Why are We Uncomfortable with Pain?

Most people are afraid of pain. We fear threats to our own safety, and the mental trails of agony we seemed doomed to wander on after whatever catastrophic event has occurred. But I've observed that many are made even more uncomfortable when confronted with the pain of others. We want to fix things. We want to make the trouble go away. We want the person breaking down in front of us to stop crying, hiding, or abdicating from normal life. When confronted with the pain of others, we realize just how small and powerless we are. And that's what's truly terrifying.

Someone dear to me has learned over the course of time that trying to make me laugh when I'm in the throes of agony is not the solution. In fact, it makes things worse. It communicates that they are afraid to get down in the muck and sit with me, pushing against their own fear of failure, and valuing me and my well-being enough to risk a bruised ego. No, you are not going to fix what is going on inside. Your solutions will likely fall on deaf ears. But choosing to pray over the person in torment, opting to just sit with them, knowing that you can only offer your presence and understanding, is humble and brave. And often, that's all that's needed.

Jesus did this in His own way. He had all the answers. In Him was life (John 1:4). Jesus knew that He would resurrect Lazarus that day as He approached the tomb in Bethany, and yet, He stopped and chose to sit with Mary and Martha in their desolation and share in their grief, weeping openly (John 11:35). Jesus didn't quote scripture at them or offer platitudes. He spoke new words of life to Martha because she was in the right state of mind to accept them. But He did not browbeat Mary for her frustration at His absence. He offered her His presence and His tears. Jesus entered and inhabited the space of sorrow with the sisters as His full self, ultimately encouraging and restoring as God, but breaking down in the moment and sharing their sorrow as only a human being can.

Isaiah 53:3 calls Jesus "a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief." He was no stranger to our pain. Jesus experienced the loss of an earthly father, rejection, hatred, loneliness. He came from abundance to live in the dirt with us. No one knows the jolting journey from riches to rags and back again better than Him, or empathizes more with the internal turmoil of experiencing pain and loss as a finite being. More than that, Jesus was intimately familiar with the traumatic upheaval of living as an eternal being in a finite body. Jesus would defeat death not only in this instance, but in His sacrifice on the cross, and through the final vanquishing of it in Revelation. He had all the answers, and, in fact, was the answer to death and grief Himself, and yet, He still chose to process His pain with Mary and Martha, and sit with them while they wept and wondered why He hadn't come sooner. He didn't speed up the scene, or cover the sound of falling tears with promises that the sisters would get through this and that everything would be alright. Even though Jesus knew that He would ultimately fix everything in the short term and the long run, He gave Himself and those who loved Lazarus time to grieve. In doing so, He demonstrated that He truly cares about us and our pain. The response of the crowd to His heartfelt tears was, "See how He loved Him!" (John 11:36). Connection was fostered through this simple act of humility.

If Jesus, the antidote to death, loss, and sorrow, stooped to become the Man of Sorrows and sit with the hurting, how can we, who have no answer except Him, do any less?