The Irony of Pain

I am sure all of us do not like pain and regard it as something we try to avoid.  You could say our hypothesis about pain is that it is NOT good.  One of the reasons I am writing this is that my 15 year old niece told me recently that she doesn’t do anything that causes her pain. 

She told me this when I asked her if she wanted to join me in a 1 mile run around the block. I had no real good rebuttal but I immediately sensed the statement was one that would hold her back in life.  It is certainly intuitive to not want pain in your life.  I had to examine why I immediately knew that I disagreed with her statement and actually felt that with that attitude life would be more difficult.  Even as I write it I have trouble basically saying that pain in your life is not only good but necessary.  It seems natural to not wish for any pain to come to our family or others.  My head is asking which is more painful ultimately; a life without pain or one overcoming it? 

If you do any fitness activities you have certainly heard, “no pain no gain”.  Until recently I have always just written that off as a clever metaphor for overzealous body builders.  Tony Dungy (exNFL player & coach) and his wife adopted a child with one missing gene that caused a congenital insensitivity to pain.  This disease CIPA or Congenital Analgia is so rare that your odds of having this are 1 in 125 million.  That means that roughly 3 people have this condition in the United States.  People with this condition actually do not feel any pain.  At first you would think that this would be a great blessing, no pain-ever!  But what about the lessons we learn from pain?  Are they not valuable and even life saving?  Can a person be taught the consequences of right and wrong or dangerous activities without the sense of pain?  How would you know not to remove the radiator cap of a car that is overheating and left you on the side of the road without the understanding of pain? If Tony Dungy’s son removed the cap his body would receive the physical damage but without the pain he would never understand the consequences.  It is the pain that keeps us from removing that cap.  We sense the heat from the radiator and realize that if we remove that cap what comes flying out is going to harm us. 

Rick Warren writes in A Purpose Driven Life that, “Pain is the fuel of passion-it energizes us with the intensity to change that we don’t normally possess”.  If you believe Rick a life without pain would be without passion and changing that would be virtually impossible.  That doesn’t seem like the “pain hypothesis” I started with.  C. S. Lewis would seem to agree stating that, “Pain is God’s megaphone”.  It seems that God uses pain to make us aware of all kinds of things, including closeness to Him.  Our problems and subsequent pain are not punishment; they are a loving God doling out his version of discipline via what can sometimes be very tough love.

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