This has never made the best marketing message. What company would adopt the electric chair or the hangmans noose as its logo?
Christianity has always dealt in hard truths — God is not a means to our own ends, suffering is unavoidable in lives bounded by mortality and often wrecked by failure. Suffering for the sake of suffering is useless; it is merely masochism. But when suffering cannot be escaped as the health-and-wealth preachers promise — or even nobly endured as the stoics promise — it may perhaps be transformed. “If you and I can share our pain,” said the late theologian Henri Nouwen, “suddenly we find grace and joy coming in. In your tears and anguish and struggle, you suddenly discover community, you suddenly discover friendship, you suddenly discover affection, you suddenly discover forgiveness, you suddenly discover healing. “All these things come through vulnerability.” In this odd faith where the poor in spirit are blessed, the highest ideal is suffering for others — though most of us do precious little of it. This model of spiritual leadership has nothing to do with conventional measures of
