Hilary and Donald Cannot Remedy Our Pain

In the 21st chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus and Peter have a discussion about love, in which Jesus inflicts psychological pain on Peter. The context of this conversation is that a few weeks earlier, on the evening of Jesus' arrest and trial, Peter had boldly declared that he would die for Jesus, and then a few hours later swore vehemently that he did not know Him. After the resurrection, Peter moped and then ran away to go fishing. Jesus was not willing to let Peter self-destruct, so He came to the shore, built a charcoal fire to use Peter's sense of smell to remind him of the night of Jesus' trial. He then asked Peter three times if he loved Him, in a reminder to Peter of the three times the bystanders at the trial had asked him if he was one of Jesus' followers.

Peter did not miss the significance of Jesus' words. There is an interplay on the words used for love in this interchange that many other expositors have written on. The substance of this psychotherapy session is that Peter did not think that he was capable of loving Jesus as Jesus loved him. He had failed. He had denied knowing Jesus and even if Jesus forgave him, he could neither forgive himself nor think that he would do any better the next time. Reliving that event must have been psychological agony. But Jesus saw what Peter did not, that the coming of the Holy Spirit would fundamentally and profoundly change Peter. He even told him that he would one day have the strength to die for Jesus, which church history records happened a few decades later.

Why did Jesus inflict this psychic pain on Peter? Jesus knew that Peter had to move beyond his failure and continue to grow, in order to fulfill the future that He had for him. And so, what makes the pain justifiable is not that Peter got emotional closure or psychological rebalancing, but that he would one day (soon) live a life and say and do things that would fulfill him and his life's calling to be a fisher of men.

We all experience pain. Not just the physical pain that results from bodily injury, but the psychological and emotional pain that comes from things we have said and done, and from things that others said or did to us. As Stephen Hiemstra wrote, "Self-centered rumination is a heavy burden, not a light one." Unlike daily life, God uses pain not for chastising us, but for making us like Him. C. S. Lewis wrote, in his book on this subject,

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The bottom line is that God so desires that we become like Him in His attributes of love and holiness that He will use any means necessary to move us towards that goal. If He was willing for Jesus to die on the cross and endure the weight of the sins of the whole world, including the punishment justly due for those sins, why would He do any less to get us to experience His divine character in our daily life?

Sin has consequences. Whether we reap the consequences in our own life or inflict consequences on others, cause and effect are inescapable, apart from the grace of God. The government is not God. Government can mitigate some of the consequences but runs the peril of encouraging sin if the consequences are removed. In Christianity this is sometimes called "cheap grace". (Romans 5:20 & 6:1)

Politics seems to have morphed within my lifetime from the casting of vision to an appeal to anger and pain. Before blaming the current crop of politicians for leading in that direction, perhaps we should consider why those who tap into that current of anger and rage receive so much support in the ballot box. Why? To paraphrase Shakespeare, the problem lies not in our pols, but in ourselves. It is far easier to blame someone else for our problems than to own up to our own failures, because that would be painful. We accuse others of stealing from us, taking advantage of us, or treating us unjustly, and then expect the government to fix it. This is not leading us toward heaven on earth, but earthly hell.

For our society to flourish, pain must be redemptive, not destructive. The blame game and the associated anger will simply destroy. What does this path look like? Pain must be embraced, and this means to not look for a solution that will make it go away. Whether we blame crime or unemployment on illegal immigration, building a wall is not a solution for sin. Blaming the fat cats or Wall Street barons for poverty and redistributing their wealth does not solve sin. Only Jesus can forgive sin and then empower us to live free from it, on an individual basis, regardless of circumstances.

The problem is not that our politicians are making self-serving accusations or promises. The problem is that we are looking to government to fix things that it is impossible for government to fix. Hilary and Donald cannot remedy our pain. Perhaps we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but we should not make the mistake of hailing Caesar as a god, much less expecting Caesar to do what only God can do.