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Ignoring sin
—won't lessen the pain
by Stephanie Olson (WordAlone board member)
News: August 4, 2006
I recently read about a child who was born without the sense of pain. As a parent that sounded like a good thing to me. After all, when my child hurts, I hurt. For a child to never feel pain seemed like an amazing gift, at least initially.
Then I learned ramifications of having no sense of pain, and the nightmare it was for her parents. 
The child did not know when she was hurting herself. Some of the problems included: she tried to dig her own eyes out with her fingers when she was a toddler; without cries of pain when she was ill, her parents didn't have the usual, early signs of infection or illness; she did not know when something hot was burning her. In short, having no sense of pain left her vulnerable to hurting herself and being seriously hurt by the world around her. She was unable to learn from pain when something injured her.
This is, I think one of the problems in society today. We no longer understand the real purpose of pain, especially social and emotional pain such as that flows from casual sex to broken marriages; from gossip to theft of character; from disrespect for parents to disrespect for self or others. Too often, people now believe it is the rules that cause the pain, not breaking the rules. The lie being pushed is that all that is needed to stop pain is to change or eliminate the rules.
Pushing the rules away does not reduce or remove the pain. Rather, it leaves only confusion as to why there is pain or where the pain came from.
One example of this lie was put forward was in our local newspaper recently. A sociologist recommended an "easy" way to get rid of the pain of divorce: remove the "stigma" of divorce in society. By removing the stigma, there would be no social "expectation" that marriage should be a commitment, and if divorce were "normal" then there would be no pain.
Sadly, I believe, this sociologist was wrong on both points. First , there is no "stigma" to being divorced today. It is common and accepted. More than 50% of our youth are growing up with divorced parents. Secondly, this has not solved the problem of the negative impact and pain of divorce on the former spouses and the children living in split families. Every person I have spoken to whose life was impacted by a divorce has talked of their pain, even years after the fact.
God gave us instructions, in the Ten Commandments, and helped us understand them better through the spiritual gifts of Martin Luther, who centuries ago wrote clear explanations of these commandments as well as showed us how to apply them to our daily lives. These instructions for life clearly show us how to avoid hurting self or others. Each and every time any one is broken or ignored, there is pain.
Sadly, in our broken world, as with the child I mentioned at the beginning, we need pain to keep us from hurting ourselves and others.
Can we again learn how to properly face pain in our lives: to listen to the pain and learn from it within the grace and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus. Can we learn, again, to be honest enough with our own pain to be able to use it to teach our children? I believe it is a loving God who gives us pain. I believe He didn't leave us with pain because He hates us and enjoys hurting us, but rather to guide us, to help us learn so we can help others to understand pain.
Fortunately, we can learn many of these lessons by simply reading the Bible without having to experience pain. We can learning from the mistakes of other believers who have willingly, honestly shared their stories with us in the Scriptures.
Let us no longer fear pain. Rather let us humbly accept and learn from it. Removing the "stigma" of sin cannot prevent pain. Denying the evil in selfish choices, no matter how hard we try, will not take the pain away. Only our Lord Jesus Christ can save us, redeem us and heal us from the pain of decisions made in our brokenness.
"Wretched [person] that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 7:24-25