Offer it up!

Before we get started, please read the previous article, here;Peter actually shows emotion

I've talked about redemptive suffering before, but, since it's men's mental health month, I think this is something I need to talk about more. Especially when the “prosperity gospel” is out there. I've been told by someone (who herself would be disgusted by the “health and wealth” aspects of the prosperity gospel), that my depression is, apparently, because I don't love God enough. So, as someone who is very guilty of not always saying the right thing, and even more guilty of sometimes saying the wrong thing, I'm still baffled that somehow showing emotion is unmanly. Jesus showed complex emotion, and we'll talk more about that later this month. But, let's talk about Paul. No, not Paul McCartney from The Beatles, Saint Paul. Let's see what he has to say (and I give myself full permission to repeat myself,  “Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into his grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”. (Romans 5:1-5). Alright, as I've been saying throughout June, notice what he doesn't do? Paul doesn't say “suck it up, you're being unmanly”. No, Paul is saying “offer it up”. Catholics and maybe some Eastern Orthodox reading will understand this, but, for the Protestant readers (and I know Protestantism is not a monolith), and I'm sure y'all can agree with this (it is, in The Bible, after all). It's not that you bury those emotions, it's not that you pretend that you don't have them. No, it's that you deal with them in a way that produces character, which produces hope. Paul knows what suffering is like. He knows what shedding tears (2 Corinthians 2:4) is like. He doesn't tell you, “suck it up, and be a man”. He says “offer it up, because that will lead to the hope in God because of the character you've built from that suffering”.

*All verses from ESV Catholic Edition with Deuterocanonical Books, Copyright 2017 by Crossway

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