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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 42. The Source of Pain.
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The Source of Pain.
Pain is the distressed outcry of a broken order; pain of body comes through some breaking of nature's arrangements there; pain of spirit through consciousness of elements within or without that strain and jar, and clash and break. All pain is a result of sin, somebody's sin, sometime, somewhere. The connection can rarely be traced, and never traced fully, but it is there.
That connection may be direct, where a man's own actions cause the break that cries out its distress in pain. Through ignorance of the body's nature and needs, or through thoughtlessness or passionate desire where we do know, the break is made. The pain does not always come at once. Nature is very patient and long-suffering, but come it will,, however long the wait, for she is likewise very exacting. Countless instances of so called "mysterious providences" are a result of hardships we thoughtlessly or willfully inflict upon our bodies.
For a number of years I have been trying to observe closely instances where sickness and death have come, causing a great shock and deep sorrow, and either criticisms of God or a long drawn sob over the ' strange dispensations of providence. Yet from the bits of information available it was, in each instance, clearly evident that the death that seemed so untimely and strange could be traced directly to the person's own acts done in ignorance; but most times, if not always, a thoughtless ignorance that a bit of thinking could have prevented.
Then there is the indirect or more remote connection. Whatever we believe about original sin as a teaching of moral truth, we are all compelled to believe in a transmission, through the blood, of traits that are a result of sin in those who have lived before us, either near or remote. That physical traits and ailments pass faithfully and ruthlessly on through generations is familiar enough. Most men come into life with the story of somebody's sin, whether through carelessness or willfulness, written down on the tablet of their bodies.
It is extremely common to hear work spoken of as a curse, as though a punishment for man's sin, or a result of his sin. Yet work itself is in no sense a curse, but a positive delight, and a help. But the conditions that sin has woven around work have made much of it a straining, grinding drudgery. The break of sin left and leaves man with less than his normal strength. It has affected the earth so that it does not yield so readily to his efforts, and further increases his stint of work by producing thorns and such growths as must be fought and overcome. And so with less than nature's allowance of strength, and more than nature's allotted task, very much work becomes to thousands a grinding, slaving, cheerless round that brings pain. It can all be traced to sin, the break in the natural order.
Job's friends, or critics, supposed that his pain and numerous distresses were a punishment sent by God because of his sin. Job resents such talk. He felt instinctively that he had been on such terms with God as to shut out any such thought as punishment. Let it be remembered that God is not punishing men in the sending of pain and affliction. God is not dealing with men in judgment; if He were the case would be settled at once for all of us. Judgment is reserved for future final settlement. And even then punishment is not a thing that God chooses to be meted out to us as a judgment for our misdeeds. It is something included in the sin itself. The worst thing God could do to any man would be to leave him utterly alone to the working out of his sin. In great graciousness He does not do that. But He does keep hands off in part, and permits much of the result of sin to work its way out. And so pain comes through the break in the natural order.
The first mention of pain in the Bible is in connection with the difficulty with which woman would perform the most difficult and delicate task entrusted to her. All the life of the body is from God. The natural life is lived in full contact with Him. That first sin was a break with God. Any break interrupts partially the flow of life from Him to us. The bodily duties are then done with difficulty, for some of its vitality has been cut off. In the most difficult duty the lack is most keenly felt.
Had we fullness of knowledge, and subtlety of insight, every bit of pain could be traced clearly, logically, step by step back to some act of sin. And the tracing would be thought a strangely interwoven network of sin and that which sin causes. This does not necessarily mean that the pain is the result of the sin of the man who suffers the pain. Clearly there is a vast amount of pain on account of others' acts.
Life is such an intricate network that no man can move or breathe without affecting somebody else. How terribly selfish sin is. Every act of sin brings pain to somebody else, to those nearest and most tenderly loved, and those at the farthest reach of influence. Jesus suffered severest, keenest pain of both body and spirit through sin— the sin of others. Every bit of pain that came to Him came either through particular acts of sin, or through the whole fog of sin that enveloped His life as an atmosphere.
There seems to be on record in the Bible just one exception to this. Jacob was lamed in his body by the strange touch in the night wrestle, in the dark, done by Jabbok's narrow waters. A direct act of God afflicted the natural order of his body. Yet this seems to be the only instance of the sort mentioned in the long list of Bible biographies. And, too, there may not have been actual bodily pain, though there was a crippled body hindering and hampering his activity. The condition of his body gave his spirit keen pain, no doubt; yet that was because it reminded him at every step of his willful stubbornness against God, and God's plan.
And mark keenly that here this unusual thing was done for service' sake. God's plan for a world centred at this stage in this one man. In His passionate outreach for a race, He was shut in to using Jacob. The unusual act told the greatness and the acuteness of the emergency.
So there may be in rare cases a direct touch of God when some great purpose requires it. But clearly that is very rare. God does not need to resort to such measures, as a rule. There are always enough doorways opened through sin's breaks to give all the opportunity needed for disciplinary work. The rareness of such action gives peculiar emphasis to the general principle that pain comes through the natural channel of a break in the natural order.
The vast, intricate, subtly intangible, but terribly real network of sin envelops all life. One cannot move without touching and being touched by its meshes. The atmosphere of life has become affected by sin as by a pervasive gray fog. One cannot draw the breath of life, however lacking in mental or spirit culture, without suffering pain, however little he may think of it. The very stupidness to pain at times spells out the commonness of it, and its hardening, dulling effect upon the spirit.