Sanitizing Pain from Psalms: On Docetist Hymns that Mock the Holy Spirit; Endurance

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All redemption requires pain. All joy in the best of all possible worlds requires pain. All humor requires pain. Hymns and reconciliations require pain. The present era views endurance negatively. Scripture views endurance as a virtue. Christ’s empathy requires his pain. To confuse the connection of pain to endurance with masochism is a mistake. To apply the term of masochism to the Marine Corps is a mistake. To call endurance masochism is to mock the Holy Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to devalue the fruit of the Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to encourage masochism.

The quotation in the above image is a verbatim quotation of Ralph Sawyer’s translation of the Art of War[1]. If pain were not a necessary component of sanctification,[2] then self-murder would be considered a viable way of dealing with pain by ending it,[3] as Hamlet’s soliloquy[4] makes clear. Therefore, any diminution of the status of pain in the life of the believer has the danger of decreasing the sanctity of life. Conceptions of the importance of pain have far-reaching implications that should not be taken lightly.

This quotation from the Art of War is contrasted with the foolishness of Dwight Schrute of the television show The Office. Dwight is most known for yelling that he is awesome to a stairwell[5] in order to prepare himself to be enthusiastic for his employer’s annual review of his work. The employer, Michael Scott, brushes over Dwight’s accomplishments despite Dwight’s attempt to express all of the things he has ostensibly done for the company in the last year. Dwight’s pain in being ignored is necessary for the joke to make sense. If there were no pain from Dwight, there would be no joke.

All jokes are predicated on pain.[6] Even the platypus, if considered a cosmic joke, requires pain, because the incongruity[7] between the duck bill and the beaver body causes cognitive dissonance which finds release in amusement. The pain experienced will vary from individual to individual because different individuals have a different threshold for mental strain resulting from pain issuing from cognitive dissonance. While the pain experienced from the cognitive dissonance may be slight at times, it is pressure nonetheless. The effort to think requires pain at some level, so there is no humor without pain in the best of all possible worlds. Or perhaps this is not the best of all possible worlds, and to escape this world is to enter that other, better, world. In either case, the conception of pain is strangely vital to understanding much that is not seen.

Pain is linked to joy.[8] There is no justification or sanctification without pain. If there is no pain, there is nothing to heal. Well people need no doctor.[9] The Lord’s Supper means nothing without pain. The crucifixion means nothing without pain. A crown of thorns means nothing without pain. A trial means nothing without pain. A cross means nothing without pain. Hymns that have no reference to pain or the effects of pain do not participate in the real and are vanity. Only their form in having a lack of pain is itself painful to the degree that attempts to portray a state of affairs that is a denial of the real in the world that is. A hymn that does not reference pain cannot reflect the gospel, because the gospel is the good news of justification in the context of a world of sin and misery. The gospel without pain has no cross, or thorns, or Christ. The gospel without pain is no gospel at all.

Such hymns that sanitize pain are in effect Docetist hymns that treat life and pain as idealized nonreality, thereby cheapening the experience of life and encouraging ways of escaping the real that is. If the expression of pain that creates pain in others were sinful, then the psalmist would have made no reference to his own pain, thus creating the sensation to a degree in the minds of others. Creating pain in others is not necessarily sinful, otherwise, God would sin in creating pain in people when He shows to them how they looked to Him, in the case of Hosea’s performance art of marrying a promiscuous woman. Repentance and reconciliation is impossible without creating pain in others by letting them know the pain they caused. The deeper the offense, the deeper the pain caused. Neglecting to do this and issuing a surface level apology often encourages bitterness as retained pain. Hymns or reconciliations that do not deal with pain are void.

The word endurance has fallen on hard times. In the past, perseverance was considered a virtue. Then it was stripped down to endurance, which still maintained some association of virtue. Now, it is merely “stick-to-it-iveness,” which is closer to stubbornness than a virtue. It recalls the words of Augustus Cray of Lonesome Dove, whose policy is to stick to whatever he has chosen to do, even if it does not make a lick of sense.[10] In the present day, the word endurance is still retained to describe athletic competitions. Perseverance sometimes is interchanged with endurance in some translations of Hebrews 12:1, which references sanctification, becoming like Christ, as well as comparisons to athletic competitions. Endurance has fallen on hard times.

Endurance is often referred to negatively in the present day, but it is referred to in Scripture positively. Reference to endurance as cold would label it with a negative association relegating it to sin, thus the endurance of the saints would be rendered sinful. The references Paul makes to endurance in punching himself or running a race in 1 Corinthians 9:27 would be rendered sinful. Glorying in sufferings that produce endurance in Romans 5:3 would be rendered null. Receiving any reward for doing the will of God through endurance in Hebrews 10:36 would be demoted to legalism. Meeting trials with endurance in James 1 would be cut down to pride. Being strengthened by the will of Christ in Colossians 1:11 would be turned to arrogance. Patience in affliction in Romans 12:12 would be returned to vanity. God granting endurance in Romans 15:5 would just be psychological poppycock. References to the crucifixion would become in appearance meaningless if endurance is associated with sin and coldness. Cheapening pain cheapens endurance. Cheapening endurance cheapens grace. Downgrading the concept of endurance in any of these verses would have the effect of diminishing the sanctity of life and encouraging death.

Dwight does not know any of this, because he is an idiot.

Endurance is not only referred to positively in Scripture, but also is tied to Christ. As a child, Jesus endured the threat of genocide conducted expressly to kill Him.[11] Jesus likely endured the cold of a stable in a desert at night.[12] Temperatures could have been as low as 40°F.[13] Or perhaps Christ could produce spontaneously infinite amounts of heat contrary to the laws of entropy like Admiral Nelson so that his is zeal for his king and country kept him warm. [13.5] Otherwise, he would probably have had to endure the cold, even in a stable. Or perhaps angels kept him warm so that he did not have to endure the cold. If they did, would we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses,[14] but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin? The nativity is a scene of cold endurance, or endurance of the cold. To ignore these factors would be to look at the nativity through a lens of romanticism which ignores the real of cold, and the subsequent endurance of it. Or perhaps he was in a stable during the Summer, and he was merely enduring the threat of genocide expressly against him. Unless these alternate possibilities are true, endurance is tied to Christ.

Perseverance is endurance. Did Jesus endure the cold in the wilderness? It can become cold in the desert at night. Did Jesus endure pains of hunger, and would this have involved a lowering of caloric body temperature, thus resulting in a cold endurance? Did Christ persevere in his mission when his blood ran cold down the sides of his body? Perseverance is the obverse side of endurance. If the two are identical, endurance is the fruit of the spirit, or a fruit of the fruit of the spirit. Endurance is concentrated patience.[15] Patience is the fruit of the spirit.[16] If patience is the fruit of the spirit, and endurance is concentrated patience, then endurance is a product of the fruit of the spirit.

Christ’s endurance is tied to his empathy. If Jesus did not endure cold, then could he sympathize with anyone who did so? Could he sympathize with martyrs who endured cold and chains in Roman prisons? Christ is God imaged. If Christ did not endure coldness or pain, how would he be an example? Christ endured more than the body of Christ, or Christians.[17] Why does Christ mention endurance as the opposite of coldness? He speaks of enduring through coldness, or reversing coldness through action.[18] If Christ did not endure coldness, he could not have empathized with his people.

It is also not advisable to associate the fruit of the Spirit with mental illness. Vanity could be associated with the logos, because the word for vanity in the old Testament was breath, but this would be unedifying. Comparing Masochism, a sexual perversion, to Endurance has a similar effect. Patience should not be tied to mental illnesses, such as masochism. Endurance is a concentrated form of patience, so differentiating endurance from masochism as if they are similar has the unfortunate result of associating the fruit of the spirit with mental illness. From an Aristotelian balancing frame, too much patience is coldness. A right amount of patience, if concentrated, is endurance. Too little patience is wrath, or passionate anger. None of these have to do with masochism, and a differentiation between the two implies that there is a similarity, which there is not.[19]

Stephen Pressfield equated the duty of both the marine and the artist with the love of being miserable. Stephen Pressfield served in the Marine Corps and wrote a book about the 300 Spartans that is a part of the 2011 edition of the Army Chief of Staff’s Professional Reading List.[20] Part of what Steven Pressfield meant when he wrote in the War of Art that “Marines love being miserable,”[21] is that (in his words from The Gates of Fire) Spartans enjoy shedding “tears now that [they] may conserve blood later.”[22] In other words, “being miserable” means enduring pain in the present for a goal in the future—delayed gratification through self-control. If this love of misery were to be equated with masochism, then the entire Marine Corps would be designated as sexual perverts, because masochism is a sexual perversion in which sexual pleasure is felt from pain, or a passion for pain in and of itself. Equating the love of being miserable with such a perversion is a meaningless designation, unless discipline as a word has lost all martial and spiritual import, and should be struck from translations of Scripture. This is not the case.

If the love of being miserable were a sexual perversion, then the Apostle Paul would be a sexual pervert.[23] This would be to mock the Holy Spirit. When Paul rejoices in suffering, it is not rejoicing in the suffering itself, but in seeing them as proof that he was acting as a steward for Christ.[24] The love of being miserable that Pressfield speaks of is tied to the will to excel, which Paul exhorts in Scripture.[25] To seek to excel one’s limits is to be miserable that those limits are not reached, or miserable in effort to reach those limits. Christ did not die so that the church would remain static without striving to excellence. To call striving “masochism” is a form of pride, or passion of self-exaltation through the tearing down of others. Its effect is to call patience a violation of the seventh commandment. Its effect is to call the fruit of the Spirit a violation of God’s law.

Does it grieve the Holy Spirit to call his fruits perversion and illness? To call evil good? Good, evil? Virtue, vice? To imply that all pursuits that require endurance are masochism? That Lewis and Clark’s expedition was masochism? Apollo 11? That Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica on The Endurance? [25.5] That Job was a masochist? That every prophet who went out into the wilderness to wear camel’s hair was a masochist? That Christ was a masochist in divesting himself of glory, going into the wilderness and being executed by the state for crimes that he did not commit?[26]

To call endurance masochism is to devalue the fruit of the Spirit. To equate patience with masochism is ridiculous. It would be to state that only fair-weather patience is true patience, while casting down bitter-weather patience in the face of obstacles as masochism. It might be said that endurance is patience combined with self-control, because the discipline of self-control over a long period looks not to the pain of the present as its goal (which masochism does) but to the goal of which pain the long-term goal produces in its pursuit. Christ sought the redemption of his people, and endured pain to that end through patience and self-control brought about by the love of his people and the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in his human nature, even though the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.[27] To imply that this is masochism would seem to attack that which there is no law against its natural form— the fruit of the spirit. Their joy is of serving their master, not pain in itself.

It is possible to rejoice from persecution of seeking to be like Christ, but if this is overgeneralized, pain can be associated with a Christian identity, so that problems in general, harsh treatment, and ridicule seen as categorically good signs of following Christ. This can lead to valuing pain indiscriminately, without evaluating exactly the reason for the pain. The reason may be extrinsic to Christianity, and not related to it at all. This may take an extreme form in the case of a persecution complex that seeks attention rather than seeking to ministering to others for their good. Creating an inner ring of mutual enthusiasm for those inside and contempt for those without is not imitating Christ. To do so would be to make the church into not only a hot-house of mutual enthusiasm, but also an echo-chamber with an excessive estimation of the echo-chamberites. Christ had joy in the fact that he was pleasing his father, not enjoying the pain in and of itself.

All redemption requires pain. All joy in the best of all possible worlds requires pain. All humor requires pain. Hymns and reconciliations require pain. The present era views endurance negatively. Scripture views endurance as a virtue. Christ’s empathy requires his pain. To confuse the connection of pain to endurance with masochism is a mistake. To apply the term of masochism to the Marine Corps is a mistake. To call endurance masochism is to mock the Holy Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to devalue the fruit of the Spirit. To call endurance masochism is to encourage masochism.

Works Cited

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[1] Sun, Wu, Ralph D. Sawyer, and Sawyer Mei-chün Lee. The Art of War. Ca. 500 BC. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2002), 223-224.

[2] J. Ligon Duncan seems to indicate that learning to suffer is a subordinate goal of learning to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever:

If we want to benefit most from our suffering, by prayer and meditation, we will approach our suffering as a good soldier approaches war. What do I mean by that? A good soldier who has trained and trained is not surprised when he finds himself in war! He has been trained for it. Likewise, consider it your Job to be prepared to suffer. That puts a whole different cast on Sunday morning, doesn’t it? You are gathering with God’s people Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day to train as good soldiers of Jesus Christ so that when your time of trial and testing sand suffering comes, you will be ready. (46)

Duncan, J. Does Grace Grow Best in Winter?. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 46.

Duncan’s words using the Biblical metaphor of soldiering mirrors Stephen Pressfield’s words about both marines and Spartans. Is this how Duncan thinks we should view Sunday morning? Is self-control the fruit of the Spirit? If not, why is fruit singular?

Duncan also states that the phrase “lean to suffer” is in effect given as a normative statement by Christ:

Admiral Nelson won the great Battle of Trafalgar against the French during the Napoleonic Wars. The Viscount of Camperdown, who also won many battles during that period, was one of the admirals under Nelson. The Viscount of Camperdown’s family crest had a ship with full sails on it and with two little Latin words: Disce pai—’Lean to suffer.’ That is precisely what Peter and Paul and Job and Moses and Jesus would say to you and me as believers in the fallen world. ‘Learn to suffer.’

Duncan, J. Does Grace Grow Best in Winter?. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 12-13.

J Ligon Duncan also mentions that there is no recorded mention of Jesus laughing, but plenty of his sorrowing. He is not known as a man of laughters.

C. S. Lewis explains some purposes of suffering in The Problem of Pain:

In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) The simple good descending from God, (2) The simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted; suffering and repented sin contribute.

Lewis, Clive. The Problem of Pain. 1940. (Quebec: Samizdat University Press, 2016), 69-70.

Claiming that God is not omnipotent because he would have created a world without pain is an extremely shallow assertion. Similarly, associating both the lack of pain and the enjoyment of the present with Holiness is questionable.

The lines also mirror C S Lewis’s words on pain in the fifth Screwtape letter:

The Enemy’s human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that suffering is an essential part of what He calls Redemption; so that a faith which is destroyed by a war or a pestilence cannot really have been worth the trouble of destroying. I am speaking now of diffused suffering over a long period such as the war will produce.

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), 38.

In Lewis’s view, there is no salvation without suffering. Is being miserable and suffering the same? Did Jesus love being miserable? Did His assuming an infinitely lower state entail misery? What about the garden of Gethsemane? When Lazarus died before he died? Did He learn to suffer? Did He enjoy suffering? Did He enjoy being miserable? Did He enjoy knowing that the pains He took were necessary for the best of all possible worlds? Can enjoying pains necessary for the best of all possible worlds to reach the highest state of reality be the same as loving the state of being miserable? Was Jesus proud of His work, or was it just suffering that He had to endure?  Christ had joy in the fact that he was pleasing his father, not enjoying the pain in and of itself.

[3]

Either paganish unbelief of the truth of that eternal blessedness, and of the truth of the Scripture which doth promise it to us; or, at least, a doubting of our own interest; or most usually most sensible of the latter, and therefore complain most against it, yet I am apt to suspect the former to be the main, radical master-sin, and of greatest force in this business. Oh! If we did but verily believe that the promise of the glory is the word of God, and that God doth truly mean as he speaks, and is fully resolved to make it good; if we did verily believe that there is, indeed, such blessedness prepared for believers as the scripture mentioneth ; sure we should be as impatient of living as we are now fearful of dying, and should think every day a year till our last day should come. We should as hardly refrain from laying violent hands on ourselves, or from the neglecting of the means of our health and life, as we do now from over-much carefulness and seeking of life by unlawful means. . . . Is it possible that we can truly believe that death will remove us from misery to such glory, and yet be loth to die?

 Baxter, Richard. The Saint’s Everlasting Rest. 1657. (Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 465-466.

[4] Shakespeare, William. Hamlet (3.1.56).Ed. Barnet, Sylvan. Literature for Composition: Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. (New York: Longman, 2003), 926-927.

[5] The Office. “Performance Review.” 8. Directed by Paul Feig. Written by Greg Daniels and Larry Wimore. NBC, November 15, 2005.

[6] Slavoj said this somewhere.

[7]

The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field. I am not thinking primarily of indecent or bawdy humour, which, though much relied upon by second-rate tempters, is often disappointing in its results. The truth is that humans are pretty clearly divided on this matter into two classes. There are some to whom “no passion is as serious as lust” and for whom an indecent story ceases to produce lasciviousness precisely in so far as it becomes funny: there are others in whom laughter and lust are excited at the same moment and by the same things. The first sort joke about sex because it gives rise to many incongruities: the second cultivate incongruities because they afford a pretext for talking about sex. If your man is of the first type, bawdy humour will not help you—I shall never forget the hours which I wasted (hours to me of unbearable tedium) with one of my early patients in bars and smoking-rooms before I learned this rule. Find out which group the patient belongs to—and see that he does not find out.

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), 54.

[8] A perfectly satisfied person cannot be seduced. Tension and disharmony must be instilled in your targets’ minds. Stir within them feelings of discontent, an unhappiness with their circumstances and themselves. The feeling of inadequacy that you create will give you space to insinuate yourself, to make them see you as the answer to their problems. Pain and anxiety are the proper precursors to pleasure. Learn to manufacture the need that you can fill.

Greene, Robert. The Art Of Seduction. (United Kingdom: Profile Books, 2010), 203.

[9] Mark 2:17.

[10] Lonesome Dove. “Part I: Leaving.” Directed by Simon Wincer. Written Larry McMurty, William D. Wittliff. CBS, February 5, 1989.

[11] Matthew 2.

[12] Luke 2.

[13] “WeatherSpark.com.” Average Weather in Nazareth, Israel, Year Round – Weather Spark. Accessed July 18, 2020. https://weatherspark.com/y/99108/Average-Weather-in-Nazareth-Israel-Year-Round.

[13.5] 2005. Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World. Beverly Hills, CA: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

[14]  Hebrews 4:15.

[15]  This equation is attributed to Thomas Carlyle.

[16] Galatians 5:22-23

[17] See footnote 2.

[18] Matthew 24:13.

[19] Ignore Holy Sonnet 14.

Donne, John. “Holy Sonnets: Batter My Heart, Three-person’d God…” Poetry Foundation. Accessed July 17, 2020. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-persond-god.

[20] “The U.S. Army Chief of Staff’sProfessional Reading List.” The U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s Professional Reading List – U.S. Army Center of Military History. Accessed July 18, 2020. https://history.army.mil/html/books/105/105-1-1/index.html. https://history.army.mil/html/books/105/105-1-1/CMH_Pub_105-1-1_2011.pdf

[21]

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candy-asses don’t know how to be miserable.

 The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

The artist must be like that Marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby.  And war is hell.

Pressfield, Steven/ McKee Robert (FRW). The War of Art Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. (New York: Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2012), 68.

[22] Pressfield, Steven. Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2005), 139.

[23]  1 Corinthians 9.

[24] Link to stewardship blog post

[25]  1 Thessalonians 4:10.

[25.5] Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. Nar. Simon Prebble. 1959. Ashland: Blackstone         Audiobooks, 2008.

[26] Philippians 2:7, Matthew 4, 27.

[27] Isaiah 53:5.