Pain hurts

I know I might seem a sucker for every new song I hear, but really I'm not! True, I'm not a stickler for every worship song or hymn being a theologically coherent statement, as I reckon they're primarily poetry. I'm not one of the school which wants to censor "Hark the herald angels sing" because of the phrase "veiled in flesh" or to change the line about the wrath of God being satisfied in "In Christ alone". On the other hand, I'm not that keen on songs that seem to have been written from no experience of the reality of life - ones that are full of religious cliches or pious platitudes.

So when I heard the words "In thy service pain is pleasure" in the Walking by Faith cd which I got for my birthday, I must say I was not too impressed, especially as the performance seems to relish the words "pain" and "pleasure". It just isn't true. The psalmists never pretend that pain is anything but painful; Job made no bones about his suffering. I seem to remember he cursed the day he was born. Paul wanted to be rid of his "thorn in the flesh". Jesus himself didn't find his pain pleasurable. To the modern ear, that line is misleading nonsense. It isn't true that being a Christian makes pain a pleasure. It isn't true that faith turns one into a masochist. Pain hurts. Pain is still painful.

I did a bit of digging and discovered that the lyrics are not in fact modern. They were written in 1824 by Henry Francis Lyte - vicar of Brixham in Devon and author of "Praise, my soul" and "Abide with me" - who was quite a remarkable man. He had a far from easy life. Abandoned to boarding school by his soldier father, his mother and brother dying when he was young, his daughter dying in infancy, he must have known about emotional pain. In his late forties his health was declining and he underwent a range of Victorian "remedies". "Lyte complained of weakness and incessant coughing spasms, and he mentions medical treatments of blistering, bleeding, calomel, tartar emetic, and "large doses" of Prussic acid. (Yuk!) Yet his friends found him buoyant, cheerful..." (Wikipedia). 


Actually the poem isn't about how easy the Christian life is, by some sort of magic; quite the reverse, it's about the cost of "taking up your cross" and following Jesus. But all the cost is worth it, because of his love for us from beginning to the end. I get what Lyte is trying to say about counting suffering as "all joy", but that's not the same as pain being pleasure - well, not in the language I speak. I see that some versions leave out the verse with "pain is pleasure". That seems sensible to me, since its plain contemporary meaning is so jarring on people who know real pain. One doesn't analyse songs when singing them, but one does retain the memorable bits. And that's memorable for the wrong reason. Don't give me that.


Here instead is a prayer by Sheila Pritchard which I read in today's Closer to God, based on Ephesians 3.
Loving Father,
I pray that out of your glorious riches,
you will strengthen me, so that I may rooted and established in your love.
By your Spirit
let me know how wide and long and high and deep
your love is for me...
Show me what it means to be filled with all the fullness of God.
Thank you that you will do even more than I can ask or imagine.
Through Jesus your Son. Amen.