The Purpose of Pain

I have realized this week that we often have a disjointed view of pain.  When pain causes me to pull my hand back from further injury from a flame, or a sharp object, or a moving object scraping away my skin, I view pain as a good thing.  I appreciate the warning that the pain is to me in removing my hand from the place where further injury could occur.

When a pain causes us to go to the doctor and get checked out, so that the doctor finds the underlying cause of the pain and fixes something that could have caused our body a great deal of harm.  While we do not enjoy the pain, we can appreciate the purpose it has served in our body.

Pain is God's way of telling us that there is something wrong.  For those who suffer from chronic pain, it would be easy to say "Enough!," but the truth remains that the pain tells us that there is something wrong. 

Our view of pain becomes disjointed when we move away from the physical realm.  Pain in relationships.  Pain from people, pain in losing something we care about.  These things aren't physical pain, although the pain caused can affect us physically.  When we move into this realm, we more often than not view the pain as the problem.  We seek to remove the pain.  Someone has hurt me, I will not give them that opportunity again  so we shut them out.  We have lost someone we love, so we purpose not to love that deeply again.  We take offense at something someone says to us, and we view them as the problem. 

If we carry over our lesson from physical pain, could it be that we often look to solve our pain by fixing other people?  Why is that?  Could it be that emotional pain in our hearts and minds is more indicative of something wrong in us?  Why do I take offense at gossip shared about me?  Because I have pride in who I am, or in what I've done, and it hurts my pride.  Certainly the gossip is wrong, and should be fixed, but is it possible that the pain is pointing to a part of myself that also needs to get fixed?  If we dealt with the pain from that perspective, it will free us up to forgive as God desires us to. 

I don't know if I've been as clear as the thoughts seem to be in my mind, today, but I hope I've encouraged you to view emotional pain in a different light.  As a symptom of pride in some form in our lives that needs to be dealt with.  When we count up the wrongs against us in our minds, it forms a blockade in our hearts against forgiveness, but when we take ourselves out of the picture, remove the pride that tells us that we deserve better treatment than we got, we'll be free to live without pain, and with forgiving hearts.

Why deal with pride?  because:

"He must increase,

but I must decrease" 

John 3:30