Like many people living in chronic pain, I’m often searching for spiritual and emotional comfort. And while my faith is an obvious starting point, I’ve been led down other paths as well. At the times, I thought certain philosophies and life-views could also be compatible with Christianity and help me in unique ways. Perhaps this belief stemmed from a naivety assuming that our American culture was, generally speaking, palatable to Christian ideals. Yet throughout my journey, it has continuously surprised me how many widely-accepted world views sucked me in and then spit me out, more confused and spiritually lost than ever. Philosophies that on the surface have seemed innocuous and sometimes-- even like common sense, are, at their roots, entirely contradictory to Christian theology. And ironically, in some ways it feels like I needed this foil to really tighten my own grasp on Church doctrine-- not exactly a place I assumed chronic pain would bring me, yet here we are.
After just typing this first paragraph, I already feel an apprehensive churn in my stomach, the fear that I’m 1. trying to bite of more than I can chew (as I’m not certainly not an expert on Christian theology or other spiritual practices, and 2. that I will inevitably come off as extremely judgmental, sitting in my ivory tower while deeming what is acceptable and unacceptable for Christians who are suffering to believe in. Still, I don’t think it would be in the spirit of love for my Christian neighbor to sugarcoat my personal experience with common beliefs I believe are inherently problematic for Christians. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with my points, please know that I do not come from a place of self-righteousness or condemnation, but from a place of genuine concern and empathy for your own unique struggles with pain.
Without further ado, here are some ideas I (at least somewhat) used to believe, but ultimately found problematic.
1. Your body has an innate ability to heal.
1. Your body has an innate ability to heal.
This is not a foreign idea to our society. For me, it was a naturopathic physician who introduced it and encouraged me to repeat it as my mantra. Because she knew I was Catholic, she asked me to say it is as a prayer, “Thank you, God, for creating my body with an innate ability to heal.” Seems harmless enough, right? And obviously, there is undeniable truth to this. I’m not a scientist or a doctor, but I know our bodies have incredible systems in place to keep us healthy, balanced, and alive. On the simple level, I can see a cut on my hand heal a little bit everyday until it completely vanishes. Even that in itself is incredible and evidence that our bodies do have a natural healing force at work. And to my doctor’s credit, I do respect what she was trying to accomplish here: she wanted me to see that my body was not cursed for a life of the daily migraines and body pain I’ve been trapped in for years. She wanted me to marvel and rejoice that in despite of all this pain, my body is still keeping me alive and has incredible healing potential. And I do think she was right to remind me of this.
Still, as a manta or repeated prayer, you may already be able to see some potential problems. There is undeniable science and truth behind the body’s healing properties, and by all means-- let’s study and celebrate them-- but is this always true? Is this the highest of truths we can reach? What about babies with terminal illnesses? What about their body’s “innate ability to heal?” What about someone whose been shot critically in the head and can’t get immediate medical attention? What about all of us when we reach a certain age and our bodies start failing us? Obviously our bodies’ healing properties can only take us far, so do I really want this to be my life’s mantra?
These were things that first came to mind, but I told myself I was overthinking things and needed to respect the general idea of having hope for healing. Still, the more I prayed the words, the more shallow it seemed and the more it felt like someone else’s words (probably because they were). Somehow, I don’t believe that when I’m on my deathbed, I’ll be praying about and reminding myself of my body’s “innate ability to heal.” I don’t think these words hold any real meaningful spiritual comfort for me. I can’t put all my hope into the body because I know one day it’ll ultimately fail. I know my body’s innate healing properties aren’t the answer to all my spiritual problems-- nor do I want them to be. This isn’t to downplay God’s marvelous creation of our complex bodies, but just to challenge: Is this a great mantra to fiercely carry with us throughout our lives? Did the God of the universe become incarnate and die on cross...so that our earthly bodies could have the innate ability to heal?
2. “You are the one who can end your suffering.”
I put this one in quotations because it is straight out of a self-help book recommended to me: Loving What Is” by Byron Katie (spoiler: this statement is not true).
This sentence should’ve been the biggest red flag when I began reading the book, but just like the mantra “Your body has an innate ability to heal itself,” I thought I could take away the general positive message while still leaving my Christian worldview intact. And to be completely fair, some bits of wisdom can be found here if you can overlook some major problematic statements like this one. I’ll admit I didn’t finish the book, but from what I did read, the basic idea was that we make ourselves miserable through the thoughts we tell ourselves. And as someone who has suffered from OCD since childhood, I can definitely get behind that idea. Her process to end suffering was to embark on detailed self-inquiry through a line of critical questioning. I actually tried it about an interpersonal conflict that had been bothering me, and it did help lift bit of the burden. The human mind is incredibly complex: it can create complicated webs of worries, but can also sort things out and make sense of difficult problems. I’ll take it a step further and say: I absolutely believe God wants us to use the brains he gave us to work out problems that lead to suffering. I agree with the author (and many others before her) that we can and should reason our way out of tough spots, but I 100% disagree that we can eliminate all of our earthly suffering this way, and that this should be a life goal.
Obviously, the pinnacle of our Christian faith is not feeling happy all the time. Quite differently, the pinnacle lies in redemption through Jesus’s great pain and suffering...not so that we can be comfortable on Earth, but so that we can share paradise with God after our deaths. We have to be careful not to try to achieve here on Earth what God has made possible for us only in Heaven. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t strive for joy and peace, but to remind us that a life without pain and suffering is impossible and not a good goal to strive towards. Jesus, the God of the universe, obviously could have escaped his fate on the cross if he really wanted to...but obviously, he didn’t. He carried a heavy wooden cross to his slow, painful, and extremely unjust death. He didn’t preach, “Do all you can to avoid suffering,” but quite the contrary:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Mathew 16: 24-25.
It’s kind of scary to read the part: “For whoever would save his life will lose it,” because that’s complete contradiction to “You can end your own suffering.” It’s a warning that if ending our suffering is our only and ultimate life goal, we aren’t following in Jesus’s steps, and therefore, our destiny in Heaven is jeopardized.
My naturopathic physician was concerned about this view of suffering. When I expressed that pain can bring us closer to Jesus, she basically told me, “I’m afraid if you find merit and meaning in your physical pain, your body will hold onto it. If you find your pain good, then why would your body want to get rid of it?”
And honestly, I don’t have the most perfect answer to that objection. I don’t think God delights in our pain and I don’t think we should purposely inflict pain on ourselves or not try to rid ourselves of diseases...I just mean that eliminating pain shouldn’t be our only life’s goal or our highest achievement. I don’t think my pain is a badge of honor that I want to cling to forever, but I do think that each moment I do spend in pain should be offered fully to God, and that this does have the potential to bring me closer to him.
St. John Vianney’s “Catechism on Suffering” tells us:
“Whether we will or not, we must suffer. There are some who suffer like the good thief, and others like the bad thief. They both suffered equally. But one knew how to make his sufferings meritorious, he accepted them in the spirit of reparation, and turning towards Jesus crucified, he received from His mouth these beautiful words: "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise. “
While suffering is inevitable, he later states we can choose to suffer with love or without love. So it’s not that the pain and suffering in itself is good, but how we approach it makes all the difference. If God transformed the death of His son into everlasting life for man, that’s pretty good reason to trust Him with your pain too. The point should never be to try living a life free of suffering because that’s both impossible and unwise; the point should be to take that suffering to the foot of the cross.
3. “YOU are the one who can end your suffering.”
Okay, yes, this is the same one as number 2, but with emphasis on the “You.” Hopefully you’ve already caught the glaring flaw in that one, but just in case: It’s very dangerous to believe you have such power to end your own suffering. It’s one thing to thank God for your body’s innate ability to heal, but quite another to shove God in the corner and say, “No thanks, I can heal myself.”
Not to come off as overly harsh (especially since I know many who believes this probably have good intention), but this is idolatry and a violation of the first commandment. I could go on and on about how extremely prideful and wrong it is to believe you hold the key to ending human suffering (even if it’s just your own suffering), but I am guessing you probably already get that point. Christianity is all about recognizing Jesus Christ’s grace as our only source of life, and that if wasn’t for His incredible sacrifice, we’d all, quite literally, be damned. When left to our own devices, we are broken, sinful, and disobedient children. Our complete reliance upon God is the only way we can ever hope for our suffering to end in Heaven.
I also feel like it’s worth really honing in on this point because this is quite a dangerous and alarming thing coming from a book with a cover of a smiling older lady in the “self-help” section of Barnes and Noble...And obviously she isn’t the first or the only guru to be preaching these ideas. It’s easy to get sucked into some of these ideas because they seem innocuous and even inherently positive and good, but they are often filled with serious errors that could lead you down a questionable spiritual path.
4. Emptying your mind can lead to inner peace.
So this isn’t something I’ve heard someone say to me explicitly, but is more the heavily implied suggestion in many secular meditations I’ve completed. Now, I can certainly understand wanting to silence the constant biting worries that seem to be racing around in my head 24/7, and that’s certainly a goal worth pursuing, but to empty my brain of all thoughts entirely? Not only is that just strange and likely impossible, but why would you actually want to do that? How could peace be achieved by focusing on...nothing?!
Maybe it depends on your definition of “peace.” If you merely believe is the absence of activity, the absence of bad thoughts and/or chaos, then yes: I suppose perhaps having no thoughts could bring about peace. But if peace is a good thing, then how could it be nothingness? How could nothingness be good? I feel like I could easily be accused of overthinking this one too, but once again-- I’m trying to follow these ideas all the way down and see where we end up. And where I end up on this one is down a weird existential rabbit hole where nothing means anything at all, and it’s quite the dark and confusing place to be.
To me, peace is calmness in the midst of goodness. When I feel peaceful, I don’t feel nothingness; I feel joy, freedom from anxiety, and like I’m in the presence of God and His goodness. To take it back to St. John Vianney, I imagine peace is what the good thief felt when Jesus told him, “Today you will be with me in paradise,”(even though, strangely enough, he was also dying painfully when told this). Seriously, can you imagine more beautiful and peaceful words to hear from Jesus?
Just like God doesn’t tell us to run away from suffering at all costs, he also doesn’t tell us to achieve peace through emptying our mind of all thoughts:
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (Thessalonians 5:16-18).
So, ideally, our thoughts would be directed towards God all the time. And frankly-- why wouldn’t you want all your thoughts directed towards our all-loving and all-merciful creator? If you had a choice between focusing on nothing and focusing on infinite goodness, why would you not choose goodness?
To close, I’m not implying that there can’t be wisdom in things that aren’t explicitly Christian. I think I even demonstrated this by qualifying some of these ideas: Our bodies do (generally speaking) have healing properties we should do our best to access. God has given us the ability to calm irrational fears through critical questioning. And we should attempt to banish racing worrisome thoughts that overwhelm us. But these are also conclusion we can reach ourselves through faith and reason-- and without the sketchy philosophies we have to weed out.
I know extreme physical suffering often leaves us vulnerable and desperate for anything that might help. To be fair, I can certainly see the appeal of the idea that you can end your own suffering to someone who is in great pain every day (and to an extent, I’ve fallen into that ideological pitfall as well-- so I really get it). But a lot of the ideas surrounding pain, suffering, and the meaning of life that are circulating our culture are lies, and we need to be critical of them. They are false promises that often contradict our faith severely. Moreover, we should denounce these wrong and dangerous ideas by affirming the truths we do know: that only God can end our suffering, that peace is found through complete reliance upon Him, and that if we take up our crosses laden with suffering, we can, like the good thief, share paradise with Jesus. And that sounds a lot more beautiful, uplifting, and true than any of these other silly and flawed ideas.
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