A Biblical Understanding of Pain by John Timmerman ’67, Calvin English professor emeritus, Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2013, 118 pp., $16.
John Timmerman has coped with his share of pain during his lifetime. “I’ve had personal situations in my life and when you are experiencing them it doesn’t seem fair,” he said.
He’s also mentored students during his 37-year teaching career who have come to him with personal problems. “I can’t tell you how many students have come in under a cover story of wanting to talk about a paper and have had the tears come out about something else they are dealing with. I see the amount of pain they carry around with them, and I wanted to address this.”
Timmerman’s goal for A Biblical Understanding of Pain is to consider what we suffer and why we suffer it. In the book he distinguishes six specific categories of pain and then provides biblical understanding and practical suggestions for coping.
“There’s a lot of talk and writing about pain,” he said. “What makes my book different is I wanted to come to an understanding of pain in the Christian life.”
While researching for the book, Timmerman read authors who wrote of the “gift” of different kinds of pain, the “joy” and “blessing” of suffering and one who instructed to “embrace” pain. “I would rather hug a porcupine,” Timmerman wrote. “… I don’t want to embrace my pain, I want to get rid of it.”
Timmerman begins with chapters on denial and the need to address pain and an attempt to define pain in the context of evil. “I begin with the fall and take it through Christian history to the present in which we live with Christ and finally to the resurrection. That’s my template for understanding pain in the world today,” he said.
The book then includes chapters on physical, spiritual and emotional pain, and the pain of mental illness, the prodigal and memories. Throughout, Timmerman uses personal stories of encounters with pain.
“I use stories,” said Timmerman. “Many from my own experience and others from students, who gave me permission to tell their stories.”
Timmerman describes instances of his pain as a result of metabolic syndrome, his young daughter’s pain recovering from surgery, his wife’s battle with postpartum depression, and his family’s grief over the murder of a niece and her child. Other stories of a prodigal daughter and a daughter wronged by her father also illustrate heartrending experiences in the book.
He then offers biblical understanding and practical suggestions for dealing with painful circumstances.
“I’m not a theologian,” he said. “My understanding comes from a lifetime of trying to live a Christian life. The book is applicable to laymen suffering pain; it’s very practical.”
The chapter on mental illness was the biggest challenge for Timmerman: “In the modern church people are reluctant to speak openly about mental illness. You can’t put a Band-Aid on it, and other people can’t see it. People are sometimes confronted with statements like, ‘You’re not praying hard enough.’ It’s not widely accepted.”
He included the chapter on prodigality, which is a source of pain not often addressed, because it came to him as he was writing the book.
“When I set out to write the book, I never imagined writing on that,” he said, “but it just popped up. Prodigal children, husbands and wives—people suffer terribly from it.”
In the end Timmerman offers hope to those who are suffering: “We understand, however, that pain does not have the last word on this earth,” he wrote. “It is not all powerful; only God is. God sets the limits; He sets the boundaries when our pain-riven lives don’t even know if there are boundaries, when we wonder if we can possibly go on.”
