Jun 3, 2018
A Review of Paul Borthwick and Dave Ripper’s “The Fellowship of the Suffering”
Suffer No More
Anyone who knows me knows that I went through a particularly low fallow period between New Year’s Day 2014 and some point last year. It started with my apartment being flooded (cue Noah) and my cat and I’s temporary evacuation. It ended when I started getting regular freelance work. In between, was I shaped for resilience? Well, I hate to admit it but … probably? I quit drinking. I quit smoking (though I still am working on that as I use smoking cessation tools to this day). Things changed that might have not changed if I hadn’t made some significant choices in my life to try and improve things for the better. So it was with this backdrop that I was interested in Paul Borthwick and Dave Ripper’s jointly-written The Fellowship of the Suffering.
Essentially, the book defines suffering as not having what you want and having what you don’t want. It then is divided into three sections on suffering through Christ, suffering with community and suffering with the world. The book is successful on at least the first two parts. Seeing that Jesus kind of really suffered by being nailed to a tree, I could see the authors’ point in finding a means to internalize your suffering and take it to a deeper place — albeit through the works of Paul, who has to be one of my least favourite writers of the Bible. And, of course, the authors’ claim to fellowship with other people who are going through pain on their own is worthy of a read.
It’s the third part, that once you’ve accepted pain as a means of being Christian that you’ll find ways of spreading the Good News that I have a problem with. In Paul Borthwick’s case, he’s a missionary, so this means going off into remote and far flung countries and converting people to Christ. I’m probably going to get yelled at here by other Christians (see, I know how to posture myself for suffering), but I find missionary work to be akin to colonization. There is more than one way to God, and perhaps God has found a way of making sense of himself to certain demographics of the world through ways that don’t involve Jesus Christ. So I find the whole notion of having to convert people as being rather offensive. If not plain ridiculous.
Coming back down to earth for a few seconds, I did, however, find parts of this book poignant. I more easily related to Dave Ripper’s pain stories because I’m probably closer to age with him than I am with Paul Borthwick. Dave also has a human presence, whereas I found the Paul sections of the book (no pun intended) to be a little more heavy handed in approach. In any event, I can wholeheartedly recommend the first half of the book to those who are in pain and need to find some approach to deal with it. Dave’s section on how to pray was personally revealing for me, as it taught me a thing or two about the different sorts of prayer that one can turn to.
Still, that last third or so of the book is … ugh. I can’t find the words! For instance, a story is related of the first missionaries who went to Burma and all of the persecution they received (wives, children, colleagues dying), and the moral of the story seems to be that in order to proclaim the gospel of Jesus, you’re going to be held to the coals (which, the authors argue, is kind of okay because it just gets you closer to meeting God in Heaven — a concept that’s kind of alien to me as a Christian because I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, per se. I see Heaven and Hell as things that exist on this earth, so surely getting tortured for your faith would constitute Hell for me.) No matter how you slice it, having to suffer persecution for spreading the gospel is a kind of odorous idea to me because it presupposes that you haven’t suffered enough for you to be worthy of spreading the Word. (And that’s notwithstanding that I take the Alcoholics Anonymous approach to my faith — getting new members is all about attraction, not promotion. Basically, I’d want people to have what I have and come to the faith, and not come to it because I preached on a street corner — possibly getting flogged while I do it, if these authors are to be believed.)
Thus, I’m kind of torn on the utility of this book. At the individual level, it may help someone get through their pain by asserting that they’re not alone in their troubles. (Heck, even Jesus knew that He was in for a rough ride.) However, marrying that notion onto the concept of missionary work is dubious at best. It’s kind of as though the book is really saying that, as someone who knows what trouble is, you’ll be well served to go out there and preach and court trouble as a result. Maybe I’m oversimplifying things. Still, The Fellowship of the Suffering left an odd taste in my mouth. It’s really too bad because there’s some wonderful advice in the first half before it gets preachy on you. If you’re in any way a progressive Christian, take what you will from the first two parts of the book and leave the dangerous third part alone. I understand why it’s there, but, again, it runs the risk of endorsing colonialism, which is not a good thing. Part three is simply there for the evangelicals to whom this is marketed towards. In other words, despite the trials I endured during the past few years, the conclusion to this work was definitely not for me. Everything else, though, maybe. Take that, again, as you will.
Paul Borthwick and Dave Ripper’s The Fellowship of the Suffering: How Hardship Shapes Us for Ministry and Mission was published by InterVarsity Press on May 15, 2018.
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