Could Be Worse
A few years ago, I watched a TED talk given by Ash Beckham in 2013, in which she encourages the audience to find the strength to have necessary but difficult conversations. Drawing from her experience of coming out, she suggests that all of us are living in our own closets—that we all hide from those difficult conversations because we are afraid of admitting the truth. Her whole talk is worth watching, but the one line I still hang onto is something she said about the universal nature of struggle: “Hard is not relative. Hard is hard.”
Sometimes we seek comfort in knowing that things could be worse. I have heard many people, when faced with greater pain and loss than I have experienced in my own life, say, “I know other people are in worse shape than I am.” I suspect that instinctive response is born of genuine humility and a desire to look on the bright side even in difficult circumstances. Some of our parents, teachers, clergy, and other mentors have taught us that, because there is always someone worse off than we are, we should be grateful no matter what. But when are we permitted to acknowledge that things are hard for us? When does our struggle matter?
In 1 Thessalonians 5:18, the apostle Paul wrote that we should “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” That is a powerful invitation to a faithful perspective, but I do not think but that Paul meant that we should take comfort in knowing that things could be worse or that we should pretend that the struggle we face is insignificant. In fact, I think the gospel for which Paul was willing to suffer and die proclaims the opposite.
Our struggle matters to God. Our pain matters to God. Our grief and loss matter to God. We believe that God not only wills that all people might be saved, but that, in order to save us, God would take upon Godself all that is wounded, lost, and broken within the human race. In the incarnation, therefore, God becomes flesh not in the abstract sense but in the same real, tangible, fragile sense that you experience every day. God takes your nature upon Godself. It is your struggle that is embodied in Jesus and made perfect through his death and resurrection. Any approach to the Christian faith that denies the significance of our individual loss effectively undermines the power of the gospel.
We rejoice in all circumstances not by denying the significance of our struggle but by clinging to the promised redemption of all that is amiss in our lives. The season of Lent is a time for the church to do that with renewed intention. Instead of focusing only on the positive, we take time to remember the struggle that is within all of us. We acknowledge our mortality on Ash Wednesday. We fast for forty days to remind us of our humanity. We confront through our penitence that we are sinners in need of a savior. These practices are not rehearsals in misery, designed to win sympathy from God, nor are our Lenten disciplines supposed to make us better people. They are supposed to remind us that despite all our struggles God loves us fully.
This Lenten journey is not an attempt at self-purgation but a proclamation of God’s purifying and perfecting love for broken and imperfect people. This journey, therefore, is one of honest faithfulness. As Ash Beckham explained, it does not matter if my struggle is harder than yours. Hard is hard. Things could be worse, and other people may have a harder time than we do, but God’s redeeming love for us is just as real and just as important. Do not second-guess your experience of the wilderness because you suspect that other people’s journey is more difficult. Yours is hard enough, and God will bring you through it.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan