Paul Grimmond's 'Suffering Well' Chapters 10 and 11

After the deep challenges of the previous chapters, Chapter 10 lifts our spirits with the certainty of God’s promises. Once again Paul offers us readers complex topics made clear and simple. There are grand statements to make you stop and think, such as the fact that our fate is connected to Jesus’ fate and that these plans of God were established before time began (p. 145). There are gigantic concepts tackled simply, such as union with Christ (p. 147) and the unchanging character of God (p. 145). But has Paul run out of steam?? Or have I? (I am running behind schedule now that August has already begun!) Or is the enormity of these truths just too hard to come to grips with in a brief chapter towards the end of a book? I don’t know…. It’s just that this second last chapter left me wanting more. This is not necessarily a bad thing; part of the aim was to have us longing for heaven! I’ve always found heaven elusive; Paul’s descriptions on page 148 were enticing, and closer than I’ve come before to having a clear picture of heaven. Overall I think I’ll need to look at the numerous Bible passages Paul’s quoted to keep working out the topics that this chapter’s introduced. No doubt that will prove very fruitful, and better than having Paul do all my thinking!

Chapter 11 worked better for me. The standout challenge here was Paul’s question: ‘How can you grow in suffering well for Christ?’…! That’s something I’ve never asked myself, but it’s a task that I have set for the year ahead, gulp. What a book!!  

I loved the exhortation to read the Bible biblically. It’s a funny (and depressing) concept - to think that people attempt to read it in any other way, but oh, they do, (…and we do). The Bible speaks a different language doesn’t it? For example the word “comfort” as Paul shows us in his illustration of the Comfort Shop versus the comfort of knowing the purpose for which you’re suffering. Or the idea that real joy is not in prosperity but suffering. There is so much in this book to challenge worldly Christians. I’ve begun to rise to the main challenge since starting to read it. I’ve already stuck my neck out a little further in the last month to encourage someone to get to know Jesus, despite the real possibility of an irritated response. In God’s kindness it went well - and why do I think that mere irritation is something to fear anyway? And so I press on…

In a world where so many Christian books offer an instant unleashing of secret spiritual powers (why do I keep reading Koorong catalogues?!) Paul offers us persistence, hard work and a lifetime’s progress. And it all starts with reading your Bible more faithfully! Unspectacular but sound biblical advice. I’m encouraged to keep up my daily devotions, and to read now with a view for how to be so godly so as to suffer. Thanks Paul!! I can see how in the end your book will help me to find the joy of facing various trials, but I’m sure it’ll take some getting used to, and a lot of courage. I’m glad he reminds us that we’ve got each other to help us persevere (p. 159). I guess I should buy this book for my friends to read too so I have some companions on the journey ahead. 

Paul Grimmond's 'Suffering Well' Chapters 7, 8 and 9

We’re nearing the end of the book, and it seems that the challenges are just beginning. Good Christian books don’t affirm us in our pre-existent beliefs and comfortable lives; they shake us up and change us. This book is not a comfortable read. It’s a good read, because Paul’s teaching the Bible faithfully. He shows us in this section the uncomfortable parts of the Bible. He’s right; we don’t feel like we should point out to a sufferer that there might be sinfulness in their response to suffering. Happily, it’s not our opinion; it’s what the Bible says to sufferers. Therefore, Romans 12 is a challenge!

How do we rebuke the weary faithful? Preferably we tell it to ourselves and to each other while life isn’t that bad, and we embed it in our souls and cling to it in the tough times ahead. It’s a powerful message. Difficulties don’t excuse ungodliness. I know I tend to cut myself some slack at just those times. I know that I tend to think sinning is an effective short-term method to ease the sense of suffering. I hadn’t seen the choice so starkly before. Do I stick with Jesus or walk in the way of comfort? Once again I’m reminded that I don’t take sin seriously enough, and I don’t treasure what’s produced by godly suffering enough. I still need to work at seeing that my faith is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1). Then I will see suffering as a gift.

In chapter 8 Paul’s acute sense of a neat argument makes him identify this chapter as one that doesn’t fit. I’m not so sure that it sticks out all that much! Isn’t this the weariness that Romans 12 talks about?  We’re not worn down in our context by much blatant persecution but by the smaller and yet equally powerful struggle of being Christian in Australia today. Wasn’t this covered in chapters 5 and 6? I identified with all of this! The temptation to get bitter when loved ones aren’t getting converted according to my timetable. The sadness of seeing the world through God’s eyes, especially the distress of sin, seeing unbelievers missing out on the good life, and believers disappointing God. It is a heaviness, but Romans 11 exhorts us to trust God, who of course knows what he’s doing. This chapter fits!!

Finally, while chapters 7 and 8 exhort us to avoid sinning in the face of suffering, chapter 9 spurs us on to act rightly as we suffer, praising God, expressing our emotions, declaring that God is good, and ultimately doing good while waiting for heaven’s release. This is just as challenging as examining our response to suffering for sinful attitudes and behaviours. Just as it’s tempting to default to self-preservation in sinfulness, it’s very difficult to keep the outward focus in times of hardship (for some of us anyway). That’s why this book is vital as a guide for solid preparation for times of suffering. And no doubt a comforting reminder to stay on track when you’re in the eye of the storm. But don’t look at it for answers when you’re hit between the eyes. That won’t be the point for feeling the challenge. Meanwhile, I think 1 Peter 4:19 should be my memory verse for the month:

So those who suffer according to God’s will should, while doing what is good, entrust themselves to a faithful Creator.

Paul Grimmond's 'Suffering Well' Chapters 5 and 6

At this stage in the book we follow a new trail, to take up the series’ guidebook metaphor (by the way, has anyone else noticed that the little man on the bottom of each page walks when you flick the pages? I’m easily amused.). The focus so far has been on suffering in general, and now we come to the (predictable) surprise that we’ve been waiting for as Paul turns to consider persecution. I must admit I hadn’t noticed that the New Testament doesn’t talk much about suffering in general and is more focused on suffering for Jesus. I knew about the presence of the latter, I just hadn’t spotted the absence of the former. (I’m glad Paul said that’s the hard bit, it makes me feel a bit better!) This is the predictable fact - the Bible is all about Jesus, not what’s happening with us, yet again!

You really can’t argue for a comfortable life from the Bible. It’s a pity that a lot of us manage to live it. We do really, don’t we?? I found these chapters a little too challenging because of that. They state more than once that we won’t be glorified with Jesus unless we suffer with him. And I can’t say that that’s not in the Bible. In fact I know very well that it’s there, but I like to try and ignore it. Awkward. Chapter 6 immediately answered the question I was pondering by the end of chapter 5; I often feel quite keenly that we Western Christians don’t know what we’re talking about when it comes to suffering for Christ. It’s a big challenge when Paul points out that Christian suffering’s not just physical persecution. It is hard to be reviled, and the way our society’s gone, all we have to do is quietly state that we think abortion’s killing, rather than a medical procedure, and we’ll find ourselves in hot water pretty quickly. But I feel keenly how easy it is to give into the temptation to not rock the boat. Then there’s the sorrow later of failing Jesus yet again. This is a form of suffering all right, but I still can’t help feeling that it’s pretty lame when I think of all those articles I’ve read in the Voice of the Martyrs. I don’t quite get what Paul meant by the fact that abuse and reviling is commonplace in our world, and therefore we don’t feel it so much. I think he was saying that that’s why we don’t see it as suffering. I’m not sure it works that way for me, perhaps because I don’t spend time on web forums. I related more to the temptation of wanting people to like me, only one of the many reasons why I’m not on Facebook.

Another thing this chapter made me think about was that the danger I’m in is more potent than that of suffering Christians. The danger of ‘the slow, spiritual death of a thousand tiny compromises’ (pg 97). That’s so poetic on Paul’s part, and like good poetry it makes the point very effectively. We really do need to spur each other on to live without shame, ‘to live such godly lives for Jesus that people will dislike or even hate us for it.’ (pg 98). I certainly don’t do enough of the spurring or the living! It appears vital for our eternal destiny that we feel the challenge of this chapter. Paul writes ‘a Christian unmarked by suffering is not a real child of God’ (pg 101). This is hard hitting. It sounds like ‘we’ll only be saved if we suffer’. There’s always a fine line between earning our salvation and exhibiting its reality. But I know when I’m making excuses yet again...

As for the unanswered question on page 93: Would Paul and Peter have written the same kinds of letters to us today? Pretty much! Perhaps the only difference would be that instead of commiserating with us in our suffering, they’d be exhorting us to stop avoiding it. Or they would if they were writing to me...

Paul Grimmond's 'Suffering Well', Chapters 3 and 4

Paul’s at it again. In chapter 3 we have three succinct summaries of three complicated parts of the Bible: Job, Habakkuk and Romans 1-9. I’ve jotted several of his sentences into my journaling Bible for future reference when reading these books. You get so much more from this book than just an understanding of suffering. I also had a ‘light-bulb moment’: I love the passages in the Bible that speak of us being mere clay and God the potter, making the point of who owns who, but I’d never made the connection that technically we are made of clay, being people of dust, so we literally are the work of our master potter! …. Call me slow….. 


In chapters 3 and 4 Paul tackles the average approach to suffering head-on, challenging us not to ask the world’s questions when confronted by life’s hardships. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Well, that’s what I do…… And I didn’t realise quite how much I do it. Sure, I have all the ‘right theology’ to think about suffering ‘correctly’, nothing of Paul’s Bible teaching was a surprise to me here, but what was remarkable was his statement in chapter 4, "The experiences of life do not tell us what God thinks of us." Here’s yet another ‘it’s not about you’ moment. Life truly is all about God, about how he’s working out his purposes. That in itself was also not surprising. I’ve known it in theory, but these chapters pointed out to me that I did not follow it in practice. Because God (in his mercy) hasn’t sent anything massive my way suffering-wise, I hadn’t yet asked these questions of myself, but I have taken the ‘God must hate me’ point of view very seriously when my friends have expressed it. Chucking my theology out the window, I’d struggled with them to work out whether this is in some sense true. While I knew Romans 8:31-32 in theory, and had shared it with many sufferers, I hadn’t felt the power of it until now. The cross is the only verdict we need to work out where we stand with God. Yes, call me slow….. 


So, this has been a great reset for my mind, and a personal challenge to actually apply what I know when it comes to the issue of suffering. There are many other challenges in chapters 3 and 4. We’re confronted with the difficult reality that the Bible teaches: that God brings about all suffering. There’s no way to avoid this if you subscribe to the idea of a God who’s in control of everything (the very definition of ‘God’ as far as I’m concerned). Isaiah 45:7, Amos 3:6 and Lamentations 3:38 are hard-hitting verses. So is Jesus' response to injustice in Luke 13. As Christians we just can’t get away from a gospel that has the suffering of God himself planned from before the creation of the world. Keep this in mind, and your questions about suffering have to change. Paul flagged in chapter 2 that suffering is essential, and I wondered what that meant. He wastes no time telling us why, showing here how it’s essential to glory as shown by the cross. 


I have no idea where Paul goes to from here. For me, I’m thinking out how I can get my friends (and myself) seeing our security from the perspective of the cross before the crisis moments come.

Paul Grimmond's, 'Suffering Well'

About our new contributor:

Alison Napier has served in fulltime ministry since 2005 in Sydney’s CBD. During that time she’s discovered the joys of high-rise living and exotic food in Chinatown. An animal lover who’s recently developed a fascination for elephants, Alison’s own pets tend to be fish or birds, as they fit best into a one-bedroom flat on the 26^th floor. Having become a Christian in her second year of university, Alison delights in growing in her knowledge of and love for God day by day. An avid, but time-poor, reader she particularly enjoys any book that takes her away to another world for a few hours, if relaxing, or challenges her brain with interesting ideas, if working. Paul Grimmond’s Suffering Well falls into the latter category, and it’s a joy to share it with you this month.

Chapters 1 and 2

I’ve wanted to read this since it was published; the sad reality of life is that you could always be better equipped to help others, or yourself, cope with any number of hardships that come your way. I really enjoyed Paul’s other book, Right Side Up (my last Equip book club outing). His writing style is simple but his thoughts are not, the perfect mix of easy to read and challenging to think about. This book promises more of the same. The back cover raised my curiosity instantly, it was disconcerting to think that a theologian who’s ‘expert’ enough to write a book finds his thinking on a fundamental topic to be out of step with the Bible’s teaching. That’s the beauty of the Bible though; it’s a living God-breathed word that always teaches us surprising new things as we study it in depth.

The first chapter indicates right from the start that the material in Paul’s book will be unsettling, teaching that the verses: ‘to live is Christ, to die is gain’ mean it’s better to die of cancer at 17 than to endure verbal persecution and give up on the faith! These lines tell the lazy reader who’s looking for easy answers to suffering to look elsewhere, and the rest of us better prepare for more confronting ideas. I like it that Paul Grimmond doesn’t promise us a remedy to suffering (as opposed to many other Christian writers) but inoculation against it. This is quite a promise in itself, and at this stage I’m wondering what it will be.

At the end of the first chapter Paul outlines everyone’s choice in life: we can be prisoners of our age or slaves to biblical truth. A wealth of ideas is summed up in just this phrase. Chapter two extends this ability of Paul’s to encapsulate complex ideas in an economy of words. And here I encounter another surprise: I thought we were going next to biblical theology (lazy reader that I am), but instead we examine culture. I had a light-bulb moment as he described a phenomenon I’d observed but not analysed: the idea that avoiding pain and suffering is the new moral basis for our society. It’s true isn’t it? ‘What makes me happy’ is the ultimate end of self-centredness, and this thinking has turned from being merely desirable, to being a right! This explains our current ‘marriage equality’ debates perfectly: access to marriage is a moral issue for the gay lobby and I could not work out why. (I saw it as a moral issue for entirely different reasons.) Page 28 clarifies: ‘In our brave new world God is immoral and Christians are immoral’, morality has well and truly been turned on its head! Reading the Bible through the blinkers of cultural perspective, rather than reading our culture through the Bible certainly describes my experience as I first investigated Christianity. It took several years for the revolution in me to take place, and I’m sure I’ve not yet totally kicked that habit.

These were my main thoughts while reading the first two chapters of Suffering Well. It was a thorough work-out for the brain, and I’m left with a few questions to be tested and explored as the book continues. Paul claims in chapter one that the Bible calls us to suffer well. Is this really true? Or do we just endure it? Is suffering really essential? That’s the scary thought offered to us by this book, I’m not sure I want to find out the answer to that!