Good Pain and Bad Pain: A Lenten Reflection
Paul likens the Christian life to a race that we are running: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever” (1 Cor 9:24-25).
I’m an athlete, a fencer, so this metaphor hits home for me. Though it’s more immediately gratifying to practice the things I’m already good at, to become a better fencer, I have to work on my areas of weakness. To continue the metaphor, serious athletes are familiar with the concept of training cycles. There’s baseline training all year round, taking different forms during the season and the off-season, but we also put in special effort at key training sessions or camps, in order to kick up our performance a notch.
What’s true of training for a physical competition holds true for the spirit as well. We can think of Lent as a forty-day training session, a fitness program for the soul. Just as a training regimen for a sport focuses our attention on the body, showing us where we need to work out more or improve our skills, so Lent draws our attention to areas of spiritual weakness, so that we may take on the disciplines and habits that will help transform us ever more into the image of Christ.
With that in mind, before Lent I asked God to use this time to continue His work in my heart. “Do what You have to do,” I said to God. “Even if I don’t like the lesson, teach me obedience, teach me how to serve.” I admit to feeling nervous even as I laid this before Him, because I’ve noticed how often He takes me at my word.
As usual, God chose to act when I wasn’t expecting it, so I was unprepared and vulnerable. You’d think I’d expect the unexpected by now, but God is always one step ahead of me.
I was hired as a referee for a collegiate fencing meet. Refereeing sabre fencing requires not just knowledge of the rules, but also the ability to analyze a split-second action correctly and make the call decisively while staying cool in a high-pressure situation. On top of all that, refereeing is public: both students and the teams’ coaches are watching, analyzing, and quite likely protesting if my call doesn’t go their way.
I’ve refereed at this level before; I was confident that I could do a good job.
Then I met a challenge. To say the least.
My own fencing coach is also the coach of one of the teams that was at the collegiate meet. In the second round, his team came to my strip, so as I was refereeing, my coach was watching and coaching his fencers from the sidelines. It’s always a challenge to deal with coaches watching, but in this case the point was that I knew he is a much better referee than I am.
It didn’t go well.
I was in an agony of nervousness. My stomach was knotted; I could feel my pulse racing and adrenaline flooding my system. In mounting terror, I missed a few things I should have seen. My confidence drained away, and with it, my ability to focus and see the details I needed to see in order to make good calls. I started making some calls just flat-out wrong. If I glanced to the side I could see the “How could you have blown that call?!” expression on my coach’s face. He knew I was screwing up. I knew it. At that moment, I would rather have been anywhere else. But it would have been unprofessional to flee, and anyway there was nowhere to hide.
Somehow I made it through the match, and through the day.
I knew there was something here for me to learn from – and not just on the level of refereeing.
As I reflected on the day later on, a few things began to come into focus. You see, if it hadn’t been for my coach being there, no one would have noticed how badly I performed. I’m good at putting on a facade of self-control, and apparently I fooled most everyone. Just a few minutes after the bouts in question, one of the organizers had complimented me on my poise and control of the strip. “You’re a rock star!” he chirped, as I mumbled something and ducked away.
This lesson wasn’t about misplaced confidence, it was about pride. The Lord has given me many gifts, and I know that He expects me to use them. But they are His gifts, not mine; and if I do good work with what He’s given me, the glory goes to Him, not to me. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, it’s my own glorification that I’m looking for. All too often I try to use the accolades of peers and the admiration of others to fill the empty place in my heart where pride and self-loathing echo, a place that, in truth, can only be filled by Christ’s redeeming love.
On that day of refereeing, my pride, my bitter and self-hating pride, wanted everyone to think I was doing a great job; my pride did not care if I messed up a call or not, as long as no one noticed.
Well, I had been humbled. It didn’t matter if everyone else in the room thought I was perfect. I’d seen my coach’s reaction to my calls. Even if no one else noticed, he had.
But then I realized something much more important had happened By the grace of God, during those agonizing minutes of refereeing badly in front of my coach, I had actually let go of my pride for a little while. I was so nervous during those matches because for a little while I didn’t care about people thinking I was doing it right; I cared deeply about actually getting it right.
The challenge, of course, is to keep this lesson in my heart all the time; to do all things to God’s glory, whether or not anybody else notices. It’s hard; there are so many ways that I can fool myself, which is precisely why I need lessons like this. It brings home just how important Christian fellowship is, for both encouragement and discipline.
Athletes are familiar with the concepts of “good pain” and “bad pain.” Bad pain is when you pull a muscle or twist your ankle; with bad pain you should immediately stop what you’re doing and work on repair and rehab. Good pain is when you’re pushing harder in a sprint, or working past the fatigue point; a serious athlete accepts and embraces good pain. In this season of Lent, I’d like to continue that as a metaphor. Sin is bad pain; discipline is good pain. Often what hurts in the short run is necessary for growth. Painful as that day’s difficult experience of refereeing was, I’m grateful for it, because of what the Lord taught me with it. Now, with His help, I hope to do better next time.
Related posts:
Dr Holly Ordway came to Christ through reason, in the pursuit of truth. "In your hearts honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 15).
She writes about her journey from atheism to orthodox Christian faith in her book "Not God's Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith" (Moody Publishers).
