The Journey: Forty Days of PromiseCelebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Eleven: Biblical Sufferology
Welcome to day eleven of our forty-day intercultural journey. From Martin Luther King Day to the end of Black History Month we are focusing on The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.
Day Eleven: Biblical Sufferology (Practical Theology of Suffering)[1]
On a daily basis, enslaved African American suffered vicious victimization. Yet they fought their way to personal and interpersonal victory. How? They found victory in Jesus over daily abuse through their daily, even moment-by-moment practice of Christianity.
Charlotte Brooks explains it this way to Octavia Albert.
“I tell you, child, religion is good anywhere—at the plow-handle, at the hoe-handle, anywhere. If you are filled with the love of my Jesus you are happy.”
For Brooks, her religion was no “pie-in-the-sky, sweet-by-and-by” pabulum. Listen to the next sentence out of her mouth.
“Why, the best times I ever had was when I first got religion, and when old master would put me in that old jail-house on his plantation all day Sunday.” Jailed physically on the Sabbath, spiritually every day was a free Sabbath, a day of jubilee for Brooks.
Trials Make Us God-Dependent
What mindset enabled such inner freedom? Brooks and others understood that trials make us God-dependent. Speaking to her interviewer Albert, and to us, she says,
“You see, my child, God will take care of his people. He will hear us when we cry. True, we can’t get any thing to eat sometimes, but trials make us pray more.”
In fact, the lack of trials can lead to a slackening of faith. “I sometimes think my people don’t pray like they used to in slavery. You know when any child of God gets trouble that’s the time to try their faith. Since freedom it seems my people don’t trust the Lord as they used to. ‘Sin is growing bold, and religion is growing cold.’”
Trials Make Us Other-Sensitive
While Brooks provides an African American slave sufferology explaining the source of personal victory, James Smith offers an African American slave sufferology explaining the source of interpersonal victory. He understands that lack of toil leaves us insensitive, while trials make us other-sensitive.
“The life that is buoyant with hope, living perpetually in God’s sunshine, realizing every thing that is sweet in existence, has little in it that touches the chord of sympathy . . . Yet there are those in toils and trials that reap an experience that, when made known, unfold a lesson of admonition and comfort to others. . . . Yet, flowing out of this, we see the Guiding Hand preparing us for better things, moulding us for a better life.”
God’s guiding hand leads us down the trail of trials where we not only see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we become a light unto the world. As Smith summarizes:
“No mystery was ever deeper than that which shrouds the path by which men were led into bondage, and no system was ever more cruel and intolerant than that which inflicted stripes and burdens upon men, without cause, and deprived them of liberty and the right to life. Yet when we look back upon God’s dealings with his early people, and see how they wrought in bondage and suffered in their wanderings form it, it reveals His power of bringing good out of evil, light out of darkness, and becomes a school of wisdom to the world.”
We follow the North Star guidance of the enslaved African Americans’ response to their daily affliction by adhering to their slave sufferology. We walk their trail of trials trusting Jesus day by day, clinging to the truth that trials make us God-dependent and other-sensitive.
Learning Together From Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. Nothing happens to us that must define us. What loss or trauma could you redefine to reclaim your God-given victory and authority over evil?
2. As you walk the trail of trials in your life and as you journey with others, how can you apply two core themes in African American sufferology: Trials make us God-dependent? Trials make us other-sensitive?
[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.
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