Avoiding Pain

This really is an interesting topic. I haven’t really thought and prayed through a lot of what this implies for men’s lives, but let’s give it a crack as we are just scratching the surface. 

I think this is a good one for me and therefore must be a good one for men, because I am a man....  go figure….

pain

  [peyn]  Show IPA

noun

1.

physical suffering or distress, as due to injury, illness, etc.

2.

a distressing sensation in a particular part of the body: a back pain.

3.

mental or emotional suffering or torment: I am sorry my news causes you such pain.

4.

pains.

a.

laborious or careful efforts; assiduous care: Great pains have been taken to repair the engine perfectly.

b.

the suffering of childbirth.

5.

Informal. an annoying or troublesome person or thing.

Origin:
1250–1300; Middle English peine  punishment, torture, pain < Old French  < Latin poena  penalty, pain <Greek poinḗ  penalty

Note that we can be the recipient or giver (originator) of pain. 

Is pain a good thing? Is it necessary?

Alternatively, what would happen if pain was not existent in the world we exist in today?

Would we survive?

Would we have enjoyment?

Would love in all its expressions be felt and comprehended as much?

Would justice have any value?

Would morality have any worth?

One of the arguments that I have been conjecturing is why is it, that the world that you and I live in (mainly English Western Scientific Culture) we are so focused on pain avoidance at every level, that like leprosy, we are so numb to it we don’t even know when we’ve hurt ourselves, sooner or later our arm falls off.

Hear me out on this: if you and I as men, husbands, sons, fathers and friends, pursued a painless life, what would that look like?

To some degree, the world around us is feeding our culture to pursue pleasure (opposite of pain) at the expense of all other things including morality and the trespass of that moral code.   See, pain involves the trespass of a code or law.  You can apply that to relationships, communities and the natural world. 

For example: I can have sex with a prostitute  - pursue pleasure, avoid the painful reality that I am not intimate with my wife because she won’t explore new things or have sex as often as I want. Now the prostitute affirms this thinking and the she and I are just exchanging a transaction.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/why-im-happy-to-be-a-sex-worker-20130913-2toi6.html

“I've met, spoken to and sometimes worked with sex workers from across Australia. Sex workers provide sexual services. It is a pure and legitimate economic transaction.
……

Sex workers are not interested in clients for intimate relationships. Like the woman working in your local hardware store, sex workers are purely involved in a business. They are there to make money. Not to find a husband”

Now pain is involved in either course. Yet we want to avoid it, but we just delay it…

“Buy now, pay later”

“Do what you want do, be what you want to be – yeah!”

“Pain killers for this, pain killers for that…”

“Take something to dull the pain….”

I have family member, in a spiral of destruction, numbing the pain of not knowing that he is loved, thought well of, validated as a man of character, integrity and walks in truth, and is avoiding the elephant in the room.

What of myself: So I am asking myself, do I avoid pain? Another way to put it, do I avoid the truth about a situation / relationship / financial circumstance / work ?

Do I avoid the painful reality of accepting that at times my heart is terribly broken with pride and unsympathetic thoughts and need to sit at the foot of the Cross and seek patience and forgiveness?

It’s painful to accept the truth about myself at times. It really is.

3”For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” Romans 12:3.

Isn’t it interesting that the body, mind and soul have the DNA of “pain” receptors intrinsically built in to them? Why is that?

To me the clearest point about why we as men need to “toughen up” and embrace pain, is Jesus Christ’s example.

“Father forgive for they know not what they do….”

“Yet Father is there is another way, yet your will be done….”

Did you know the word “Excruciating” is derived from the work Crucifixion.

Crucifixion was a most heinous form of punishment (Pain) that the Romans did not allow it’s citizens to die that way and abolished it in the 2 or 3rd century.

Imagine if Jesus walked away from pain, yet he embraced it head on in so many situations, to the point he wept – over Lazarus, Jerusalem and the Cross.

I guess my summary point to this, is to counter the world’s approach of avoiding pain and accept it with the spirit of James and Paul:

“Consider it pure joy my brothers when you face trials of many kinds…

and “that all things work together for good for those that love God”

Freedom

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Abraham Lincoln

For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.

Galatians 5:13

free·dom [free-duhm] Show IPA

noun

1.

the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint: He won his freedom after a retrial.

2.

exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.

3.

the power to determine action without restraint.

4.

political or national independence.

5.

personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery: a slave who bought his freedom.

6.

exemption from the presence of anything specified (usually followed by from  ): freedom from fear.

7.

the absence of or release from ties, obligations, etc.

8.

ease or facility of movement or action: to enjoy the freedom of living in the country.

9.

frankness of manner or speech.

10.

general exemption or immunity: freedom from taxation.

11.

the absence of ceremony or reserve.

12.

a liberty taken.

13.

a particular immunity or privilege enjoyed, as by a city or corporation: freedom to levy taxes.

14.

civil liberty, as opposed to subjection to an arbitrary or despotic government.

15.

the right to enjoy all the privileges or special rights of citizenship, membership, etc., in a community or the like.

16.

the right to frequent, enjoy, or use at will: to have the freedom of a friend's library.

17.

Philosophy . the power to exercise choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without; autonomy; self-determination. Compare necessity (  def 7 ) .

Luke 4:

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
 to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[f]

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Question for you and I?

Does freedom operate in a vacuum?

That is, by the world's message, in looking for, seeking out, striving for freedom, the golden prize is “to do, say, think and believe whatever the individual wants”.

“It's my right, it's my person-hood, it's my brain...”

If one is seeking freedom then it is freedom FROM something?

Why is this important to ask?

To my mind, this is yet another lie that the enemy is positioning as a “rational” value to pursue.

“I just want to free of this …. [pain, relationship, debt, job, manager, child, parent, sickness]”

which in a relational sense towards: people, property and things is generally code for:

“I just want to be free of the responsibility that I have towards that person/place or thing”

Here's another one:

“I want to free of God” - one might not say it so explicitly, but usually it's couched in terms like: “I don't want to live under those rules and regulations” [ akin to business v's Govt regulation ]

Now if you and I are free to God's law, then what is the outcome?

What did Jesus say: “I have come to give life and life to the full”

“I have come to set the captives free”

Jesus doesn't make us behave better by rules, but makes a dead person alive. A person is a slave to sin which leads to death,(Romans) and Jesus frees us of that bondage to the law and sin and gives us a new spirit on the inside of us – new life. A transformation from the inside out, not the outside in.

You know it's interesting that in order to desire freedom, you really have to first understand what it is that you want freedom from and to. If you want freedom from a relationship/thing or place, and that leads you to do 'whatever your want', then by that definition, that will lead to captivity by your desires.

Don't you think it's interesting that as the West throws off God and his moral framework towards relativism and individuality and this post modern thought that there is no truth, we are seeing more people: on drugs, more corruption, more kids suicide, more teenage pregnancies, more kids without fathers, more pornography, more child abuse, more extreme arts and media, a stupefying of content in the visual arts, victimhood mentality, more obesity, more diabetes, more regulation to try and stop the decay, more social welfare programs, more pressure on DOCS and Medicare., more abortions...

Freedom from one moral world-view doesn't operate in a vacuum, it leads to something else – Hitler and Stalin or more regulation to cover up the previous moral law.

CS Lewis said there are two types of people: the one that bends the knee to God and says” Lord your will be done” and the other that does not bend the knee and the Lord says “Okay, your will be done”.