“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.”
... far beyond our ability to endure... despaired of life itself. What does this mean? I wonder if anyone knows where this quote comes from. Some will think it a trick question. It’s not. It’s a legitimate question when it comes to the difficult question, “does God give us more than we can bear?” Does God? Life certainly does!
So, who wrote these words? The scribes of the apostle Paul, under his instructions. It’s 2 Corinthians 1:8, the commencement of Paul’s “tearful letter.” He had many chances to change his mind. Did he change his mind? No, he did not. He retained the words. To make the church at Corinth feel guilty? To manipulate the church? I don’t think so. It is his factual reflection on the trials he had personally suffered.
We can only postulate that Paul felt these very things, and indeed includes the “we” presuming that the cohort suffered together to such a degree they regretted being alive. Don’t worry, Paul, you join a very esteemed company of biblical heroes.
Job, for instance. Chapter 3 verse 3: “May the day of my birth perish... and the night that said: ‘A boy is conceived.’” There are several times where David is said to be that cast down in lament, he could seriously muse on what his son, Solomon, would pen in Ecclesiastes 7:1: “... the day of death better than the day of birth.” I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The Bible is littered with grief that welcomes death.
Where am I going with this? One thing I will say as I skate around the edge of unmentionable issues is, beyond reprehensibly abusive theologies, there’s got to be no condemnation for the one who takes their fate into their own hands. So many who have been left behind, to pick up the scraps of a life spent before its time deserve their redemption, to record awareness that they’re not alone. Their loved one they still grieve is gone and there’s something awfully final about that reality, but grief is just the start of the challenges they face each and every day. The least that is due this one is to rationalise the potency of the force that gets us to question our lives.
The suffering known to life that takes us deep into the grips of despair is potentially a reality for us all, and perhaps blessed are we to have been taken to the abyss and then to survive it. It should give us heaven’s empathy, a divine compassion, for anyone else — not to mention the millions daily — who are there. If there’s one gift, it’s seeing the uncompromising stand that the intransigent nature makes on us as it claims our lives for a time of obdurate despair.
The last thing that our world needs is people of the faith undermining the reality of despair in this life. But what the world could really do with is Christians who ‘get’ despair, who are able to be a Jesus or a Mother Theresa to and for the sufferer.
The sufferer of despair is feeling something is never more real. It takes its grip and it doesn’t leave, and the lived experience of despairing of life itself is something that is tragically all too common. The least we can do is cry with those who have no tears left to cry. In that, strangely, is a tangible hope.
Photo by Dimitry Anikin on Unsplash
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