Suffering

FORWARD

We live in a time when life has been made very comfortable and easy for us, both through the increase in our wealth, and advances in psychotherapy and medical science. But we still experience pain: emotional, physical, the pain of loss and the pain of wrong.

And in a way still quite naturally and quite human we seek to avoid it. In 1995, a Private Members Bill, short-titled the Death with Dignity Bill, came before the New Zealand Parliament. In his introductory speech, Michael Laws said:

I reject most strongly the view that this Bill is unchristian or immoral. That is a criticism that I have heard from certain religious leaders in the last wee while...I also reject the absolutely non-sensical view of some that for a person to die in pain, to die in anguish, and to die suffering, is good for the soul. Theology that teaches such barbarism is bankrupt and inhuman.

In this short text, Dick Tripp shows us that a theology that encounters suffering head-on, without an easy retreat into a contrived death, does indeed enable us to encounter both the depths of our humanity and the living God. He carefully, and using a wide range of illustrations, shows us that the God who shares our suffering is not an abstract and philosophically remote ideal, but a living person; and that in travelling our way with him, we will not merely survive for that is the way to true greatness.

This is a timely book, and will, I am sure, be of great help to Christians and seekers alike, in getting to grips with this age-old human problem.

The Right Reverend Dr Penelope A. B. Jamieson, MA (Hons), PhD, BD. Bishop of Dunedin, New Zealand