Radical Honesty and Physical Pain by iyree jarrett

There are many verses in the Bible that speak to embodied, physical pain. After my second of four knee surgeries in four years, I started keeping track of them. What I found was that the biblical imagination has no problem describing faith through the language of aching bones, trembling knees, exhausted bodies, and physical weakness.

Job says, “Night pierces my bones, and my gnawing pains never rest” (Job 30:17). The psalmist cries out, “Heal me, LORD, for my bones are in agony” (Psalm 6:2). Elsewhere, David says, “my bones grow weak” (Psalm 31:10), and “my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalm 32:3). In addition to describing their physical pain, the biblical authors are remarkably honest about what that pain does to them emotionally and spiritually. They tell God when they feel abandoned, forgotten, unheard, or overwhelmed: “How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1); “Why, LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1); and “I cry to you, LORD, but you do not answer me” (Job 30:20).

I think these moments of radical honesty in the midst of pain are worth paying attention to. People come to God with headaches and exhaustion, with hunger and thirst, with wounds and fevers, with aching bones and failing strength. They don’t have to translate pain into spiritual language or pretend that their pain does not exist. Even Jesus practiced radical honesty when he experienced pain, both physical and emotional. He wept when his friend Lazarus died. In Gethsemane, he was overwhelmed with sorrow and anguish and prayed honestly about what he was facing. Jesus did not experience this human pain from a distance. Christianity makes the almost scandalous claim that God took on a body. Jesus experienced hunger. He experienced thirst. He became tired. He wept. He experienced pain. The God we worship did not remain distant from the vulnerability of human flesh. God entered it.

Sometimes I even wonder if Jesus ever scraped his knee as a child! I wonder if he ever fell while running through the streets of Nazareth or bruised himself doing something ordinary. I wonder what his prayers sounded like then. We don’t know, of course. But I find myself in awe at the idea that the body through which God experienced the world was itself capable of being bruised and hurting. The Christian story does not ask us to become less embodied. It tells us that God became embodied. I believe that means we can be more honest with God about our bodies than we sometimes allow ourselves to be. We can bring God not only our spiritual questions, but our actual bodies: the pain, the weakness, the exhaustion, the fear, and the things we don’t understand. We can tell the truth about what hurts without believing that our honesty makes our faith less faithful.