The Virtue of Suffering

An excerpt from “Sonny’s Blues” –

“But there’s no way not to suffer – is there, Sonny?”

“I believe not,” he said and smiled, “but that’s never stopped anyone from trying.” … “No, there’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem – well like you.”…

“But we just agreed,” I said, “that there’s no way not to suffer. Isn’t it better, then, just to – take it?”

“But nobody just takes it,” Sonny cried, “that’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try – it’s not your way!” (Baldwin 404).

This passage struck me with a magnitude much greater than the rest of the text. It was the center of all my thoughts about this story. It puts into focus a connection shared among all of humanity: we all suffer. This was the starting point of a question that was developing in the back of my mind, but this question was not brought to surface until Mrs. DeBorde led our class into a discussion on the virtue of suffering. She brought to light our own ideas about suffering based on our social conditioning. In American culture, to avoid suffering, or even to pretend, is viewed as a virtue. To pretend that you do not suffer is to be strong. In some cultures, though, it may be that acknowledging suffering and battling through it is the greater virtue. The question that she helped direct my thoughts towards was this: How should Christians view the virtue of suffering? Romans 5:3-5 says, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

In the excerpt from “Sonny’s Blues,” Sonny says “there’s no way not to suffer.” - agreed. But he also says that we all try to escape it, it is just a matter of how – it is here that I part with him. In developing my Christian ideas about the virtue of suffering I came to a conclusion: human nature, “our flesh,” may naturally move away from suffering, but it is not true that we always try to escape suffering. As Christians, as we walk in the Spirit, we do not try to escape suffering but embrace it with joy, knowing that our sufferings are earning for us an eternal reward.

The greatest virtue of suffering – to embrace it with joy.

Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” The Literary Experience. Ed. Bruce Beiderwell and Jeffrey M. Wheeler. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2008. 384-410. Print.