Sarah Osborn’s Dangerous Theology of Suffering

On September 15, 1744, Sarah Osborn received the worst news any parent could hear. Her eleven year old son, Samuel, was dying from tuberculosis. Sarah decided to write about her son’s death in order to discover where God was in the midst of her suffering.

Sarah Osborn was a white, evangelical, woman living in New England during the eighteenth century. Samuel was her only biological child. Sarah always regarded Samuel’s father, Samuel Wheaton, as her one true love. Samuel’s father died at sea when Samuel was a young boy. Even though Sarah remarried and became a stepmother, she clearly favored Samuel above her stepchildren.  In narrating her son’s death, she came up with two theological models to explain her suffering: suffering as the penalty for sin, and suffering as a means of grace.

Suffering as the penalty for sin understands human sin as the cause of human suffering. This theological model suggests that God is in control of suffering because God predestines the evil and suffering in the world (82). An example of this theological model from Sarah’s memoir would be the time when eight year old Sarah burned her hand in a fire because she decided to play with her doll on the Sabbath (88). Sarah believed that she suffered burns because God wanted to punish her for her sin of playing on the Sabbath.

But Samuel’s death caused her to reject suffering as the penalty for her sins, and replace it with suffering as a means of grace. This theological model sees suffering as a tangible sign of God’s love (88). When Samuel died, instead of expressing her anger, despair, and hopelessness, she calmly accepted God’s will, renewing her trust despite her suffering (152). Sarah wrote that when she felt the most alone, that was when she felt closest to God (152-153). Samuel’s death, became for her, a way to experience God’s love more deeply.

But what might we learn from Sarah Osborn’s understanding of suffering? Our biggest take away should be how not to think about suffering! It makes total sense that Sarah understood suffering as a penalty for sin, then later as a means of grace. Her views are completely orthodox in eighteenth century evangelical theology. The danger with thinking about suffering as a penalty for sin, or as a means of grace is that not all suffering is redemptive.  We are wading in theologically murky waters if we tell a grieving mother that her son died so that God could reveal God’s love to her more clearly.

So what is a better theological model to think about suffering? Let us turn to a minute to the Suffering Servant Song in Isaiah. In Isaiah 53:3, the servant was:

Despised and rejected by others;

a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;

and as one from whom others hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him of no account.

A theologically problematic reading of this passage would be to say that suffering is redemptive because it brings us closer to God, because we do not want to say that a good God has to use suffering to bring about good. A better way to read this passage is to say that God can use the suffering that already exists in the world to bring about good. This allows us to say that the redemptive nature of suffering is in the act of solidarity with those who suffer, not in the act itself.

What implications does the suffering as an act of solidarity theological model have for the church today? One helpful implication of this model is that it proposes that the best suffering is done in community. Despite the best advances in nutrition, medicine, and disease prevention, sometimes our children will die unexpectedly, the way that Samuel did. When we acknowledge that suffering is a reality of the fallen world we live in, and we as a church choose to say that in order for us to stand in solidarity with those who suffer, we need to create environments whereby people can process their suffering before God and before one another.

Church becomes, in this theological model, a place where suffers can find support for their suffering. Our job as the church is to proclaim again and again that suffering is not what God intended for his creation, and until Christ comes again, we want to stand in solidarity with those who suffer. The best way to stand in solidarity with those who suffer is to allow our church communities to become places where suffering is acknowledged and hope is proclaimed. Instead of telling women like Sarah that her son died as punishment for her sins, or as a way for her to draw closer to God, the church needs to stand with her in her grief and suffering. Standing in solidarity with those who suffer is one important way that the church can fulfill its mission to participate in the kingdom of God.

 

* This blog post is based on Catherine Brekus's Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Northern America. It was originally written for #ch49pts at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.