Why Giving a Suffering Answer to a Risk Question Isn't Helpful, Part 1

The simple answer is that suffering answers a question that risk is not asking.

Suffering is the the experience of real pain in my life through the medium of the body or the psyche (mind and emotions). The experience of pain in the body as the result of persecution, torture, or the pain of betrayal or psychological torture is the daily reality of Christ followers all over the world. All Followers will suffer - Jesus made that clear in Matthew 5:10-11.There is so much written about suffering, I won't begin here. Significant modern writers touching on three major aspects of suffering  include C.S. Lewis (intellectual), Joni Erickson Tada (physical), and Joseph Tson (persecution).

But risk is an entirely different concept. Risk is the threat of suffering, the threat of pain, the threat of persecution, torture, kidnapping, and death. Choosing to go to places where these threats are 24/7 reality, where the smell of death is inescapable, is an entirely different experience from suffering. Those verses that are a comfort in suffering are not automatically or necessarily a comfort in risk.

Giving suffering answers to risk questions demonstrates several things:

1. Not really listening to the heart of the person asking; 
2. Not really listening and understanding the problem being expressed; and
3. A lack of understanding what risk is, both as a concept and as an experience. 

I've received "suffering" answers so many times, that I'm very careful who I go to for advice and input as I work through my own risk dilemmas as a mom living in the Middle East.

The Bible reveals three significant concepts about risk:

1. It is always referred to as an event that requires action and response (Ex. 17; I Sam 19:5, Acts 15:26; Rom 16:4; Phil 2:30.)
2. When risk is referred to, it is only in the event of risking one's life for the righteousness of God and the sake of Jesus Christ. 
3. In all its uses in the OT and NT it is always related to the covenant relationship between God and man. 

Risk is an event, and the only way to truly understand risk is by balanced awareness of both conceptual thinking and situational involvement, because risk is an action, not primarily an intellectually abstract problem.