in pain or because I want to do something that I can't.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: So it has a big impact on her. I think it had a significant impact on our boys. We've got three boys who are all kind of grown adults now. But there are lots of things that I would have wanted to do with them. as a father, And interestingly, for each of them, because it's a genetic disability, there was a 50 % chance that they were disabled.

speaker-0: So you had to make that decision yourself

speaker-1: So we did.

speaker-0: with your family and whether or not that was something that you were comfortable in progressing with. But I assume given the choice, you'd rather be here with the condition you have than not be here.

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely.

speaker-0: the calculation.

speaker-1: yes, and if either of the boys or all of them turned out to be disabled, right, then you know, of course. So obviously when we're praying we chose health for the boys and they're all fine.

speaker-0: I don't know whether your parents would have had that prayer. But I guess even if people do pray, that doesn't always lead to a change in the situation or the right outcome that you want. Do you wish that God had changed that? Or do you blame God for your situation?

speaker-1: No, I don't blame God. mean, the honest answer to that inevitably gets into some of the deeper theology that we're probably going to talk about later. But I believe that this whole world is messed up in multiple different ways that were never God's intention. And one of the ways it's messed up is in sickness and illness and disability and all kinds of other. things that affect our bodies. So I don't blame God for that. is, as I say, is strange in a way to worship a God that you know could heal you but hasn't. But My understanding of what the Bible says is that ultimately for everyone who follows Jesus, there comes a point where our bodies get radically changed. just as Jesus' body was changed after he was resurrected. And that for me is the ultimate thing that I'm shooting for. Even if I don't get healed before I die, which frankly would be absolutely astonishing and front page news if it happened. But I do know that the other side of death, there's a whole new body waiting for me. and for everyone who believes in Jesus. And so that is the, I guess, the hope that ultimately I live for.

speaker-0: Yeah, so it's a different perspective, in life you can easily have just the perspective that you're in right now and you live for the moment and you've just got what you have in front of you and maybe you want more. But that's all about living today. But for you, you're saying that the idea of a... of a situation after the current life that we're in, of afterlife of some form, gives you an eternal perspective on life. And so I can see that would give you encouragement to want to live the best life that you have now, but also that it's not the only life that you can live, right?

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely, and I don't just think that I'm a weirdo on this. I might be a weirdo in lots of different ways, but on this, think, you you read the New Testament, everybody in the New Testament who is following Jesus ended up living this kind of mindset. know, 11 of the disciples around Jesus, they all died for their faith. John was the only one who didn't and he was imprisoned, which didn't sound a whole lot of fun. And people after that were living with an expectation that life involves suffering, but that there's an ultimate to live for that is completely safe, is completely secure. No one can take it away from you. And that's living in the presence of God, the other side of of life here on earth. And that, I think that's a pretty standard New Testament mindset, really.

speaker-0: Yeah, and we can all take encouragement in that, whatever our situation in this life, right? Yeah, well, okay, so I guess that's one area that the faith and the Bible has supported you in how you think in today's life. Is there any other ways that the Bible has encouraged you or helped you in your suffering?

speaker-1: So it certainly helped me. It's also really challenged me. So Psalm 139 is a Psalm that is quite kind of famous in Christian circles and a lot of people

speaker-0: Okay, well shall we read it? Let's get Pete on it. So Pete, firstly, what is a Psalm?

speaker-2: So Psalms are old poems and old songs that were collected by Israel as a nation written by different people, some of them 3,000 years old and collected from different periods of history but not pretty ancient.

speaker-0: So should you be singing when you read?

speaker-2: Very often. Yes, some of are meant to be sung. Yeah, I'm not gonna sing now. not now

speaker-0: I'll fair enough. Just read it then. We're going to go Psalm, what was it, Psalm139.

speaker-2: Psalm 139, which is quite a long Psalm. I'm to read a section from the middle of it. So,

speaker-0: Yeah, 13 to 18. Let's do that.

speaker-2: for you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book. Before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.

speaker-0: Right, so this is a particular part of the Bible that spoke to you in your situation.

speaker-1: It certainly formed part of some of my discussions with God, particularly the bit around, I think some versions say, you knit me together in my mother's womb, or words to that effect. I can remember feeling like, well God, if you knitted me together, you dropped some stitches because my body frankly is crap. in lots of ways. And that is actually one of the, I mean, you know, I say it almost facetiously, but the reality is one of the truths about scripture is it doesn't censor or sanitize human emotion at all. the way I felt at times about, you know, the state of my body or the pain I'm in. there are passages in Scripture that absolutely are written by people experiencing pain at that level and much more, much higher levels than that. There may not be physical body pain. There might be other forms of pain. But one of the ways in which that's really helpful is I can actually pray those words back to God and say, look, this is what your word says. this is my experience. I need you to square that circle because things aren't matching. And God does answer that kind of prayer. It's not that he rewrites the psalm so it says something different, but he comes in at a very significant emotional and spiritual level in my life and helps me to deal with that pain and that frustration. in a way that is really effective. And one of the ways that that can happen is there is a lot of the Psalms actually are Psalms of lament, which are written by people who life is going badly wrong for them at that time. And they just want to express their feelings to God about how rubbish things are. that lament process, which is one that I've been through myself, You kind of it's not about like denying the reality of what's going on. In fact, it's exactly the opposite you kind of sit in the middle of that pain and and You you sit with that and you're listening to God and there comes a point hopefully and there certainly did for me where I feel a sense of hope for the future and peace that diffuses that intense pain and frustration doesn't necessarily make the situation better. You know, I'm not suddenly six foot three like my brother is. But it takes away some of the sting from it. And so lament if, you know, you're listening to this and you are in any kind of intense pain, I would really recommend. going through the process of lament with God because it will help.

speaker-0: Pete, I wonder, in the Bible as a whole, mean, is suffering a regular theme? Are there particular books that cover suffering as well? Obviously we're talking about Psalms at the moment. Are there any other stories or books that are worth looking into?

speaker-2: Definitely. There's a short little book by a prophet called Habakkuk. He basically complains to God throughout most of the three chapters of his book, which is a great one. There's a book called Job. And Job basically does nothing wrong and then his life gets ripped apart. He loses all of his property, loses all of his family and his health and ends up suffering and in pain. And then there's a huge long debate as to why Job is suffering and that sort of thing. And then eventually God sort of appears to Job. And Job has done nothing wrong basically. And he ends up with a bigger picture of God, but that whole book of Job is about suffering. And then of course there is the reality that the central Christian message is God becoming a man in the form of Jesus and Jesus dying, being executed, being brutally murdered. If you want to watch that in a film, the film is 18 rated, The Passion of the Christ. It's a painful, horrible thing.

speaker-0: Yeah, okay, so the Bible doesn't really shirk the topic.

speaker-2: It does not.

speaker-0: I feel it's quite a central topic really in a way. The human situation of life is we all suffer at some point in some form, right? I think we can't really get through life without having that.

speaker-1: Absolutely.

speaker-0: Even in, I guess, sort of contemplating the topic and if you were 2000 years ago and you're looking at our society now, I think you come to the conclusion that people wouldn't suffer because there's so much more food the economy has grown in such a way, the technology and so on and so forth, that means that we live such a more comfortable life. And yet, here we are, we all still have the same human condition that we all. suffer in some form or another, maybe different ways, we still encounter it on a daily basis. So, yeah, maybe we can dig more into why we do that in the second half, but guess Tony would be interested to, just before we finish for the first half, what do you think are the sort of key learnings you've taken from your situation?

speaker-1: Yeah, I mean we did kind of touch on this slightly earlier on, but the issue of identity. So, so often with people with disabilities, their whole identity becomes wrapped up in their disability. And I completely understand that and why that would be and I'm not critical of that. But for me, there is an identity that supersedes that, that's higher than that. And that is my identity as a follower of Jesus. So if I had to define the things in my life that mean the most in who I am, then following Jesus would be number one. Maddie and the boys would be number two. Suffering would be, and pain and disability would obviously be in there, as would be as being a supporter of Arsenal, who are the league champions by the way, just pop that one in there.

speaker-0: Disgraceful behavior.

speaker-1: But there are a whole load of other things in my identity that are on much lower level. But I think I've learned that if I make pain and suffering like my core identity, then that's not a safe basis to build a life on.

speaker-0: Do you think it's made you more resilient or given you a different perspective on life that helps?

speaker-1: Yeah, I certainly believe it's made me more patient because I just have to be. There's stuff at home that I just can't do that I've always got to ask Maddie to do and if she's not around, that thing just doesn't happen. So patience and empathy, absolutely. I think actually, if I hadn't been born disabled, I've got a sense that I'd probably be. not a nice person. Quite obnoxious. Some may say that that happened anyway, but I do think

speaker-0: But you may be an amazing footballer.

speaker-1: I like to think so.

speaker-0: Cool, all right, well, we're gonna dive more into what the Bible says about suffering and the different theological elements to it in the second half. But just really appreciate you telling us your story as a starter for 10, because I know that's obviously very personal. So thank you very much, Tony, and we will be back shortly.

speaker-2: Yeah!

speaker-0: And welcome back to Bible After Hours. have Tony here and we're talking about suffering. We spent the first half mainly focusing on Tony's lived experience of it. And we're going to spend a little bit more time looking at how the Bible talks about suffering and where does God sit in all this for the second half. And to start that process off, we thought we would ask the audience And actually, what is suffering? What is the definition of suffering? Which is maybe something we should have done right at the beginning, but I felt it was more important to go through Tony's experience first, and then we can go through some definitions. So Pete, while we're here, do you want to go through what the responses were?

speaker-2: Yes, so there's four possible answers for, and you can tick as many of them as you want for what is suffering. So the first possible answer is, what is suffering? Suffering is the experience of physical, emotional and spiritual pain.

speaker-0: I think that one came in top. So we've got them to it. the experience of some sort of physical, emotional or spiritual pain. Okay.

speaker-2: The second answer suggestion was, suffering is the awareness that something is wrong, broken, or not as it should be. That was the second most popular one. Third one is, suffering is the state of being under pressure or hardship. And then the fourth popular answer, was suffering is the experience of loss, whether of comfort, security, relationships, or hope.

speaker-0: Okay. Yeah, so we've got, can experience suffering in so many different ways and in reality, each one of those definitions could theoretically lead to suffering of some form or another, right? It's quite a broad

speaker-2: It's quite broad.

speaker-0: of what we can do. So we can be under pressure or hardship. I wonder if we're under pressure or hardship, does that class of suffering, if we were enjoying it? Like there are situations where in reality, sometimes life is hard. but we can be enjoying life, right? And then therefore, are we still technically suffering?

speaker-1: You're not doing it properly if you're enjoying it, I think, in terms of suffering.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, because I think again, contemplating what they would have been like 2000 years ago, but even now I guess there are people living lives which are very different to what you and I live and we might go, well if I lived that life I would class that as difficult and suffering and hardship but maybe for them it's just their life and they're quite happy with it are they therefore classed as being suffering.

speaker-1: I think a lot has also got to do with what your expectations are and if you're aware or not that life could be better. So 2000 years ago they didn't know that they didn't have anaesthetics and that one day that would be a thing and so I suspect they would think rather differently about things than we would if we were teleported back in some kind of weird time travel way to then.

speaker-0: I think perspective is a key element of suffering

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: You can suffer just because, I guess, you decide that you want other things in life, whatever those things are, and you don't get them, and therefore you put yourself under pressure that you want them.

speaker-1: Yeah

speaker-0: And you find that life becomes difficult because you're trying to achieve something or get something and you can't get it. So guess that's partly what I was thinking around. Do people blame God for their suffering? And I guess I wonder if half the time God's like, you don't know what you've got, mate.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: You've got yourself good compared to what they, I don't know, some other person somewhere, some other place. If I was to complain of being suffering and my situation maybe is comparably a lot better than other people's.

speaker-1: think that can be true. think there is a danger in that though of the approach that says, I'm suffering, I'm struggling, but there's always someone worse off than me. And that is almost certainly true. On a planet somewhere, there will be someone who's worse off than you. But if you have a thinking that ends up... denying the reality of what you're experiencing, that can actually be unhelpful. I think God wants us to recognize the reality of what we're living in. And if we're a great life and things are going well, then to thank Him. And if we're really suffering and struggling, to be real with Him.

speaker-0: Just, reckon God cares about that, Pete? reckon God cares about suffering?

speaker-2: I think so, yeah, I think absolutely.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-2: I Tony's absolutely right. I would agree with that is that there is a danger of saying well I'm gonna ignore this problem in my life because someone else has got it worse actually No, that's we need to be real about the difficult challenges that we that we go through and then we have a God who is bigger with bigger shoulders and God and God who cares and Tony talked in the first part about lament that kind of Giving your pain to God expressing your pain to God and some people sometimes can be scared to sort of almost argue with God or shout at God or rant and rave at God and actually shouting at God and ranting and raving at God and being honest with God about the difficulty that you're going through is actually almost a way of saying I'm gonna give this to you God because you are bigger than this rather than keeping it inside or there's a kind of a funny sort of trust in God that comes from giving God your reality.

speaker-0: Yeah. Okay, so we think God cares.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: so God prefer... in that instance, are we saying that God would prefer that we didn't suffer or are we just saying that God cares in that suffering, do you think?

speaker-1: I think God cares in that suffering. think his original intent was for life to not be as it is for us with all the pain it is. And I think the end point for us, if we follow Jesus, will be a life without suffering. But in the meantime, I think God cares about it.

speaker-0: So if God is all powerful and all loving, why have suffering in the mix at all? I couldn't he just have made this perfect world, retained a perfect world that somehow means that none of us suffer at any point. We all get what we want at any point we wish. None of us suffer any pain or any difficulties of any sort. Would that not be a better situation?

speaker-1: the big question. My thoughts on this are that God did originally create a perfect world where there was no suffering, but the thing He did was He gave humanity choice. He gave us free will. And the reason I believe that He did that is because you cannot have a loving relationship with somebody if they don't have free will to love you or not. And in that free will was the chance that people would turn away from God, which if you read the first few chapters of Genesis is exactly what happened and introduced us to all different forms of pain and suffering. which ultimately, I believe, are rooted in the decision that humanity as a whole made and still makes on a daily basis to live life independently of God.

speaker-0: Okay, that creation story has that narrative of the free will process and from then on in we're saying that humans understand the difference between right and wrong and can decide how they wish to go forwards and I guess in that definition of right and wrong we're sort of throwing in there doing what God has asked them to do or not doing.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah and and ultimately Who is the center of of each of our lives who makes you know? Do we make decisions based on what we want which is ultimately a selfish decision making and that might cut right across what someone else wants or needs and Will introduce a measure of of pain into life. So if I'm married and I decide I want to sleep with someone else other than my wife then I have an element of free will choice in that but exercising that choice is going to bring massive pain.

speaker-0: Are we saying then that if you know a hypothetical thought process here everybody was Christian everybody had faith in God and everybody followed God's will in their lives that there would be no suffering in the world? Pete what do reckon is that is that we should just get everybody to become a Christian and then we could all live sort of very nice happy lives is that gonna deliver what we want?

speaker-2: I love it when you spontaneously come up with questions just to keep me on my toes.

speaker-0: This is not a deep one at all.

speaker-2: I think that because we have done things that God doesn't want us to do, we've chosen our own way, that has tainted the world that we live in and tainted us. And the Christian message is that God... loves you and accepts you as you are, but then changes you. As a Christian, you're filled with God's power, with God's Holy Spirit, and that changes you. But that process of change starts and continues and is not brought to full completion until the end times. And so therefore, me as someone, I've said I want to be a Christian, I'll give my life to God, I still get things wrong. I believe that my life has been changed significantly, but I still get things wrong and I still cause hurts to people around me. So if everyone became a Christian, that wouldn't make the world perfect immediately because there's this element of Jesus coming back and that's God's judgment upon the world and that sort of thing. But there will be a place of no more sickness, no more suffering, no more pain, which is spoken about, but that's not in this life, that's in the next.

speaker-0: Okay, yeah, my take on it for what it's worth I guess if there was If everybody was following God's will, there would still be earthquakes and disease and volcanoes and all the likes of things that would lead to people having pain and suffering in this world. we can maybe box off the fact that free will gives us the opportunity to hurt other people. And that's on us, I guess. But there is a broader environment that we live in that gives us pain and suffering, which is different.

speaker-2: You've tapped there Luke into one of the things that some of the books, some really good books and material out there on suffering and pain do, which is categorize different types of pain and suffering. We touched upon this. So this is Amy Orr Ewing's book, Where is God and all the suffering, which is quite a good sort of entrance level in just her chapter titles. Her first chapter is called asking why the second chapter is on anger as a chapter on grief, a chapter on sickness, a chapter on mental illness. chapter on violence, chapter on natural disasters, so obviously very different to, you know, there's the suffering that's caused by humans doing things that we shouldn't do, but actually volcanoes, tsunamis, those sorts of things, is a different kind of suffering, systemic suffering, suffering that's in our economics and our world, and then she's got a chapter on Jesus as the suffering servant. Going back many, many years earlier, C.S. Lewis, does something similar with his chapters, has a chapter on human wickedness, has a chapter on hell, has a chapter on animal pain, which is quite an interesting one. there are different aspects of how we can approach suffering in that sense.

speaker-0: We'll put the references in the notes for the podcast so people can check those books out. Some good reading going on there. But yeah, clearly there's other aspects to suffering than just our own actions. I guess there's an element of... that eternal perspective that comes into play as well and what is the purpose of us being here? Is it to have the nicest life? Or is it for us to develop in character and the loving in a relationship with God? And if it is that, then maybe a little bit of suffering along the way might be okay, guess, part of that journey. And equally, if we die, which we all on earth don't want to do, believe there is another chapter and so it is not the end of everything it is just the end of one chapter so we can suffering may occur in that process but nonetheless there is a the next step I guess whatever that looks like that sounds like another podcast to me and we've not talked about evil at all today and I think we're probably not going to touch on that much because again that is another big topic, the problem of evil in itself. So we're going to focus today on suffering particularly. What about we started to touch on Jesus and the suffering that is described for him. So this is, I guess, an interesting dynamic for the Christian faith. So we talked a lot about our suffering and the fact that why would God allow that? Why is it there? But I guess Christianity has a different take on suffering than maybe other belief systems because there is a suffering involved in God himself. Is that right, Tony?

speaker-1: Yes, yeah. For me and for many other people, I think there are passages like Isaiah 53, which Pete can explain more about that, but it's essentially, as I understand it, a prophecy about Jesus from hundreds of years before he was born, before the incarnation, which talks about how he's going to suffer and die. and the things that come out of that.

speaker-0: Okay, well let's pause and actually read that one. So Isaiah 53, we're going to just do verse 4 to 9. Pete, who is Isaiah and when was this written? Was it written before or after Jesus? What was the story there?

speaker-2: Okay, so in the first main sort part of the Bible, which Christians refer to as the Old Testament, there are some books which are regarded as prophetic, most of which tends to be actually what God is saying to the people in that time, but sometimes there's a future element as well. There's historic Isaiah, who was in the eighth century in Israel, and he had a message for God's people. A lot of academic scholars would say that... The book of Isaiah, as we have, is actually the work of more than one person that's been put together, it's been edited and added together, and it covers several centuries. Some people want to say the whole thing is written by the same guy in the eighth century, so there's a bit of a debate there. But Isaiah definitely splits into some distinct sections. It changes from prose to being poetry, for example, one of these sections. And the sections are Isaiah chapter one through to chapter 39, then chapter 40 through to chapter 55. and then chapter 56 through to 66. It's quite a long book. And in the middle section of Isaiah there are these four particular poems that refer to a suffering servant. They're found in chapter 42, chapter 49, chapter 50, and chapter 53. And when you read the New Testament, which is the stuff that's after Jesus.

speaker-0: 800 years around afterwards.

speaker-2: This section in Isaiah chapter 53 is referred to in quite a few places, six or seven, I think there's seven quotes from Isaiah chapter 53, six places where it comes up. And in a Christian perspective, these verses are very much interpreted as being about Jesus.

speaker-0: so this this particular set of verses in Isaiah is I guess articulating What happened to Jesus at the end?

speaker-2: Christian perspective

speaker-0: Yeah, right. So join everyone through those verses

speaker-2: So chapter 53, verse four of Isaiah, surely he took our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God. He was stricken by him and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities, which is quite fancy words actually, but his body was broken for the things we'd done wrong, which Christians generally interpret as on the cross where he was executed. He was crushed for our sin. The punishment that brought us peace was on him. By his wounds we are healed. We, all like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way. And the Lord has laid on him the sin of all of us. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet did not open his mouth he was led like a lamb to the slaughter and the sheep before it's sheer as is silent so he did not open his mouth by oppression and a judgment he was taken away yet who of his generation protested he was cut off from the land of the living and on it goes

speaker-0: So there's Many references of Jesus' suffering. That's obviously a prophetic reference there in the Old Testament. There's plenty of references in the New Testament around how Jesus suffered. how does this relate to God now and how you interpret how God interacts with us,

speaker-1: So I think we perhaps lose sight of just how radical and incredible it is, the idea that God would come down as a human and just what that involved. But not only that, he lived a life that knew suffering and was executed basically for the message that he preached, which is about the kingdom of God, God coming near to people. And the fact that the God I worship had nails put through his hands and feet and a spear put through his side means, amongst other things, that I can't out-trump him with the level of my pain because he's been there a hundred times over and had worse because of his love for us.

speaker-0: Yeah, there's an easy, when we talk about God and suffering, there's an easy thought process where he's somewhere very distant. away from us, sort of overseeing everything, know, somehow pulling all the strings and making us suffer. And, you know, how dare he? And, there's no physical element to that, you know, God is just some other being somewhere else, not experiencing the pain that we're going through. But Jesus is, obviously, clearly, that's a different angle, right?

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. And you don't, to the best of my knowledge, you don't see that in any other faith system. I mean, there are lots of reasons why I believe Christianity is the real deal. But Jesus coming down, living that life, dying that death, and his disciples being so gripped by the truth of his life and his resurrection. that they went through similar deaths themselves because of it. I mean that takes a lot of explaining in any other way than the way the Gospels portray it.

speaker-0: the idea of God suffering I think is a very controversial idea. think there's many people turned away from Christianity or didn't believe that Jesus was a God because of that fact, right? That they can't believe that a physical God could suffer in such a manner. But did so to enable us to have our sins forgiven and be able to come into God's presence must give comfort in some way, I guess, to know that he has gone through many sufferings. I mean, that's just one of the things that he did,

speaker-1: Yeah, and also just to touch on again something that we mentioned briefly earlier, we can live like with the perspective that what we're going through right now is like all this ever going to be. And, you know, if things are bad, if things are getting worse with my body, then the only story is one of sort of pain and discouragement and things getting worse. But actually, the perspective I choose to live with and that I think is healthy for us all really is to live with that expectation that this is not forever, this is not how the story ends at all. Yes, the suffering is real and you can't downplay it, but that there is an end to the story that's really amazingly different. the book of Revelation, which is an interesting book and one that maybe should be read, recognising what sort of literature it is. But there's some really positive things about the future for people who follow Jesus.

speaker-0: And we say and we kind of see I guess Jesus in his resurrection in the new body and that story Sort of articulates the hope for the future that we all have in that that new body that that he had Reflects your hope for the future as well

speaker-1: Yes, yeah, totally.

speaker-0: Yeah Do we do we think being a Christian does that make you in some way? safe from future suffering

speaker-1: absolutely. I think far from it. In fact, in some parts of the world, you are asking for a whole lot more pain and trouble if you decide to follow Jesus. It's pretty much baked in, in that he promised that it would happen. So it is a real thing. I mean, I think for many of us in this country who suffering in different ways. A lot of it probably isn't because we're following Jesus, because Christians are not seriously persecuted in this country, but they are in many countries.

speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. So we're saying, something is not avoidable. There's no way of us getting around this one in this life. will happen, whether we have a faith or not. It's kind of baked into the world that we're

speaker-1: It will and if it hasn't happened to you yet, then just wait.

speaker-0: But are there any helpful words from what can we get from that suffering process? modern contemporary culture often looks to just be as comfortable as possible right, but is there a benefits of going through suffering do you think?

speaker-1: I think one of the things that God is in that sort of a way of rating God's skills, if that's not completely heretical, which it almost certainly is, but one of the things that God is supremely good at is taking really terrible situations and working good out of them. And one of the things he does with suffering is can work real real positives out of it that can't really happen when life is going well and easily. And I think one of the things that unfortunately is probably fairly hardwired into humanity is that when we're comfortable and at ease, we sort of can so easily forget about God. But when we're really struggling, suddenly our communication with him becomes a lot more alive. And he will use that. He absolutely will use that. There's a C.S. Lewis quote that talks about God whispering in our pleasure, but shouting in our suffering. It's his megaphone to a deaf world, I think the quote is. And God will use that.

speaker-0: Yeah, I think we're going to draw our conversation to a close now. Pete, do you to anything? I can see you Googling away. there anything you want to throw in the mix at this point?

speaker-2: just googling away, I'm gonna run out time now. John chapter 16 verse 33, Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble. There's bits where Jesus says people will hate you because of me. Christians are in call to join in with Christ's name, to suffer alongside Jesus. But Jesus says in John chapter 16 verse 73, take heart, I overcome the world. I've overcome all this.

speaker-0: That's good place to end

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: it. Good stuff. Thank you Pete, thank you Tony. So if there's any further reading that people want to do, we mentioned a few books earlier. Is there any other ones that you want to throw in the mix that we'll put in the notes as well?

speaker-1: There's a book by a guy called Jerry Sitzer, it's an incredible story of Jerry Sitzer I think he's a professor. His family was in a car crash where he lost his daughter. his wife and his mother to a drunk driver and the book is about him processing that and the whole thing that I was saying a minute ago about God taking an awful situation and working good in it, it's a really good example of that.

speaker-0: Okay, brilliant. Any more you want to throw in Pete? Any other ones?

speaker-2: There's a couple, there's a few. Earlier this year we had Ruth Page on our podcast, promoting her book, and there's a book that she references in there, which I'm itching to read. It's by Amy Kenny as the title, My Body is Not a Prayer Request. I

speaker-0: Okay.

speaker-2: think it's a relevant book to mention. I haven't read it yet, I'm itching to read it. Apparently it's absolutely brilliant. And actually, obviously we've mentioned C.S. Lewis with The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed earlier, and Amy Oar Ewing, where as God in All the Suffering.

speaker-0: Brilliant. Thank you for those recommendations, guys. So I'm going to finish off with a little bit of a prayer that I found on this, a bit of an old Catholic one. So it says, Behold me, my beloved Jesus, weighed down under the burden of my trials and sufferings. I cast myself at your feet, that you may renew my strength and my courage while I rest here in your presence. Join my life, be to me my model and my support. And let the hour of my death be my hope and my refuge. Amen. Thank you guys, thank you everybody's come and we will see you again soon.

speaker-1: Thank you

speaker-2: question here what is the right balance between lament and being real about suffering and being thankful and finding joy and contentment in all circumstances what a great question that is

speaker-0: That's very good. I'll throw that one straight at you.

speaker-1: Okay, my immediate response to that question, and that is a great question, is if you are going through something where lament is an appropriate response, I think it would be impossible to find joy in the circumstances that are causing that need to lament without doing the lament first. I think the lament is the way that you get to the being able to find joy. And you're not finding joy in the fact that your circumstances are terrible in some kind of masochistic way. You're finding joy in the fact that God is with you and real, even in the midst of those circumstances.

speaker-0: That's a great answer and I love Psalms. So many Psalms have got that lament in there but often the structure of them starts off with that like, God, why am I here? What you doing? This is crazy. I can't believe this and that. They're all attacking me or this is going wrong. But then by the end of the Psalm, the writer is sort of praising God for the situation or for the things that are good in life. So guess often you can go on that arc journey, right?

speaker-1: Yeah. Usually in the lament psalms, not always, but usually, you come to a point where it will say something like, but, you know, it's done all the stuff about how terrible things are. And then the writer says, but, and then it turns to, I will praise you, Lord, or some variation on that. he can only, she can only do that. in reality because they've sat with the pain and you can't, if you try and go too quickly to the, but I will trust you, if you shortcut the reality of the pain, then it doesn't really work in the same way.

speaker-0: Mmm, yeah.

speaker-2: I think one thing that we probably should have said in the earlier part of recording, didn't say, is that there are, there's not a neat clean answer to the question of suffering. And if the bit that... I remember speaking to a well-known Christian evangelist a few years ago who does lots of any question type activities. I said, what's the question that you're asked the most? And he said, why does a good God let bad things happen? Why is there suffering? I said, is that the question that's asked most by people who are Christians or people who are not Christians? He said, both. So I said to him, what's your answer? And so it's something around trusting in the goodness of God is a part of an answer. But there are partial answers we can give. There are things we can say that are helpful. We can talk about free will. We can talk about some of those theoretical answers. But actually, there's still the moment of pain. Actually, it still hurts. And it's still incredibly difficult. And so we wouldn't want to try to give a, this is the definitive answer. We've wrapped this up kind of a thing. this question that's been posed here about the right balance between lament and trusting God in all circumstances and being thankful to God in difficult things. This may not apply to everybody. For me in my life, someone spoke to me a number of years ago about seasons. We go through different seasons of things and for me there have been seasons of bereavement. And I think it was important to go through that rather than deny it or bury it or try to avoid it. But actually there have been other seasons that have come since where actually there's been some process of healing that's gone through and then into a different season of life. Because actually I don't believe that, I mean there are some things in our life that God says I'm going to deal with that and then move you on. So sometimes for that, and that doesn't apply to every type of suffering. So that needs to be a bit applied contextually to different people's But in some scenarios, I think the idea of seasons can help.

speaker-0: Thanks. Any other questions? Yes. It's not a question. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, you can speak into that one. Absolutely. So this is about suffering guys. live, you have to suffer, but to survive, you have to find meaning within that suffering. If not, you will drown. Nice. Do you know who that was originally from or is that your own original? excellent we have. Love it. We have a philosopher in there.

speaker-1: guess

speaker-0: Brilliant. Thank you everybody. We'll finish it there.