I'm currently in the midst of reading Timothy Keller's walking with God through Pain and Suffering and conclude that those of us living in western civilized countries are least equipped to deal with loss and here is why

13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I decided to take advantage of a 14-day free trial offer with Ancestry.com  to help me try to understand the Gabrielson family.  As I did so, I discovered that in the Peter and Anna family lineage was a child born in 1897 who also died that same year. Reubin Gabrielson never lived to see his first birthday, yet he left a profound hole in the hearts of Peter and Anna that only their faith could fill.

In  Tim Keller's book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, I read these observations. First, the author makes this point: Nothing is more important than to learn how to maintain a life of purpose in the midst of painful adversity

Sociologists and anthropologists  have analyzed and compared the various ways that cultures train it's members for grief, pain, and loss. When this comparison was done, it was noted that our own contemporary Western civilization is one of the weakest and worst in history for doing so. 

Anthropologist, Richard Schweder writes, " Human beings apparently want to be edified by their miseries, "   Sociologist Peter Berger writes, every culture has provided an " explanation of human events that bestows meaning upon the experiences of suffering and evil." Berger did not say people are suffering itself is good or meaningful. What Berger means rather is that it is important for people to see how the experience of suffering does not have to be a waste and could be meaningful through a painful way to live life well. 

Our own Western society gives its members no explanation for suffering and very little guidance as to how to deal with it. 

Just days after the Newtown school shootings in December 2012, Maureen Dowd entitled her December 25 New Time column "Why God" and printed a Catholic Priest response to the massacre. Almost immediately, there were 100's of comments in response to the column's counsel. Most disagreed in wildly divergent terms. 

The response to the column was evidence that our own culture gives people almost no tools for dealing with tragedy. The end result is that today we are more shocked and undone by suffering than were our ancestors. In medieval Europe, approximately one out every 5 infants died before their first birthday, and only half of all children lived to the age of 10. The average family buried half of their children when they were still little, and the children died at home, not sheltered away from eyes and hearts. 

Dr. Paul Brand, a pioneering orthopedic surgeon in the treatment of leprosy patients spent the first part of his medical career in India and the last part of his career in the United States....."I encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all cost. Patients live at a greater comfort level than any I had previously treated, but they seem far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it." The crucial commonality is this:  In every one of those worldviews, suffering can, despite its painfulness be as important means of actually achieving their purpose in life. It can play a pivotal role in propelling you toward all the most important goals. One might say in each of the other cultures grand narratives- what human life is all about- suffering can be an important chapter or part of that story.

During the 20th century, most people living in contemporary society have increasingly been confused by suffering emotionally. Anthropologist James Davies lists, "biomedical psychiatry, academic psychiatry, genetics, modern economics" and says, "as each tradition was based on its own assumptions and pursued its own goals via its own methods, each largely favors reducing human suffering to one predominant cause (e.g. biology, faulty cognition, unsatisfied self-interest) Timothy Keller adds this quote: " If you are an expert in hammers, every problem looks like a nail." 

Davies findings support Shweder's analysis.  He explains how the secular model encourages psychotherapists to "decontextualized" suffering, not seeing it as other cultures have.

In a BBC interview with Dr. Robert Spitzer in 2007 who is a Psychiatrist who headed the task force that in 1980 wrote the DSM-III( third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders). When interviewed 25 years later by the BBC, Spitzer admitted that in hindsight, he believed they had wrongly labeled many normal human responses of grief, sorrow, and anxiety as mental disorders. The interviewer asked, " so you have effectively medicalized much of ordinary human sadness?"

 Davis went on to say that the DSM focused almost completely on the symptoms: they were not interested in understanding the patient's life, or why they were suffering from their symptoms. If the patient was very sad, anxious, or unhappy, then it was simply assumed that he or she was suffering from a disorder that needed to be cured, rather than from a natural and normal human reaction to certain life conditions that needed to be changed. Through various scientific techniques, the job of the experts was to lessen the pain. The life story was not addressed.

The growing influence of the DSM was one among many other social factors spreading the harmful cultural belief that much of our everyday suffering is a damaging encumbrance best swiftly removed- a belief increasingly trapping us within a worldview that regards suffering as a purely negative force in our lives."

 Timothy Keller goes on and writes how Christianity, more so than the other worldviews, gives people hope as they suffer. Timothy Keller adds this quote at the end of this chapter, " while other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life's joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world's sorrows, tasting the coming joy"

In Grief Share, we teach people in the throes of grief and sorrow how to go through the pain, not around it. Part of this group is spent on understanding their life story after the loss has occurred.

Whatever your life story is, embrace it because it may, in the end, give your new purpose for your life.