Margaret Minis has written a book on the Christian Journey with the engaging title: I Don’t Mind Suffering As Long As It Doesn’t Hurt. It is an account of her own struggle with following Christ. She writes: “This book is about the process of loving which has gone on in my life. God has been pulling me out of my self-protectiveness into relationship, opening me like a flower. This has been—and still is—scary. It has often hurt. I am not brave and I hate pain. I would rather understand suffering. Let me just talk about it! I don’t want to feel it, to hurt, and I have gone to great lengths to avoid it. But God isn’t content to let me—or any one of us—sit securely on the edge of the dance floor of life, where I can’t get stepped on and won’t get sweaty or tired, only occasionally tapping my toes to the music. God keeps inviting me to dance, with him and all you others, some of whom God knows perfectly well I can’t stand. Sometimes God even takes my chair. I can, of course, still refuse: I can say, “Not now; maybe later”; that I never liked that sort of thing; that I don’t know the steps; that it’s not my kind of music; that I’m tired; or maybe I simply don’t want to do it. The choice is mine,…” (pp. 3-4)
All of us have probably been there. I know I have. Let’s admit it, transformation, real transformation – not the little cosmetic changes that we sometimes make in our lives or the faked conversions that only involve our lips but leave out our hearts – but real, shaking of the foundations, turning our world upside down transformation, hurts. And I will usually do anything to avoid the pain of change.
One of the symbols of transformation that we often see is the butterfly. We admire its beauty and freedom. We know a little about how it moves from caterpillar to cocoon/crysalis to butterfly. We know that the process of becoming a butterfly doesn’t happen overnight. No matter how much a caterpillar desires to become a butterfly, she must wait. And the process of metamorphosis is anything but gentle. In a segment on “The Secret Life of Butterflies” on the NPR program Studio 360, we learn that Nanoscience (the study of matter on the atomic or molecular level) helps us to understand a bit more what happens to the caterpillar as it goes through the process of morphing into a butterfly. In a lab at UCLA, scientists have used high-tech tactile microscopes to read the vibrations inside the cocoon. Those vibrations are then transformed to audio. The sounds are like that of an agonizing cry. The process is not one of passive waiting for the chrysalis, but agony and pain as the transformation takes place. The caterpillar has to die to being a caterpillar in order to become a butterfly. There is no other way. You can’t simply glue a pair of wings on a caterpillar and wish it to become a butterfly. It has to go through the process of transformation and that process hurts.
The same is true of us if we want to become mature disciples, followers of Jesus. This is true of the whole Christian journey, but is something that is especially brought home to us during Lent. We are caterpillars on our way to becoming butterflies. It is no wonder that the butterfly has long been seen to be a Christian symbol of resurrection, of new birth. But we can’t get to Easter without going through Good Friday and that means it is going to hurt and we are going to be stretched and we are going to suffer. It might not mean acute physical suffering for us (apart from those initial headaches we might have experienced when we gave up coffee for Lent), but it does mean dying to ourselves—our priorities, our ideas of what is ultimately best for us, of what makes life happy and content and meaningful. And that can be painful.
We can’t ask the butterfly whether or not the pain of transformation was worth it, but we can look at ourselves. We know that despite our fear and avoidance of pain, that almost everything worthwhile in life does involve pain and discomfort – whether it is our birth, learning to relate and love, growing beyond childish conceptions, moving beyond satisfying our immediate wants for something more lasting and satisfying. And in the Christian life it is no different. Growing up in Christ means growing pains.
I hope that your Lenten journey has hurt, at least a little; that you have been stretched and challenged; that Christ has been formed a bit more in you. You’ve experienced a little bit of Good Friday – the pain and suffering part as you allowed God’s Spirit to point out areas of your life where you fell short of what God wants to do in your life and that needed to be transformed. But the Good News, to quote Tony Campolo, is that “Today is Friday, but Sunday is coming!” You are a caterpillar in the process of being transformed into a beautiful, fascinating, free-flying butterfly. May you soar with Christ!
Blessings.
