Quote:
Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner
Igzy,
With all due respect, I think you're missing the point of this hymn. It is about suffering, not serving. I understand your protest ... there is a danger of a kind of asceticism teaching here. But the author is not looking forward with some kind of teaching on how to live the Christian life. He is looking backward at a life given, spent on the Lord with no outward reward or glory, and finding in that something so deep and meaningful that it almost cannot be uttered.
While I believe that we should be the most forward looking of people on the earth, there is an element to our walk that requires us to pause occasionally and look backward just as we do each time we take the Lord's table. When we do this, the tears remembered are golden.
SC
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SC,
Thanks for your comments. I didn't answer this right away because I didn't want to hijack the Mansfield thread and I didn't want to seem argumentative.
I understand your point. But it still doesn't negate the problem I have with the song, which is that it makes suffering a virtue and almost an end in itself, and I don't think that is according to the truth.
Suffering is an
evil, plain and simple. It's a product of the fall. What places it in the limelight of virtue is when someone is willing to endure it out of love for another. Suffering in and of itself does not produce character. It is the endurance of suffering for the sake of another or for a higher cause which produces character.
If a person places service to God and others at the paramount, then he will be willing to endure whatever suffering God calls him to. But if a person is pursuing "spirituality" and becomes convinced that suffering is a virtue which can improve spirituality, then he is going to likely become a bit of a masochist, which is ironically a little self-indulgent. I think this is the influence Madam Guyon had on Nee. We've all encounterd Christians who were a little too "into" suffering.
All the Lord's servants are called to suffer. But suffering should be in the line of service, not the service itself. I hope that makes sense.