Agapé and Suffering

In the movie, “The Fault in Our Stars,” the proposition is made that pain demands to be felt. And because the movie is about people dying of cancer, there is a lot of pain being felt on the screen. Many spiritual leaders throughout history have made a distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is a biological function, and suffering is the human response to feeling pain.

So the spiritual teaching has always been that pain must be acknowledged and fully felt. Of course there is a temporary period of suffering as a response to experiencing pain. But there is a much worse, more intense, longer lasting period of suffering if the effort is made out of fear to try to avoid or deaden the experience of pain.
One of the first spiritual leaders to talk about that profound truth, around 2,500 years ago in India, was the Buddha. He tried to warn the human race that even though pain is inevitable, suffering can be limited to only the temporary period of pain. But the limiting can only be accomplished if people first acknowledge that pain is actually inevitable. Then there can’t be any extraordinary attempts to avoid pain and suffering. Pain has to be faced and fully felt in order to get beyond the pain. Of course, at first, that may seem to go against our greatest fears.

Of course, we don’t want to be masochists and bring on more pain than we have to. And there have been helpful developments in anesthesia to aid in certain medical procedures such as surgery. So the point is to find a way to creatively deal with pain when it cannot be avoided instead of trying to pretend our way out of ever having to feel pain.

Just as the crucifixion of Jesus (and the persecution, beatings, and murder of so many of his followers during the centuries that followed) should have been all the evidence needed to prove to Christians that it is not the point of religion to escape suffering, so people should look to spiritual teaching to find the way to deal with pain and suffering. And that of course leads us to agape meditation.

In one of the many periodical articles about meditation, studies were reported showing that pain and inflammation can be managed with intense, prolonged meditation because it leads to changes in genes that play a role in pain. Research has shown also that meditation is effective with cardiac disorders, depression, anxiety, and immune function. Agape meditation is one type that helps more effectively connecting with all that is around us, so that we can deeply understand our ‘natural’ reactions. And that helps us deal with suffering as a reaction.

That seems to be why Paul started his great teaching about agape in Romans by pointing out that the pain and suffering from the troubles that come with life produce endurance, and “endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” That is the hope that comes from meditating with God’s agape “that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.”  Through thus meditating with God’s agape within and around us, we are given the deep understanding of the way pain is merely an integral aspect of life. In this way we lose the fear of pain. Being free of the fear is crucial point necessary for creatively dealing with pain in life.