“I’m sorry to have to tell you that the test came back and it is cancer” is a sentence we all dread to hear. Typically this would be followed by treatment options if there were sufficient time. But what if you had a new and unique kind of cancer that defied all treatment? What if your cancer could not be starved by diet or eradicated by radiation or poisoned by chemotherapy? What if there were no drugs that could touch it? You would be hopeless. Stuck in your cancer, because your cancer wasn’t like anyone else’s cancer.
There are some people who, contrary to reality, are convinced that their cancer is unique. Except it isn’t cancer, it’s the painful and traumatic circumstances of their lives. In their own minds, they have suffered so uniquely that all the cures that exist for others are meaningless for them. They are hopelessly imprisoned in the uniqueness of their suffering. Their story of suffering is their self-defense against the world, and so they both hate and love it.
But let me push back on the story they are telling. Let me suggest that their suffering is not unique, though it may be legitimately horrific. Your suffering is not unique. There is only one case of unique suffering in the world, and that is the case of Jesus Christ. His suffering alone can claim to be above the horizon of all other suffering. You, my friend, have not suffered like Jesus.
One difference is that Jesus suffered as an innocent, and you have suffered as a sinner. Even when you tell your story, don’t you have to occasionally insert a disclaimer like, “Sure, I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t deserve that”. Aren’t there decisions that you made along the way that inflamed your suffering? Did you have any thought that robbed you of peace or attitude that quelled joy? Did you cause others to suffer along your journey because of selfishness or anger or some other deed of the flesh? Jesus had no such experience. “In His living, In His suffering, never stain nor trace of sin”. I am not minimizing your suffering, only trying to contextualize it.
Another difference is that while you suffered (or continue to suffer) unwillingly, Jesus chose His path knowing what it would lead to. His entire earthly existence was part of a story that culminated on a cross. He chose to suffer because His suffering would be redemptive. It would change the world. It would wash away the very sins that led to its necessity. But you have tried to escape your suffering, sometimes at the expense of others. As the saying goes, hurting people hurt people. Do you ever look back at all the people you have hurt and hide your guilt with comforting excuses of your own suffering? Do you every say, “But I never would have acted like that if _________ hadn’t happened to me, so it’s still not my fault?” Have you ever considered that the people that hurt you have their own version of this story of victimhood, and you are simply caught up in an endless cycle? Jesus came to suffer and end the cycle.
You might think that since Jesus is the Unique Sufferer, He must hold that over our heads (since, after all, that is what you do with your suffering). But He doesn’t. Instead of using His suffering as an excuse to be above the rest of the rabble, He uses His suffering as an invitation. Because He has suffered, He understands suffering. He is not the God who stands aloof and alone, enshrined in His perfection. He is he God who enters in and participates in our suffering. If you are alive, you have suffered. Jesus understands.
“So doctor, you’re telling me that my cancer is so different and terrible that there is no cure?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying your cancer is very similar to other kinds of cancers and since we caught it early, we should be able to treat it.”
Now who would want to walk away from the Cure?
Nathan Writes 