Did you know that leprosy, one of the most ancient and feared diseases in human history, is not a wearing away of the skin or muscle tissue, but it is the destruction of our body’s nerve endings? To put it shortly, leprosy is the absence of pain.
When I was young, I believed that pain was like any other feeling, even a feeling such as joy or excitement, and so in my tenth year of life, I decided to train my mind to treat pain like any other feeling so I could overcome it. To my disappointment then and to my humor now, this was a feat I was unable to accomplish. But this little exercise told me something. It told me that everyperson, whether young or old, desires to live a life free of pain. In other words, if there was a real life genie in a bottle, one of the three wishes on most anyone’s wish list would be to never feel pain, emotional, physical or mental, ever again. As I thought about this, the age old question came up, why do we hurt? As Philip Yancey put it, where is God when it hurts? I had been content with my life and found pain manageable until I hit my late teens and early twenties, when I felt pain that wrenched deep down in the bottom of my soul, and could not hold my tongue any longer. I wanted to know WHY. Why is there pain in our world? Can a father murdering his two adolescent daughters in a drunken rage, be explained? Can a priest molesting a ten year old congregant, and the physiological pains that boy must endure for the rest of his life, be accounted for? Surely, only God could answer such a question. Surely, He would know, or SHOULD know I thought.
“Not once did a person visit my office to express appreciation for a beautifully functioning kidney or lung. They came to complain that something was not working properly. Only later did I realize that the very thing they complained about were their greatest allies. Most people view pain as an enemy. Yet, as my leprosy patients prove, it forces us to pay attention to threats against our bodies. Without it, heart attacks, strokes, ruptured appendixes, and stomach ulcers would all occur without warning. Who would ever visit a doctor apart from pain’s warnings?” This is a quote from Dr. Paul Brand, a receiver of the Albert Lasker Award, appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, and the only westerner to serve on the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation. I quoted this from Philip Yancey’s book Soul Survivor. What I took from this book and this doctor was that pain was crucial, an integral and necessary part of human life. Yes. Necessary for human life. If we had no pain, we would be lepers. A shoe that fit too tightly, for months on end, would cut off the circulation of blood flow which would eventually destroy the foot’s life support resulting in the need for amputation. Sitting in an awkward position or lying down without the feeling of discomfort would eventually rupture the discs holding our spinal chord in place, leaving one unable to move or control the muscles that are required in every day life, leading to paralyzation. The loss of pain, in this world we live in, is considered a disease. And truly it is. Mutilated limbs, disfigured faces, toes and fingers being chewed off all because the person, the leper, who carries this disease, feels no pain at all.
As I was reading this book I likened our human bodies to our spirits. 98% ofthe world’s population believes in the human spirit, and 100% of the world’s population, even the psychopaths, believe in right and wrong. So now imagine a world that can not feel right or wrong, that can not feel pain where cruelty is found, that can not sense the light from the dark, that does not know sin and is apathetic to cheer and gloom. A human without nerves, you get a leper. A world without a soul, you get hell. Imagine the African American slaves beaten, fed and spit upon like dogs, their mothers used as whores for the owner’s drunken parties, young men belted then hung from a tree for sneaking out to eat a piece of biscuit, their fathers used like cattle and oxen, grandfathers shot for their ineffectiveness in the field and lack of utility, grandmothers weeping at the thought of their children growing up just as they did. And imagine no one had the ears to hear them, because there was no pain.
To ask God for a pain-free life is like asking Him to blind our eyes and deafen our ears. As Dr. Paul Brand put it, “I thank God for pain. I cannot think of agreater gift I could give my leprosy patients.”
There was a man who once lived on this earth, who likened Himself to a doctor treating sick patients. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” He is the most documented man in human history, from those who walked with Him on a day to day basis to those who hated Him and made it their life’s work to tarnish His name. Both can not deny His existence. And when I read these words again and again I feel a sense of awe, that of all the truth I have found in my life, they have always lead me back to His words. C. S. Lewis, an avid atheist and leading figure at Oxford University came to know this same man through his search for truth and answers. Lewis said that “if you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” It is the pain that lies deep in our souls that we want an answer to the most. The pain that comes to life with the recollection of being spit on, the feelingof being lonely, or taken advantage of, been betrayed, lied to, hurt, beat, shunned and outcast from our most beloved ones. It is that pain of watching your father leave you and your family on that sunday night, that pain of seeing your drunken mother treat herself like a whore to different men each and every night, that pain of watching your brother sell his soul to money and fame, that pain of being helpless watching your sister cut and bleed herself in the dark… it is that pain that we must never forget, cuz God forbid we gouge out our own eyes.
S.D.G
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