No Pain, No Pain

“…But if doing well you suffer patiently this is praiseworthy before God.” – I Peter 2:20

You don’t hear too much about leprosy these days. It seems so Old-Testament. Would you be surprised to know that there are still leper colonies in India and Myanmar? Bacteria cause leprosy. The disease can be cured by the simultaneous administration of three “killer” antibiotics, but these are expensive, and not widely available to poverty- stricken areas of third world countries.

Leprosy is known medically as “Hansen’s Disease.” In addition to skin lesions, it causes nerve damage. The problem with nerve damage is that the sufferer doesn’t feel pain. Wait. Isn’t that a good thing?
Um, no. Pain is a gift from God. It tells you that there is a problem that needs attention. What is to keep you from bare-handedly pulling your cake out of the oven if you don’t feel pain? And, if you pulled your cake out, your skin is now burned – possibly quite severely. Charred pieces of flesh are falling off your body.

Houston, we have a problem.

Blink a few times. Feel the moisture on your eyeballs? Leprosy also affects mucous membranes. Suppose you didn’t feel the pain of having dry eyes. How would you remember to blink? Many lepers go blind because they do not know to blink. Pain is such a good gift.

When I feel pain, I can still be grateful to God. I don’t have to tell everyone how I feel. I’d rather suffer the pain patiently than to be one to those I love.

What are you going to suffer patiently today?

Pain is a gift from God. It tells you that there is a problem that needs attention.

But what if you already know there's a problem? What if you have cancer, and know you're dying? Then pain is not a good thing...it's a hellish overload on an already taxed body. In that case pain is not a gift at all.

What if you've just lost a loved one? They're never coming back again. All you'll ever have now are memories. The "gift" of pain that overwhelms the recently bereaved is sometimes more than they can bear. Wouldn't a reprieve from pain, just for a little while, be a good thing? A blessing?

It seems to me that pain is only a good thing if it alerts us to something we don't know. Once we've been warned, then chronic pain becomes a curse.

-Philosophical nab