Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1911 — God Uses Pain to Refine Humanity [ARTICLE]

God Uses Pain to Refine Humanity

By DR HAROLD PATTISON

iraf-ssL*-*-

The problem in Job’s time was. why #0 the righteous suffer? but the problem In our day has broadened to why flihould there be any suffering at all? As we have stood near the bedside of some dear one whom we could not bear to see suffer, we have wondered bow God could stand it. Personally, I do not believe that God is, a being that goes about shattering our homes or breaking our hearts. It Is thought that he permits such things, but it may well be said that God cannot still be good and make exceptions, here and there in the workings of the groat laws of the universe, that were to put irreguaritles in the place of uniformity, to Introduce anarchy and make confusion worse confounded. We are to remember, too, that we are Inclined to mistake the part for the whole, and In the matter of pain our standard of measuroinent is apt to be false. The actual amount of pain in the world is only as great as that borne by any single human being. A partial answer to this problem Is (bund in the present uses of pain. Pain may be a punishment, but not always, for pain would seem quite as often a punishment for weakness as for wickedness. Great pain purifies. As the psalmist says: “It was good for me that I was afflicted." Pain is power. Pain stimulates us to do our best. It is a goad and spur that discovers our best paces. We often say we learn by experience, but If we stop to think of it the experiences to which we refer are mostly painful. It takes fire to temper steel and the sword blade never yet took and held its temper without it. A California apple Is large and beautiful, but tasteless like cork; it needs the frost of New England to ripen the Baldwin and pippin. We none of us want to live over again the difficult crises of our lives, yet not one of us would be willing to part with the experiences those crises gave us. Great pain warns us. A wounded dog holds up its foot and so keeps out the dirt. Pain told it to do that. The cross of Christ sheds the strongest light on the mysteries of pain. Jesuß never seemed to be perplexed at the existence of pain. How groat a part of his ministry'consisted in banishing pain, yet Jesus and Christianity have done much to increase the pain of the world. Gethsexnane and Calvary show us that in our lives as well as his the beat and truest in human life comes from pain. The cross is the appeal of suffering. The vicarious suffering of Christ is said to conflict with our sense of Justice, It does not do tt. We interpret it by the old view of theology, but rightly viewed it is the climax and complete expiration of the forces to which we owe entire evolution of our race. We not confuse vicarious suffering with vicarious punishment. When life is seen at its deepest and truest it seems as though there were nothing else but vicarious suffering through which the world was saved. Pain is incidental. It does not last. Pain is unnatural. Jesus came to heal and banish it. Pain is not eternal, and “God shall wipe all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crime, neither shall there be any more pain, tor the former things are passed away."