Sufferings and Armor

Siddhartha was born to a royal family in Lumbini, now in Nepal. He grew up in the seclusion of his palace without seeing poverty, suffering, illnesses, old age, or death. When he saw them outside the palace, he became a wandering mystic and was enlightened (“Buddha” = “enlightened one”). He taught a way of life that was meant to cope with poverty, suffering, illnesses, and old age (later called Buddhism). The basic principle was that suffering exists, people cannot avoid it, and they must learn to cope.

Siddhartha wasn’t too far off from making a basic observation of the human condition. Some sufferings come to us without expecting or wanting them, and we have no choice but to endure them. Think of a parent that sends his child to school only to find a stranger gun her down in the school or a person who goes to the doctor for a routine checkup only to find that she has stage-four cancer and a few weeks to live. You start work on Monday happily, bringing snacks to your workmates, then walks the boss in an awful mood, scolds you for no reason, leaving you in tears. Sufferings are common to everyone, and often we can’t do anything about them except endure them.

But we can endure them with a different attitude than usual if we understand a simple mechanism. Peter explained.

“While suffering in the flesh, armor yourselves with the same mindset of Christ: Anyone who suffers in the flesh stops sinning when s/he does not seek the desires of people but the will of God in this lifetime.” (1 Pet 4:1)

When people hurt or ill-treated them unjustly, the natural tendency was for Peter’s audience to lash out, defend themselves, or fight back – the “desires of people.” If they followed through, they might have sinned. Instead, they should follow the Lord Jesus’s example. He knew that focusing on people who hurt him could have made him bitter, angry, and commit sins. He could have called myriads of angels from heaven and killed his opponents. Instead of looking at people’s actions, he focused on the “will of God.” In the Gethsemane, he didn’t ask, “Why are people hurting me unjustly when I have done nothing but good for them?” Instead, he said, “Not my will, but your will.” He focused on what God wanted him to accomplish in his sufferings.

Peter wanted his people to have the same mindset (en-noia “same” “mind”). When they did, they’ll find armor – like what soldiers wore that protected them – around them that they didn’t have before. It mysteriously deflected the arrows of their enemies by focusing on God and his will.

Sufferings are common, but how we handle them is different. If we focus on people and our desires to want justice, we fight and aggravate the situation. But if we focus on the will of God – what does he want us to do or learn in that situation – then we find a supernatural strength to slow down the events (like Spiderman, who can see things in slow motion) and act wisely. This passage isn’t saying that we can’t fight injustice. We fight with the proper armor that comes only when we put God’s will first.