The Problem of Pain

As I write these words, I am sitting on the ninth floor of St. Joseph’s hospital on the north side of Chicago. If you have to be in a hospital, this isn’t a bad option. For one thing, the view is incredible. St. Joseph’s sits on the shore of Lake Michigan, so every morning I have been treated to a display of beauty as the sun rises over the watery horizon. Even more importantly, the care here has been phenomenal. The nurses who have rotated through our room during each 12-hour shift have been both competent and compassionate. You can have Spiderman and Captain America. These caregivers are my heroes.

We have been here for a full week seeking care for my wife’s chronic headaches. The entire ninth floor of this hospital is operated by a unique treatment facility called the Diamond Headache Clinic. To my knowledge, it is the only inpatient headache clinic in the country. There are patients here from all over the country who come seeking relief from excruciating head pain. Some stay a few days, while others stay for weeks at a time, depending on the specifics and the severity of their condition. Many will make repeat visits. We came once before, back in 2010. Others have been multiple times. This week we met a 17-year-old young lady who has already been twice in the last 18 months.

Some might think this is overkill for a little ole’ headache. You have to understand we are not talking about the run-of-the-mill variety we all experience when a cold sets in or in when grandma gives little Timmy a starter drum set for Christmas. We are talking about a debilitating level of pain you can only understand if you have experienced it or lived with someone who does. This kind of pain reduces a grown man to sobs while he cradles his head in his hands for fear it is about to explode. This kind of pain causes otherwise intelligent and productive people to withdraw from daily life for fear that an unwanted stimulus will send them into a pit of suffering. This is the common experience of the people we have met here.

The big trouble with headaches is they are still largely a mystery. While researchers have made advances in recent years, even the experts here at Diamond will tell you we don’t really know what causes them – at least not with the kind of certainty and precision we have come to expect from medical science. This means there is no definitive cure. That’s why professionals in the field of headache treatment usually tell their patients they are not seeking to cure them; they are simply trying to identify effective ways of managing and limiting the pain.

And therein lies the great challenge – and not just with headache treatments, but with the human condition in general. It is the challenge of managing pain. As citizens of the most scientifically and technologically advanced society in history, we have come to believe we have a right to live without pain. There is supposed to be a pill for every ache and a cure for every malady. Just think of the huge opioid crisis facing our nation. The crisis took hold, in part, because marketers and manufacturers of an addictive drug played to our desire to think we can live pain free if only we have enough prescription meds.

That is a big, fat lie. To live is to hurt. As fallible people in a broken world, we will all experience pain – and not just the physical variety. The pain can also be emotional, relational, psychological, or spiritual. Yes, for some it will be worse than others. What I face pales in comparison to what my wife lives with every day, but even my soon-to-be 50-year-old body hurts sometimes. I suspect it will only get worse as I get older. This doesn’t mean we have to be passive or fatalistic in the face of pain.  When there is chronic pain, we should seek help in limiting its effects, but an honest approach to our human experience means learning to accept and live with a certain amount pain.

The unavoidable question is why. There is an entire sub-discipline of theology called theodicy, which wrestles with the dilemma of how a good and all-powerful God can allow people to suffer. There are no simple and satisfactory answers, except to say suffering is a consequence of human sin. Scripture tells us of a world in rebellion against its creator, with disastrous consequences. By the time we get to the end of Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve disobey God, there are weeds growing in the garden, and things only get worse from there. God’s perfect creation has been thrown into corruption. I don’t think it is a stretch to say this has something to do why an entire floor of this hospital has been set aside just to treat headache patients. Like everything about the universe, the human body is at war with itself. That won’t change until Christ returns to bring God’s kingdom to fulfillment.

There are many others smarter and more faithful than I who have spoken to this great theological dilemma, so I am not going to try to offer some previously unheard-of insight into the cause of pain. Instead, I am struck by an essay I read earlier this week which reminded me of something that can change our approach to the problem.  The great Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, once challenged us to think about the purpose of pain instead of focusing only on the reason for pain. In other words, instead of only asking “Why does God allow pain?” we should also be asking “What good does pain do? What can it accomplish?” Of course, shifting the question in this way requires a certain amount of faith. If you are already convinced God doesn’t exist or, worse yet, that God does exist and doesn’t care, then there isn’t much point in changing the question. In that case, there is no point to anything anyway, so why bother? But if you believe God truly has redeemed the world through the pain and suffering of Jesus, then this question matters immensely, for it means there is something redemptive to pain. If God can use Jesus’ suffering in such a powerful way, then perhaps he can use ours as well.

To be fair, the pain you and I suffer isn’t the same as what Jesus experienced. The sins of the world are not forgiven because I hurt. That power belongs to Jesus alone. But when you and I hurt we are perhaps more receptive to what Jesus experienced and accomplished. This is why Lewis said one of the great purposes of pain is humility. Pain has the ability to shake us loose from our illusions of self-sufficiency and thereby make us humbler.  When we hurt, we are forced to recognize we do not have the ability to fix everything by our own power. We need the help of someone, be it a doctor or a nurse or, at the very least, the manufacturer of ibuprofen. Pain reminds us of our utter interdependency. This, in turn, can remind us of our utter need for God.

We cannot assume this an automatic outcome. To the contrary, pain can harden us to others and make us bitter. If we choose, pain can turn us in on ourselves and make us think only of what we need and want right this moment. However, if we can focus on the question Lewis encouraged us to ask, it might just open us up to become more empathetic to others and more receptive to the divine aid God desires to give. You see, the core of the gospel is that we cannot save ourselves; only God can through the mercies of Jesus Christ. I am not suggesting every instance of suffering is a case of God sending pain into our lives to force us to our knees. I am suggesting God doesn’t waste any experience to accomplish his purposes – not even the experience of pain.

As I write, we are preparing to leave here and return home. We are hopeful my wife’s headaches will be better, but we also know they will not be gone. There will likely be more painful days to come. When they do, it will be easy and perhaps natural to turn back in on ourselves and ask why this is happening, but my hope is we will also have the courage to be open a different kind of question. What is God doing with this hardship? If the answer draws us to him, it will prove to be the most important question we could ever ask.