VIP

“Have pity on me, my friends, have pity,  for the hand of God has struck me.” (19:21)

Who is the most important person in a church? Is it the head of the denomination? Is it the local pastor? Is it the person who is most filled with the Holy Spirit? Or how about one of those hard-working deacons, the one who somehow has a hand in everything and without whose tireless service the whole church would (or so it seems) collapse? Or perhaps the most important person is that unassuming angel of mercy whose humble but towering faith is known to the Lord alone? Or what about the prayer-warrior? Isn’t there always one saint who seems more ardently and joyfully committed to prayer than all the rest of the church combined? Is he or she the most important? But no. Oddly enough the answer is none of the above. Rather the answer is this: the most important person in the church is the one who is suffering.

Consider the analogy of the human body. If I injure my foot and cannot walk, then all of a sudden the most important part of my body becomes my foot. Immediately all the rest of my body (including my wonderfully sophisticated brain) must be put at the service of my foot (or maybe it’s my toe, or even my toenail) in order to care for the injured member until it gets well and I can walk again. For as long as my foot cannot walk, neither can the rest of me. In fact, if the injury is serious and there is great pain, I will not even be able to think clearly until the problem is attended to. I might even lose consciousness from shock or loss of blood and be totally unable to look after myself.

In such a situation, what would we think of a brain that, rather than bending all its energies and intellect towards the care of the injured foot, decided to amuse itself with mathematical puzzles? What if our brain took the attitude that there was really nothing wrong with our foot, that it was probably just pretending to be injured in order to get attention, or that in any case it ought to be able to look after itself and do its own healing? As ludicrous as this may sound, are there not people who function just like this, people who live their whole lives in denial of the very health problems (whether physical, psychological, or spiritual) that are destroying them? In the same way, are there not Christian congregations which refuse to deal with the suffering in their midst? For all their talk of ministering to the needy, when faced with real suffering they have a highly developed facility for passing by on the other side.
 
In Job we see five men (counting Elihu) whose lives are inconvenienced by the suffering of one. Four of these men are, subconsciously, so deeply resentful of this interruption that they cannot see that the problem is really theirs just as much as it is Job’s. Frantically they try to theologize their way out of any personal implication in their friend’s pain. Their behavior is like that of a stubborn man who insists on walking around on a broken foot—or even going skiing or roller-skating! But it is no use: Job’s friends are involved in his trials, whether they like it or not, and everything would go a whole lot more smoothly if they would simply accept their share of the responsibility, and get on with learning the compassionate arts of understanding, comfort, healing, and restoration. Here is what Paul says about these things in 1 Corinthians 12:22-26:

Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.