The Lie of Holy Suffering & The True Fast of Compassion
Healing Beyond Blame, Compassion, and the Work of the Gospel
The Myth of Holy Suffering
The Christian faith was forged in the fires of profound trauma. It began with the shock of the Crucifixion, a catastrophe Jesus’ followers could not initially comprehend, and matured under the iron heel of a Roman Empire that extracted life and wealth to feed its own prosperity. As the Empire eventually collapsed, leaving a void filled by greed, fear, and chaos. Many centuries later, the Black Death baptized the faith in terror again, as terror roamed the streets, sometimes killing off entire villages. After centuries of enduring such unrelenting agony, it is little wonder the religion that emerged became one obsessed with the holiness of suffering.
As the faith transitioned from the religion of Jesus to the religion about Jesus, many versions of the myth of holy suffering arose. In an attempt to follow Jesus, people chose a path of suffering, believing that they had to suffer like He did. Some embraced the path of martyrdom, turning themselves into monsters so that they would be killed by the Roman Empire like their Lord. Some mutilated and mortified their flesh so that they would be perceived by others as righteous. They stopped listening to the words of Jesus.
“Then John’s disciples came to him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples don’t fast?’
Jesus said to them, ‘Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast (Matthew 9:14–15; cf Mark 2:18–20; Luke 5:33–35).’”
Jesus was gone from them for three days, and then he returned. It is like the followers who came afterward forgot that: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the middle of them (Matthew 18:20).”
They taught people that to suffer was to be like Jesus and was proof of their righteousness. Others said that suffering was God’s punishment for sin. Eventually, this would evolve into the idea that suffering is necessary for us to achieve spiritual growth. None of this is a part of the way of Jesus.
When we misunderstand what Paul said, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the assembly (Colossians 1:24),” we are united in Christ as his body. Our suffering is his suffering, but we should not seek to inflict more wounds in Jesus.
If Jesus is the bridegroom and we are his companions, we should not suffer while he is with us, and he has promised that he will always be with us so long as two or more are gathered in his name. This is the awe that we discover in the world, living with the One who is in it, holding it all together.
The spiritual life that we are called to is to savor this world, to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8), and to celebrate what we have here and to create new reasons to celebrate by relieving injustice and alleviating suffering.
Jesus calls us into a shared life, a life of companionship where we work together, holding each other up and helping each other through our burdens. This is the way we are to live. It is why the yoke that he offers us is light, and why we must lose our lives to find it, because we are living for all of us to make all of our lives better.
That is not a life of self-denial. It is a life of mutual support. The way of Jesus is a path of liberation and freedom. Alone we can only do a little, but together we can do great and wondrous things. Together we can liberate not just ourselves, but those around us, and make this world a better place.
The early church had to misunderstand this so that it could support the Roman Empire that was supporting it. Over time, as it bowed the knee to empire after empire after empire, eventually creating its own empires, it had to maintain that power structure so it could be great and wealthy. In all that work and all that time, it denied the very calling that Jesus had placed upon us. It blinded itself so that it could not see the work it was called to do.
The Brokenness Not Yet Healed by Compassion
The Buddha teaches us that suffering arises from attachment and aversion. We either hold on to something so tightly that we cause ourselves misery, or we try to run from something so hard that we burn ourselves out and cause suffering. Suffering, he taught, is the basic dissatisfaction of the world because nothing is permanent. That impermanence is the heart of all suffering.
The greedy, the power-hungry, and the fearful create empires for themselves and inflict injustice and suffering onto people because their cravings can never be satisfied. Whatever it is the greedy wish to hoard, they will never have enough to satisfy themselves. They will always want more and will go to stronger and more violent ends to gain that which they crave.
When someone is hungry for power, it is rooted in a sense of their own inadequacy. They feel like hoarding power over others, holding other people’s lives in their hands will prove to themselves that they are worthy of living. No amount of suffering inflicted on the world, no amount of control, will ever satisfy the power hungry. There is nothing that the fearful can do to make themselves feel safe other than to relinquish their fear and to find ways to cope with it. No wall can be too thick or too high. No weapon will mollify their terror.
Whatever we seek to have to end our suffering may work for a short time, but it will never last if the root causes of those hungers are not dealt with. This is why suffering spreads throughout the world as people commit injustice upon injustice, to build empires for themselves so that they can consume endlessly in an attempt to satiate a craving that can never be satisfied. Much of the suffering that Jesus sought to heal came from this source.
Others suffer because of illness or disability, and Jesus sought to heal them too. The deep suffering that arises from these places is still associated with attachment and aversion as people want to flee their illness or disability or attach themselves to it and claim it as an identity.
No matter the cause of the suffering, at its root, it all has one true cause. It is a brokenness not yet healed by compassion. In time, medicine will find a cure for what ails us, but it requires money and time. The greedy hoard that money and keep it from going to the works of compassion that could bring healing. The fearful blame those who are afflicted and prevent that money from flowing, and thus compassion is again blocked. The power-hungry cannot conceive of themselves suffering like those that they deem wretched, and so they block that compassion as well.
Suffering is to be healed, and compassion is the tool that will heal it as we learn how to relieve and prevent all the causes of suffering. Until that day comes disease and disability will bring suffering to many. This persists because the greedy, the fearful, and the power-hungry have dammed the wellsprings of compassion. They manipulate the systems of this world to ensure that the riches meant for collective healing are instead hoarded by a few, leaving the many to languish in avoidable pain.
Jesus came to relieve suffering and to bring compassion into this world so that we could be free. He did not come so that we would mortify ourselves through fasting and suffering to become more righteous.
As we grow in our faith, we develop eyes to see and ears to hear, and we know the fast that we are called to and the true meaning of suffering.
Eyes to See and Ears to Hear
If we are going to follow Jesus in the way that he opened for us, we have to clarify our vision so that we can see. Jesus puts a lot of emphasis on sight and the eyes because this is how we perceive the world. If we do not see the world as it is and as it could be, we are living in a distortion that will cause both us and others harm.
In Luke 11:34, Jesus tells us that when our eyes are good, our whole body is full of light. When we perceive the world correctly as it is, we see the wonder and awe present in all things. We perceive the Spirit of God moving, animating all within it. We take in this awe and we savor it. And the light within us grows stronger, and we become beacons shining out to the world, reminding it of its own goodness and original blessing.
As this light shines within us, it feeds the tree of life growing within us that breaks up the hard soil of our hearts so that the waters of grace can flow from us. In this way, we restore the world and bring healing first to ourselves and then to others.
But if our eyes are evil, and they see the world filtered through our fear, greed, and lust for power, then we only see the world as danger and things that we can exploit and extract for our own benefit. That distortion in our vision brings much suffering and pain to ourselves and to the world because we are trying to fill a craving that cannot be satisfied by collecting, hoarding, and consuming.
Some have called this a God-shaped vacuum within us, that is not exactly the right way to perceive it. It is a life-shaped vacuum, and while yes, God is life, in fact, God is the One Life flowing through all things, what we are sensing is our own alienation from that life: that we are not living life abundantly. In our separation, one from another, under the cruel and extractive empires that rule over us, we blind ourselves to the world as it is and engage in the systems of empire to give ourselves strength and means to survive. We fill ourselves full of darkness because darkness is all around us, but we are called to be light, to shine into that darkness knowing that darkness cannot overcome the light.
When Jesus said, “Having eyes, don’t you see? Having ears, don’t you hear (Mark 8:18)?” this is what he is talking about: the spiritual eyes of our soul that allow us to perceive the glory of God in all things. We lose our ability to see and perceive the awe in the sunrise and sunset, and the glory of the stars at night. We stop savoring our food, putting rules in place that define what good food should be, and punishing ourselves if it doesn’t live up to those standards, even when we do not find any bodily pleasure in them.
When we deny the body, we are committing the sins of the spirit. The Spirit is not more holy or more pure, for all that was created was made in original blessing and is good. When we have eyes that don’t see and ears that do not hear, we are blocking ourselves from perceiving and engaging in the joys of this world that bring healing, hope, love, and community to us all.
The great joy of this life is learning to perceive all that there is to savor, and learning to live in right relationship with everything so that we are not hoarding, extracting, or exploiting those things for our own personal gain. True joy should never harm the self or another, it is not joy but a form of cruelty that does this. As we learn to clear our sight, we begin to perceive the world as it is, full of wonders graciously calling us to participate with them.
Matthew 7:3-5
3. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye?
4. Or how will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye;’ and behold, the beam is in your own eye?
5. You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Jesus warns us against the zealotry of calling out other people’s imperfections and sins before we deal with our own. We often project our insecurities, fears, and inadequacies on others so that we can blame them and distract others from what we ourselves are doing, thinking, or longing for. We cannot restore the sight of others so long as our own sight is impaired. When we cannot see clearly, we will poke their eyes out so that they will be as blind as we are.
This is the truest of all hypocrisies: calling out the sins of others while participating in them ourselves. Oh, how easy it is to see others having walked off the path when we are there amongst them in the same place, so far away from the path.
True righteousness is living in right relationship with ourselves, with God, with each other, and with the world. Casting judgment on others breaks that relationship and prevents us from doing the work that we are called to do.
Our job is to learn how to see clearly, and to see what is causing the suffering and pain in ourselves and deal with the systems that are causing those pains and suffering. As Paul said, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.(Ephesians 6:12)” These are the systems of cruelty, injustice, and suffering that keep us from experiencing life abundantly.
Once we learn this lesson, we will hear Jesus say, “But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear (Matthew 13:16).”
The Prophetic Vision of Healing
It is popular in the traditions I grew up in to invoke the wrath of God without looking to see what that wrath looks like. In Isaiah 35:4–6, God sends a message to those with a hurried heart. He tells them to be strong and not afraid, God is coming “with Justice, God’s repayment (Isaiah 35:4).” What is this justice and repayment?
“Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing; for waters will break out in the wilderness, and streams in the desert (Isaiah 35:5-6).”
Oh! It is healing. God’s justice is the healing and restoration of people and nature. Jeremiah 30:17 also promises this healing. The judgment of God is on the brokenness of the world and those who insist on breaking it. God does not break the world further. God heals and restores it.
This misunderstanding of the wrath of God comes from a rejection of one of the strongest messages that God ever gave us: that He does not want the sacrifices of the temple. We do not have to cause suffering or suffer ourselves to appease God. Jesus did not have to suffer and die to appease God.
“For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6).”
The sacrifice of Christ is that He laid down His life because no one could take it from Him. He suffered as we suffer. He participated directly as an agent of the divine in the suffering that humanity faces under empire.
When the Church willfully rejects the words in Hebrews 9:22-26 to mean that blood is the cost for remission of sins, it shrouds the true meaning of the text. It tells us that in the Law, blood sacrifices are listed for every kind of sin, but in the heavenly temple, Jesus must offer something better, because if blood were required he would have to return to the earth and repeatedly die to continue to pay for the sins of the world.
Instead, he offers something greater, mercy, as it is revealed in Hosea 6:6. “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13).” Jesus brings mercy, not judgement, which is what God wants more than sacrifice. At the cross, Christ offered mercy: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).”
In this way, Jesus lives what God demands from us:
“He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does Yahweh require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)?”
God does not seek or revel in suffering. God desires mercy, justice, and healing.
The True Fast
Isaiah 58:6-7
6. “Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to release the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?
7. Isn’t it to distribute your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor who are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover him; and that you not hide yourself from your own flesh?
God reveals what it means to truly fast. And if our eyes are open and our ears can hear even a little bit, we can see the mercy that fasting is called to be. Fasting is not the denial of food and water to the body. It is the release of the bonds of wickedness, breaking the bands that tie people down, freeing the oppressed, and breaking every yoke of bondage to distribute food to the hungry and to bring the poor home.
This is the mission that Christ said he came into this world to fulfill. It is how Jesus himself defines the gospel. The gospel itself is the true and great fast. Every Lent, when we enter the Great Lenten Fast, this is the work we are supposed to remind ourselves to do.
Are we practicing Teshuvah and Tikkun to release the bonds of wickedness? Have we interfered with injustice to undo the bands of the yoke and to let the oppressed go free? What are we doing to break every chain that holds people down so that liberty and freedom can flow freely in the world? Have we ensured that the hungry are fed and that the poor are taken care of? This is the work that we are called to. The greatest Lenten fast, the true fast that God requires of us.
Why is it a fast? Because it may require us to have just a little bit less or for the wealthy to have a lot less. The prosperity and abundance of the world has to be shared amongst all its inhabitants. As Jesus said to the rich young man, he needed to sell all that he had and give it to the poor if he wanted to enter the kin-dom of heaven. This is the fast we are called to.
“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from the one to whom much was entrusted, even more will be demanded (Luke 12:48).”
This is why we need to have eyes to see and ears to hear. Because when our eyes are clouded and our ears are clogged with the desire for wealth, power, or security, we cannot hear the cries of the vulnerable, the chained, and those who need to be freed. The hungry cannot be seen by the one who has too much.
This is the fast. We are called to commemorate each Lent, to remember and to ask ourselves where we have done well and what more needs to be done to keep us focused on the true work of the gospel.
Once we realize the work that we are actually called to, we learn why fasting has been mistaught for centuries. When the church bowed the knee to empire, as it does continuously, it cannot now speak out against the injustices done by empire: the colonization, the extraction, the exploitation of others. It has to sanctify these actions and make them holy. And so it transforms the true fast that we are called to into a false fast where we colonize ourselves and put false and foreign ideas into our body, extracting pain and suffering and exploiting that suffering for holiness and righteousness.
Compassion is the truest spiritual discipline and the heart of everything that we are called to do. The more we see that, the more we realize that dismantling systems of injustice is in and of itself a form of worship. It is the Great Fast we are called to by the Divine, by the prophets, and by the teachings of Jesus himself.
True acts of devotion relieve suffering. It could be suffering for ourselves or for others, but it always has to have an eye outward, even when we ourselves require that healing. Healing is never for ourselves alone, but for the body of Christ itself, so that all of its faculties may be strong, so that the healing and restoration in this world are possible.
Jesus Rejects Punitive Theology
But those who do not know God, because God is love, will say, “but God sends judgment down on people so that they are punished for their sins.” Jesus rejected these arguments, and we should too.
In John 9:1–3, When Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who was blind from birth, the disciples asked him, “whose sin caused the blindness: this man’s or his parents?” We will ignore for now how this question carries an understanding that this man had a previous life before he was born and just look at how Jesus answered the question.
Jesus said it was not the fault of the man who was born blind nor his parents, but that these things just happen. They just happen. They just happen. Some people are born with an affliction. It is not because of their sin or their parents’ sin or the sins of their lineage. Suffering is not brought unto children because of the wrath of God.
We have already established and seen how God does not want suffering. God wants mercy. So, Jesus says that this particular man was born blind so that Jesus could heal him. To me, this is simply applying causality to the works of compassion. This man was not born without sight simply so a miracle could happen but as an agent in this world of healing and restoration. When Jesus met someone who had no sight, Jesus healed them to bring about that full restoration.
This is the work that we are called to do, to bring healing wherever we go, and whenever we see suffering, to heal it.
In Luke 13:1–5, Jesus is asked about the victims of the Tower of Siloam, which collapsed and crushed many under its weight. Why did it fall? Was it because they were sinful? Again, Jesus rejects this idea that suffering and pain are brought about because of the sins of the people.
God causes the rain to fall on the wicked and the just alike. He does not pick those who should suffer and have pain because it is the desire of God that everyone should be restored and brought back into true relationship with themselves, with God, and with everyone else.
This idea that bad things happen to bad people is an instinctive response to tragedy and suffering, but it has no root in the tradition. It is the distorting lens that grows over our eyes to try to understand why bad things happen, because we find it very hard to accept that sometimes random chance can bring about disastrous outcomes.
We want to believe in a God that controls everything in the cosmos, thus giving everything that happens meaning and purpose. But if God controlled everything that happens, then we do not have free will. We are merely puppets. All of our bad actions are not our own; they were directed by God. Therefore, no one could be blamed for doing something wrong, harmful, or wicked. That is not the world we live in. We live in a world of free will where we can choose what happens. And the result of that free will is that some things just happen by random chance.
It is a wicked heart that would wish the cosmos to be enslaved to the will of another so that suffering would disappear because a new suffering would be born. That bondage would strip people of their ability to feel joy, because everything would be scripted for them. Their lives would be hollow, unable to bring meaning or purpose to them. That emptiness is a hell I do not want to live in.
In Ezekiel 18:23, God asks this question:
“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?”
A few verses later, in Ezekiel 18:32, he answers it: “I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies.” It always boggles my mind how those who believe that Scripture is inerrant and contains all truth would deny the very words of God, saying that He takes no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies.
Well, I don’t see the scriptures as inerrant, and I do not believe that all truth is contained within them. They are the voice of the tradition of those who encountered God before us, that help us to walk this path with them. No. The divine does not revel in the suffering and death of others. I don’t know how that could be stated more clearly.
When a follower of Christ sees suffering, they should see their Lord on the cross. Their immediate instinct should be to bring Him down, to free Him, to heal Him. Suffering is not divine judgment. Suffering is the summons to compassion. It is the role of those who walk the way of the cosmic Christ to bring healing and restoration wherever they go, and through whatever means they have available to them, whether that is financing it, studying, creating new medicines, creating new technologies, organizing the community, or just bringing therapy and guidance.
The goal of our spiritual work is to bring life more abundantly. We do that through liberating people from the chains that bind them, the suffering that holds them down, and the lies that imprison them in their own minds. This is the work of the cross. Our work in this world
Compassion, Dignity, and What Makes Us Human
When Jesus heals people in the Gospels, He is restoring to them their place in the community and their personal dignity. When we see someone suffering, often we think we are offering them compassion, but what we are offering them is pity. Pity is the evil twin of compassion. It is a sorrow and a looking down on those who suffer. “Oh, poor you, to suffer like this.” Compassion, on the other hand, jumps down into the trenches with them and helps to lift them up. Compassion literally means to work, to sojourn, to suffer together.
Jesus always begins by restoring dignity to the person and welcoming them back into the beloved community. His healing is a revelation that compassion is the deepest law of reality. As John says, “God is love, and those who do not know love do not know God.” All three commandments that Jesus gave are laws about love, about compassion, that we are to take care of one another and to have the same devotion one to another that we have to the Divine.
The vulnerable will always be with us, and impermanence will always be a mark of life. But we are not to give in to cruelty, abandoning those who suffer and creating systems of injustice that do them further harm. We are called to heal, to do compassion. That work is essential; it is the proof that we are followers of Christ and that we are part of living God.
One of the markers of our genus is that we take care of one another. We have found Neanderthal skeletons and human skeletons that show so much damage and healing, meaning that the community around them kept them alive and nursed them back to health. Our care and compassion for one another are one of the marks that make us human. We don’t limit this care and compassion just to our own species. Ancient dogs have been found that suffered terrible diseases that they would not have survived if they had not been cared for by the humans they lived with. That care and concern for one another have helped our species to survive so many natural calamities and changes in this world. When we reject it, we are rejecting something very basic about what makes us human.
When we fail to see suffering as it is, we blind ourselves to the many systems that we create that are unjust to those who are suffering. We blind ourselves to our ableism and perpetuate harm, even when that is not our intent. Every person deserves dignity because they exist. Not because they suffer, not because they have done something that culturally we have deemed makes them great. There are no great people, there are only people.
The lie that people must be worthy or deserving of dignity is a foul system that benefits only a few. Those who create the rules by which dignity and worth are doled out define themselves as the ones who should be the center of our worship and devotion, so that they can hoard power and wealth to themselves and comfort themselves that they are not the ones that are unworthy or lacking in dignity. The fear at the heart of their existence brings pain and suffering to the masses who follow them.
Anytime we hear someone say they deserve what they got, we need to ask ourselves who benefits from those people’s suffering. All too often, you will find someone who is benefiting financially. They’re benefiting in their status rising, or they are stealing something from those people to aggrandize themselves and increase their own wealth.
We must be careful not to fall prey to these false lenses that distort reality and prevent us from doing the work that makes us truly human, either to our fellow humans or to anything in nature. such actions are a betrayal not only of the divine, but of the very earthiness that makes us who we are.
For followers of Jesus, compassion means doing the work necessary to bring about healing. We build systems of mercy to combat the systems of injustice in this world. We organize our communities, we heal those that we can heal. We take care of the vulnerable and through doing all of that, we combat injustice. It is our prophetic work to interfere with injustice wherever we see it.
The Great Fast of Lent
So, my siblings, sisters and brothers, let us take on the great fast, the true fast, the one that God called us to in Isaiah, not just in Lent, but all year round. May it be our lives, work, and the glory of our souls. Amen.