I was raised to believe that suffering is a punishment for sin or a sign of God's displeasure. This verse suggests something profoundly different: that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. Not that suffering is bad and we should avoid it or that it means we've done something wrong. But that there are things that can only be learned through suffering.
I work as an oncology chaplain, and I've watched people with cancer learn things about what matters, about love, about dependence on God that they probably wouldn't have learned otherwise. Suffering doesn't produce those lessons by itself. But when people move through suffering with faith, something shifts. They're stripped of illusions. What was hidden becomes visible.
That doesn't make me thankful for cancer or for any suffering. But it makes me able to see that even in terrible things, transformation is possible. People meeting me in the valley of the shadow of death sometimes come out on the other side with a faith that's deeper and more real than it was before. Jesus's learning through suffering gives me language for what I'm witnessing.
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