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”