Book Review: Christ and Human Suffering by E. Stanley Jones

Flickr/Zuhair A. Al-Traifi

Reviewed by Rebecca Lewis

Is God the author of human suffering? Why should we do anything about it? These are timeless questions asked the world over that E. Stanley Jones eloquently addresses in his book, Christ and Human Suffering, (published 1933). No one is better able to address this than Jones, who spent much of his adult life living in China and India, where suffering of the masses, and of the individuals trying to help them, was extreme.

Jones begins by honestly addressing the fact that God does not deliver the righteous from all suffering as we often expect or hope. He concludes, " something better than deliverance [is what] we must search for" if we are to understand Jesus' solution to the problem of suffering. He then proceeds to distinguish between "evils from within," due to choices of our own wills in self-injurious defiance of the moral laws of the universe, which we call sin, and "evil that comes from without," which we call suffering.

In order to address the full spectrum of suffering, Jones identifies nine different types of suffering based on Jesus' warnings about the end times in Luke 21:8-19. He faces these with humility and compassion, fully empathizing with the disillusionment of those who, doing their best to serve the Lord, find themselves bereaved of children or spouses, homes, or health, or those subjected to violence from man or nature, persecution, or, the most intimate of suffering, unhappy families.

All of humanity recoils from the injustice of suffering, so any discussion of the topic is inadequate without delving into the various ways that humans have decided to explain and to face suffering. Here Jones' global experience is invaluable, as he again shows humility and understanding of the answers societies have found.

 In brief, he explores the following:  Stoicism of the West — suffering is inevitable and impartial, courage equals "unyielding despair" (B. Russell); Buddhism — suffering comes from desire, cease suffering by ceasing desire/being; Hinduism — suffering is just, Karma, accept suffering as your due for deeds done in previous lives; Vedanta Hinduism — suffering is illusion, Maya, withdraw into Atma/the unconscious mind of the universe; Islam — suffering is God's will, the godly submit to it and accept suffering as God's plan; Judaism — suffering will be made right, ultimately God will bless the righteous and punish the wicked; un-biblical Christianity — suffering is God's way of developing our character.

While all of these viewpoints nobly try to make sense of the problem of suffering, they all produce inaction in the face of both individual and corporate suffering.

Jones dedicates the rest of his book to going step by step through the ways that Jesus spoke about and addressed suffering. He shows that Jesus teaches that, while people do reap the consequences of "internal evil," their own sins and the sins of those around them ("the fact is we do not break this [moral] law, we break ourselves upon it"), that the suffering of "external evil," is neither inherited nor authored by God, nor is lack of suffering a sign of God's special favor.

While all of these viewpoints nobly try to make sense of the problem of suffering, they all produce inaction in the face of both individual and corporate suffering.

Jones argues that Christ, far from withdrawing from or submitting to suffering, "represents the most amazingly active method of dealing with life," not merely teaching but showing us how to overcome evil with good. "With little explaining and no explaining away," Jesus shows us how to take hold of life at its direst points, and proactively turn what Satan intended for evil into victory. He came to give life and life more abundant, not primarily through the miracles of healing and deliverance from suffering, which he does do on occasion;  but, as he works out in his own life, by a "victorious vitality" that brings a greater life from the ashes.

 "The religion of Jesus does mean these three things: victory over sin, victory over self, victory over suffering."

Through the giving of many examples from the life of Jesus and those who know him, both in history and in his current experience, Jones shows that "the will of God was to be done, not by acquiescence but by activity — it was to be done by taking hold of the whole miserable business and turning it into a triumph of the love of God." Far from nursing our own hurts through self-pity, self-protection, apathy, anger, or noble despair, "Jesus would call us to sound the depths of life and to live dangerously there, to grapple with the great issues of life and show Life through them," what Jones calls "the highest expression of the will to live."

With depth and perception, Jones spends six chapters working out the objections to, difficulties, and results of the peaceful but purposeful activity that comes from this faith. Before his crucifixion Jesus said, "You will leave me all alone. But I am not alone, the Father is with me. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:32b-33).

Indeed, the victorious Christ is also with us always, and just as "God was in him reconciling the world to himself," so also God's Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, is in us. As his disciple, John affirmed from his own experience, "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (I John 4:4).

I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling with the problem of suffering and seeking to understand and, most importantly, to live God's way, overcoming evil with good, the way of Christ.

Rebecca Lewis studied history at both the BA and MA level, and holds an MA in International Development from WCIU. She taught at the university level for over ten years and has worked on curriculum development for 30 years. She has lived on five continents, most lately in India with her children and grandchildren, where she consulted on curriculum development for Indian government school teachers.

Epic, by John Eldredge - A Review

Editor’s Note: This book review was originally published in the Summer 2006 issue of the International Journal of Frontier Missions.

From the author of Wild At Heart comes this Epic: The Story God is Telling, a small book, which, like Brian McLaren’s [The Secret Message of Jesus], is very logically structured. In addition to the important Prologue and Epilogue it tells the story, the epic, of the entire universe in four “Acts.”

In the 16-page Prologue he insists that we must see the overall story, “the larger story,” if we want to understand the sub-plots.

Act One is where all is good and beautiful.

Act Two is the entrance of evil in the form of fallen angels. (Which, my guess is, at the moment in history when predatory life first appeared in the Cambrian era.)

Something happened before our moment on the stage. Before mankind came the angels. . . . This universe is inhabited by other beings . . . Most people do not live as though the Story has a Villain, and that makes life very confusing . . . I am staggered by the level of naiveté that most people live with regarding evil. (pp. 30, 39)

He now quotes a famous passage from C. S. Lewis,

One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death, disease, and sin . . . Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees . . . this is a universe at war. (p. 40)

Act Three is where, he says, the Biblical story begins in Genesis 1:1, after angelic powers went wrong.

This act begins in “darkness . . . is still under way, and we are caught up in it. A love story, set in the midst of a life-and- death battle.” (p. 72)

Act Four gestures toward the final future in a brilliant, eloquent, imaginative flight of fancy which frowns on all human guesses of the grandeur of the future. He says playfully:

I’ve heard innumerable times that “we shall worship God forever.” That “we shall sing one glorious hymn after another, forever and ever, amen” It sounds like hell to me. (p. 80)

The Epilogue is a significant part of the book. He says,

First, things are not what they seem. . . . the unseen world (the rest of reality) is more weighty and more real and more dangerous than the part of reality we can see.

Second, we are at war. . . . We must take this battle seriously. This is no child’s game. This is war . . . a battle for the human heart.

Third, you have a crucial role to play. . . . We must find our courage and rise up to recover our hearts and fight for the hearts of others. (p. 102)

Here we see talk of war. But, strangely, it does not speak of a war against a Dark Power and his works, but a rescue operation for human hearts. That is certainly a basic part of it, but to liberate the French from the Nazi yoke the dark evil of Hitler had to be eliminated first.

““Most people don’t live as though the Story has a Villain, and that makes life very confusing.” ”

Here is a thought: theoretically if every soul on earth were finally born again we would still face a ravaged creation, riddled with violence (in nature) and disease. And God would continue to be blamed for all this evil—unless Christians were finally identifying it with Satan. However, that is precisely why this “thought” is purely theoretical: we CAN’T win everyone without destroying the works of the Devil in that very process. As long as hundreds of millions of mission-field Christians have eyes running with pus and incipient blindness, as long as such horrors are blamed on God (for the lack of a Satan), WE ARE NOT GOING TO WIN MANY MORE PEOPLE. And, all those hundreds of millions of rural people and uneducated people we have recently won are eventually going to lose their faith just as they have in Europe and much of America. We are not winning very many educated people.

We must, it seems to me, accept it as our true mission to fight these horrors in the name of Christ. That is essential if we are to glorify God in all the earth, and that glorification is the basis on which we invite people to accept God as their Father in Heaven—and recruit them to help fight this war.

Both of these two books [Epic and The Secret Message of Jesus] brilliantly describe the restless pew. One of them actually speaks of war, not so much against evil as a rescue operation of humanity.

Thousands of writers and pastors are puzzling over the essential question of what a believer does as a Christian besides being religious and decent and active in (small) good deeds.

Is there something wrong with the DNA of American Evangelical congregations? Many leaders today are suggesting that we need new church pioneers with ideas so different that the very word “church” may not be ideal.

Both authors here are discontent with “normal” church life in America and in one way or another are groping toward something vitally different.

These two book writers, plus myself, plus a whole host of other restless, relentlessly inquiring Christian leaders today are aware that Evangelicals have never in any country of the world grown as prominent in national affairs, have never more closely approximated the culture of those outside of the church, and have never generated in reaction such a profound phobia of religious people taking over the country (witness the avid attention given to the Da Vinci Code book and movie which so skillfully throws doubt on the validity of the entire Christian tradition).

Here we see an outcry for something more, something different, something more serious. I believe what is lacking is a clearer idea of evil and what to do about it. 

The Devil, Disease, and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought

The Devil, Disease, and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought by John Christopher Thomas (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press 2011) – This book is a scholarly exploration of the relationship between "the Devil and disease, sickness and sin, healing and forgiveness, and exorcism and deliverance." It’s an essential read for anyone seeking to build a Biblically-sound view of disease and, more importantly, develop a proactive faith-based response to it.

Do you have another book you’d recommend? Contact us.

The Eradication of Infectious Diseases

The Eradication of Infectious Diseases by Author Donald Hopkins and Editor W. R. Dowdle (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley 1998) – What are the practitioners of the young and immature field of disease eradication saying? There are few sources that will tell you, but this book is one of them. Get up to speed on disease eradication by wading through this account of the proceedings of a workshop hosted by the International Task Force for Disease Eradication. Despite the somewhat dense prose, you will gain a bird’s-eye-view of the state of the movement. Unfortunately, the price tag ($350) is not for the faint of heart. Hint: look for a used copy.

Global Disease Eradication: The Race for the Last Child

Global Disease Eradication: The Race for the Last Child, by Cynthia A. Needham and Richard Canning (Washington, DC: ASM Press 2003) – For the novice and enthusiast alike, this book is the most readable history of disease eradication available. It chronicles three eradication campaigns (Malaria, Small Pox, Polio), the lessons we’ve learned from past failures, and sticky issues to consider. Highly recommended.