Let’s start, just for fun, by imaging a painful scene. Picture an injured man. Maybe he’s fallen down a flight of stairs; maybe he’s tumbled off a ladder. Either way, he lies sprawled on the ground. He’s suffering. His leg is broken, twisted at an unnatural angle. Maybe he’s wincing, crying out. Tears trickle across his face. He shouts for help.
Now imagine another man appears on the scene. He has good news. He leans over the broken-legged man to tell him his real problem is that he needs to stop elevating his pain above the power of the cross and to stop making his pain a part of his identity.
Seems absurd, yes? More than absurd. It seems cruel, abusive even.
And yet, something like this happens often in Christian circles.
Just recently, prominent Christian leader and musician Sean Feucht published this tweet:
Got that?
Not only are the suffering of the world exaggerating, they are cheapening the sacrifice of Jesus by “elevating” their suffering, whatever that means.
We can see how saying this in response to the suffering of the man with the broken leg betrays, at best, a total lack of connection to reality and, at worst, a heart hardened by ideology.
Why then do many conservative Christians then agree with Feucht when it comes to emotional pain?
Well, because of the largely unconscious beliefs they carry.
The objection they might raise to analogizing emotional and psychological trauma to a broken leg reveals one of those beliefs. The pain of a broken leg they think, is somehow more real, than emotional pain. Pain in the body, they assume, is more real because it can be traced to a physical cause that cannot be healed by a change of attitude.
The correlating assumption is that pain that comes from emotional wounds is somehow less real, and that it stems not from the emotional blows we’ve suffered, but from our stubborn refusal to decide to stop feeling so bad.
They believe, as Feucht puts it, that the pain of emotional wounds won’t go away because sufferers elevate their “trauma, pain & victim-hood over the power of the cross.” The difference between the pain of a broken leg and the pain of, say, a broken family or having suffered sexual abuse is, in their minds, that the pain of a broken leg comes upon the sufferer unbidden and thus he is innocent of causing any of it.
Those living with emotional pain, however, contribute to their suffering by “elevating” their pain above the power of the cross, a phrase while so amorphous as to be undefinable surely means something to Feucht. I doubt Feucht would say victims of abuse and trauma bring those experiences upon themselves, but the implication is that they do bring upon themselves unnecessary suffering by refusing to cease cheapening the sacrifice of Jesus.
The view that emotional and psychological pain is mostly exaggerated is not uncommon in many right-leaning circles. One sees it often on X-that-used-to-be-Twitter. The idea that the cure for emotional pain is for people to just be tougher is common there. If people would get themselves together and stop being such pansies, the thinking goes, we wouldn’t have a society full of whiny victims. The real problem, according to this view, is not that people have been victimized, but that they won’t shut up about it.
Feucht takes such destructive thinking to a new level by turning an unwillingness to deny suffering into sacrilege. Not only are people suffering merely because they are weak, he says, they are insulting Jesus by talking about it.
One hears such language in evangelical circles: a combination of vague accusation and unwarranted triumphalism. The point of Feucht’s tweet is that by elevating their trauma over the power of the cross, suffering people are choosing not to be completely free. The accusation is meaningless, of course, people suffering emotionally aren’t “elevating trauma, pain and victim-hood” any more than the man with the broken leg is.
The man with the broken leg is preoccupied with his pain, not because he is selfish or weak but because pain demands attention, and severe pain demands all of one’s attention. Expecting victims of trauma and abuse to choose not to focus on their unhealed psychic wounds is as unrealistic as expecting the man with the broken leg to choose to hop up and walk home.
The further implication of Feucht’s tweet is that the kind of total and miraculous healing that would enable suffering people to be whole is available if only these stubborn losers would stop rejecting it. Of course, that isn’t true. Healing for our psychic wounds is not instant. We cannot be completely free. Life is tragic and some wounds, even when they heal, will ache all life long.
Feucht’s comment is more careless than cruel. He probably lives in a bubble where such platitudes are routinely uttered and rarely pondered. When we stop to ponder them we see a deeper problem yet.
The worst thing about this Christian tweet is that it fails to capture Christ. When we consider those whose healings are recounted in the Gospels, we see Jesus take their sufferings with the greatest seriousness. Throughout Scripture, we see God concerned with the injustices people perpetrate against each other. The damaging consequences of such mistreatment are taken to be real, not simply a matter of poor attitudes that could be changed if only the sufferer would mortify his stubborn will.
Feucht assumes that what heals our pain is an action we take for ourselves. We change our attitudes, cease to “elevate” our trauma, and our suffering disappears. This message, of course, runs counter to the claims of Scripture that make clear that our pain is not self-inflicted, and our healing is not self-generated.
Life, as portrayed in Scripture, is more complicated and vastly more tragic than that. There, in the Bible, we learn what we already knew in our hearts, that our wounds are real and gruesome and the healing we need requires no mere shift in attitude from us, but the touch of a great and compassionate physician.
Beautifully written, and a thoughtful correction to the message that is too often uttered. Thank you for sharing.
"Let’s start, just for fun, by imaging a painful scene. Picture an injured man." For a second there I thought you were talking about pretty boy there in the picture at the top.
My first impression was, huh? What does this hippie cult leader have to say about anything? Hair care products? Yeah, so, there's plenty of political attitude out there regarding the victimhood culture, but there are, in fact, real victims out in the world. Are we to tell them to go F themselves? I can remember the torments wrought by my parents, and I've met people with even worse situations of childhood. For some, a strange moment can hit them in their 30s. Bringing them to their knees. They're not competing, they didn't ask for it, nor deserve it.
There does sometimes tend to be a competition of pain and suffering. Who's paid their dues? Some people have paid way too much. But for me, it always comes back to Dismas and Gestas. Both crucified, both suffering, one has the time and energy to mock and degrade, the other defends. Goldielocks here seems to have taken the wrong message from the Crucifixion.
There is a truth in every situation, and sometimes the man in true pain has to pay even more for another, sometimes he even chooses to. Yes. One can observe they're absolutely mangled by life, but they look over and see someone who is about to be mangled, and you think, aw shit, I can't let that happen. It's going to cost me even more, but I gotta do it.
As for God, yeah, I can tell, I'm not one of his favorites, all the platitudes are all fine and well for some, like hippie cult leaders with a medicine cabinet full of the finest hair care products, but not me. I hate having to pick someone up off the ground who is bleeding, but when nobody else will, normally I just get angry at God. Not because "now I gotta do shit" but really, what kind of world is this anyways? A wood chipper for the soul?
You could say I'm disappointed, but I already know there's a difference between physical and spiritual suffering. (But I think one can lead to another). Goldielocks better define 'trauma' because it appears he thinks it's running out of conditioner.
I guess I'm supposed to remember Christ, but all too often people suffer for absolutely no good reason. And that pisses me off. God expects me to pick people up? I can guarantee you that Goldielocks there will run from an injured man, which explains his statement. All I see is injured men. (And people like Goldielocks). How about giving me a break, God? Nah. No breaks. No conditioner.
I hate pain and I hate suffering. I hate it when I see it in others. The danger might be worse than pathetic wanna-be preachers denying it in their followers, telling them to 'deny' what they're going through for Jesus somehow, the danger is when I start getting really pissed off at God for letting this shit go on for thousands of years. But since there's nothing I can do about it, all that's left to do is let God have his will, and continue getting mangled... and watch others keep getting mangled. And watch as people like Goldielocks the Prosperity Theology Rock Star mock Christ, and the mangled man.
There is no doubt such a thing as self-pity exists, but some traumas ARE in fact debilitating for people. Sean here is playing Gestas. "Get up. Pull yourself up for Jesus." If this was the case, what's the point of helping anybody then? You can just remind them of Christ's suffering... oh wait, yeah, my Mom used to use lines like this.... Sorry, Sean, I'm too busy tied to this cross here to reach over and kick you. Or cut off your beloved hair. Otherwise I might be tempted to do that. I'm a little pre-occupied. I wonder if Goldielocks has ever nearly starved to death. You start to lose all your faculties. You can barely think. You can barely focus on anything, because you're literally dying. You wonder if you might get out of the situation, but you reach a point where you might not be able to help yourself at a certain point. It's a pretty bad situation to be in, and I empathize with anybody who's been through it. I hesitate to judge Goldielocks, who knows, maybe he was tortured in a Gulag when he was 14, what do I know. I doubt it though. There's only two kinds of people in this world. Dismas and Gestas. You have to choose which one to be. Sean here has chosen.
To quote Filthy Frank,
"I live in a constant state of fear and misery...
And I don't even notice
When it hurts anymore
Anymore
Anymore
Anymore"
Blessed are the suffering... I guess. Some of them won't kick a man when he's down because they've been kicked so many times they're numb to the pain. Is pain my identity? I don't know, I don't think so, it just IS. I don't want it to be. It's there, and when someone like Goldielocks comes along I just think, well, Gestas of the Golden Locks, I hope Jesus provides you all the hair care products you need when you get to heaven, all I ask for is the end to pain.