It sounds awful. No reasonable person would wish suffering on himself or on others, but Paul always was an odd man, even before his trip to Damascus. Certainly, his revelation and relationship with Christ set him apart as a freak, an extremest in his community and travels.
The thing about Paul is---he rings true. He can be circutuitous. He can be cryptic. But when Paul sets out to solidify a point, his writing cuts through the haze, it compels...
Reading 2 Corinthians this morning, I heard him loud and clear:
But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. -Philippians 3:7-11
Paul viewed suffering the loss of all things as dung only because
"I may win Christ
And be found in him,"
"I may know him"
What a peculiar man. What a peculiar call.
Paul always elevated Christ simultaneously demoted himself. Yet he was never a "woe is me" groveler like a few Christians I know these days. They wear their sufferings like a neon sign. They want others to massage them with sympathy and pity.
Nope, not Paul. Paul didn't view them that way. He counted them as gain.
His perspective forces us to refocus, to evaluate any pain in our life in a broader context--to value it because of the fellowship it forges with Christ.
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