The Cleaning Power of Pain

Robert Fulghum, in his simple yet often profound bestselling (1989 & 90) little book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, writes of a Saturday night in the Laundromat:

“Sitting there watching the laundry go around in the drier, I thought about the round world and hygiene. We’ve made a lot of progress, you know. We used to think that disease was an act of God. Then we figured out it was a product of human ignorance. So we’ve been cleaning up our act – literally – ever since. We’ve been getting the excrement off our hands and clothes and bodies and food and houses. If only the scientific experts could come up with something to get it out of our minds. One cup of fixit frizzle that will lift the dirt from our lives, soften our hardness , protect our inner parts, improve our processing, reduce our yellowing and wrinkling, improve our natural color, make us sweet and good.
Don’t try Cheer, by the way. I tasted it. It’s awful.”

Inadvertently, this modern day sage put his finger on an important part of the process of lifting the dirt from our lives. “It’s awful.” Or to change the metaphor a bit, “It’s painful.”

Scott Peck, a psychiatrist and widely read author, writes in his book The Road Less Traveled:

“Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems … It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Those things that hurt, instruct.’”

Jesus put it a bit more bluntly.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body then for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 5:29)

In this era of “self-help” and “self improvement” and “self enrichment” and “self mades” it has been overlooked that personal development is painful. Another Biblical metaphor for the process is “refinement.” A cleansing “by fire.” The psychologist’s call it “catharsis,” or “purgation.” Whatever the metaphor true inner change requires painful removal of things that corrupt or mar what they’ve infiltrated. The sin of our race can only be removed by a radical and costly process.

Robert Fulghum, I have “GOOD NEWS.” The “scientific experts” have not been able to “come up with something to get it – the excrement – out of our minds … the dirt from our lives … make us good and sweet.” But God has! A very close Friend of Jesus, whom He nicknamed a “Son of Thunder,” wrote this. “(T)he blood of Jesus, (God’s) Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7) There is a “cleansing agent” that will remove the “stain” of sin from our innermost being. It is the very “life blood” of Jesus the cosmic “sacrificial lamb.” And the word John uses – he’s writing in Greek – for “purifies” is “katharizei.” This is the root of our word “catharsis.” It means, as I’ve noted earlier “to cleanse,” “to purge.” Spiritual “catharsis” is possible. The application of the “blood of Jesus” will accomplish it. This same “Son of Thunder” wrote the Revelation; the last Book of the Bible. In it he describes a “multitude” too vast to count. He notes that they are “wearing white robes.” (See Revelation 7:9) He later notes that their robes were white because they’d been “washed” and “made white” in “the blood of the Lamb.” The Lamb, of course, is Jesus whom John the Baptist introduced as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) The term John – the Son of Thunder – uses for “washes” in this instances means, literally, to “launder.” Again, the “blood” of Jesus is described as a cleaning agent. This infinitely plentiful, miraculous substance; the life blood of the “cosmic sacrificial Lamb,” has the properties to remove “sin” and all of its attendant stains, restoring the perfect color God gave us originally. It is the “fixit frizzle” Fulghum longed for. If you soak in it you will come out “pure,” “as pure as the driven snow.” This miracle substance has been made available at great personal cost. Jesus had to die the cruelest of deaths to make it available. It is, after all, His life’s blood. But that’s what makes its availability such “GOOD NEWS!” There is enough of it for everyone. The “Son of Thunder” also said that He, Jesus, “takes away the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2) His blood has the marvelous properties it has because He, personally, suffered every painful consequence brought upon us – all humanity – by our sinfulness. He hurt in all the ways we hurt because of our wrong choices. He felt the public shame we spent our lives trying to cover up. Like an antibiotic that has the antibodies to fight off disease because it has, itself, been diseased so He, “who was sinless” became “sin.” He was you on the cross that day. He was me there then. He was “sin for us, He who was sinless, so that, in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) So, we can be “purified.” The detergent; the serum is available. But it’s costly!

For me to receive His life’s blood I have to die. The most prolific of New Testament writers, Paul, wrote “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20) Oswald Chambers writes about that “crucifixion.”

“The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is … to sign the death certificate of our sin nature. I must take my emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to my right to myself. Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ … .” He did not say, “I have made a determination to imitate Jesus Christ,” or, “I will really make an effort to follow Him”—but—“I have been identified with Him in His death.” Once I reach this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the Cross is accomplished in me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness (righteousness … goodness … virtue) of Jesus Christ.” (My Utmost for His Highest)

This “catharsis” doesn’t happen over night. And it is painful. It is a crucifixion of an old enemy, my “sovereign self,” by degrees. As, with refinement, the purity of the metal, is gradually evident in its brilliance, so the old corrupt self is replaced with a new self that reflects, as in a mirror, “the Lord’s … likeness with gradually increasing glory.” (2 Corinthians 3:15) My “natural color” is being “improved,” as His perfection displaces my imperfection. Not only do “those things that hurt instruct,” they “perfect.”