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Any Switchfoot lovers out there? I am too. If you’re not, read on; this isn’t about Switchfoot. The last few months I’ve been listening to lead singer Jon Foreman’s solo “seasons” albums – there are four companion albums that all go together: fall, winter, spring, summer. They’re extraordinarily honest, meaning the songs have both breathtaking beauty and breathtaking pain within.
I’m driving down a country road in Stafford the other morning on the way to work – if you’ve been in my car you know there is no CD player, just a giant hole where one used to be – and I’ve got the church laptop open in the front seat playing music out of iTunes over the computer speakers. The song that comes on is “The Cure For the Pain” – the first track off the “Fall” album. This is one of the songs that has both the beauty and the pain; even though I’m not sure I was even really listening or even totally awake yet, as I’m driving in and out of the shadows of the trees and in the sunlight, running through the stuff that you worry about as you’re falling asleep or starting a new day, the line caught me. “Heaven knows,” he sings, “heaven knows, I’ve tried to find a cure for the pain / oh my Lord, to suffer like you do, it would be a lie to run away.”
A lie to run away? My heart was taken back a few weeks to studying Philippians 3 in small group – I haven’t done a chapter-by-chapter study of Philippians since 8th grade probably, and let me tell you I had forgotten how those verses just hit you and hit you again and just keep coming with the hard, delightful, and very true truths. I had decided to memorize verses 7-14 (if you see me, ask me to say them to you; we could all use a little accountability). But as old Foreman was singing “it would be a lie to run away,” I realized: okay, if I am really about gaining Christ and being found in him, if I have really lost all things for his sake, if I really want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, if I really want to share in his sufferings, if I really want to become like him in his death, my commitment to that life is a lie if I run away from pain.
Don’t let me blaspheme here, but what it is that the Dread Pirate Roberts says to Buttercup? – “life is pain, highness; anyone who says differently is selling something.” And okay, even though I think we have a little more hope in Christ than that (!), life in these bodies, even a new life in Christ, in this beautiful earth that God has made, we are still surrounded by sin and the destruction that happens here. People let us down, people let our friends down, natural disasters happen, people die. But if our call is to share in the sufferings of Jesus, who personally and physically took on the pain and death of the world, and if we want to become like him in his death, doesn’t it follow that we might experience some of that pain, that we might take some of other people’s hurt on ourselves and help them carry it? And the truth is, even someone else’s pain hurts.
If you were in service this past week you heard Gregg talk about Ryan Bingham’s philosophy (from Up in the Air) that relationships are the heaviest burden in your backpack, and therefore, you need to take them out of the backpack and keep them from weighing you down. Now the logic behind this is sound: if you get close to other people, care about them and care for them, you’ll get close to their problems. And their problems will hurt and will weigh you down. Even your care for them will weigh you down. But isn’t this God’s design? And Christ’s example? Christ takes all our hurt and pain (and the hurt and pain we’ve caused other people) on himself, freeing us from it, and then tells us to love one another as much as we love ourselves (side note: if you’re anything like me, you love yourself a LOT). We’re designed to love each other, to carry each other’s burdens, and that can hurt sometimes. But if we want to live as citizens in God’s kingdom, to become like Jesus, it would be a lie to run away.
-Julia
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