Pain is crucial to our lives

Pain is crucial to our lives, says Colin Murray

AS WE stroll along our breathtakingly rugged Moray Coast, marvelling at God’s handiwork, for a moment all seems perfect in this world.

After all, creation reflects God’s greatness just as a watercolour reflects the genius of its painter.

But take a closer look at this seemingly idyllic world and we begin to notice pain and suffering everywhere – animals devour each other or are mercilessly mowed down by relentless streams of traffic; we humans inflict pain on each other and are randomly struck down with cruel and sometimes incurable illnesses.

We hunger for a painless world. Can such a place exist? Well, it actually does. But it’s no Nirvana; simply a modern day colony for leprosy patients – a world where people feel no pain, but reap appalling consequences.

As the disease spreads, nerve endings that carry pain signals fall silent. Virtually all of the physical deformity occurs because the leprosy victim cannot feel pain.

Dr Paul Brand was a world-renowned hand surgeon and pioneer in developing tendon transfer techniques for use in the hands of leprosy sufferers. His work with leprosy patients for more than 50 years convinced him that pain truly is one of God’s greatest gifts to us.

Diabetes, alcoholism, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries and nerve disorders can cause similar dangerous insensitivity to pain, Dr Brand pointed out.

As a committed Christian, he was drawn to his profession with a deep compassion for a person’s "holistic" suffering in mind, body and spirit.

The title of Dr Brand’s pioneering book, ‘The Gift of Pain’, may sound like a sick joke to those of us who suffer constant physical pain.

However, this book may at least vex the curiosity of those who have the desire to understand the nature and purpose of pain.

‘Does God really care?’, we often ask, as the randomness and unfairness of pain calls our basic beliefs about God into question.

Without pain warnings we would be in perpetual mortal danger of having a heart attack, burst appendix or stroke. Physical pain is therefore crucial to sustain normal day-to-day existence.

Far from it being an afterthought that God devised to make our lives miserable, we can appreciate the incredible network of millions of pain cells all over our body – intricately assembled for our own protection. Surely that confirms His competence rather than His incompetence?

In Jesus Christ we have the historical evidence of how God responded to pain on earth. He offers us the close-up and personalised face of the Divine response to all human suffering. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering (Isaiah 53:3).