Sometimes, I find that questions can be just as powerful as declarative statements.
Sunday night’s talk from Maxie was a prime example of this. We labeled his two questions – “little question” and “big question”.
His little question was When faced with unjust suffering, will I remain a person of integrity?. I found this question extremely powerful because I believe we only truly discover what we believe when faced with crisis or suffering.
His big question was What did I think that it would mean to follow Jesus?. As Maxie mentioned, many of us have been given an idea of what it would mean to follow Jesus…and then we hit the wall of experience and we realize that there is a significant gap between what we thought it would mean…and what it does mean.
The Big idea for the night was We will not become people of integrity until we allow suffering to bring us face to face with injustice and yield to God.
After reading from John 15, and several passages in 1 Peter, Maxie also walked us through what our responses to unjust suffering can look like:
1. Camp in the valley embracing the anger, bitterness, hurt etc.
2. Reject God and turn back
3. Face the unjust suffering, yield to God and keep walking, crawling etc.
I loved Maxie’s illustration of the first option with this picture.
Maxie closed with this piece of commentary.
Suffering injustice is not just something to get past or get through so we can be happy again. It is in the valley of unjust suffering that we get a taste of the injustice that Jesus felt on the cross; we partake of His suffering and experience the true cost of integrity. Suffering for integrity brings us face to face with injustice and forces us to work through the disillusionment of what we thought it meant to follow Jesus. Suffering rarely achieves the outcome we want but it is not a waste of time or something to just get through either. There is nothing like suffering to clarify things.
Becoming a person of integrity like Jesus is not about fairness or justice; it is about being transformed into His likeness.
In this series, What a Waste, we are introducing what (for some) is a very revolutionary idea – that we are not only transformed into the likeness of Jesus through seasons of joy, but also seasons of suffering. And maybe, just maybe, the greatest change happens when the sky is the darkest and our pain is the strongest.
To check out the talk, go the Crash website.
