Hans Hess, founder of Elevation Burger, shares his opinion on suffering in business and in life.

Transcript:

Grappling with suffering, whether it’s just in your relationships or in business, part of what makes it difficult is that we don’t have a sense of its telos, of its end, of the goal of it.

Now we know from the example of Christ there is major benefits ultimately to suffering. But it’s really hard in your day to day to connect those dots.

CS Lewis was the one who said that if you knew what God knew about your circumstances right now, you would make the same decision for you that he’s making for you. I’m paraphrasing. But the point is that if you had perfect knowledge, you wouldn’t look at your current circumstances as being something to avoid, but rather something to embrace.

When it comes to suffering, we tend to want to avoid it.

The point of suffering in your life, in my life, is an acknowledgement that I am not God. It’s an acknowledgement that I don’t have all the information. By embracing suffering, you acknowledge that there are things you don’t see that are critically important to your survival.

If you take that approach to suffering, it doesn’t make the pain less. It doesn’t make it so that you have some unrealistic, “Oh, I’m so happy to be suffering!” That doesn’t happen.

But it puts suffering in its place. It puts it in a place where your attitude about it changes, and then you welcome suffering on some level. It’s never going to feel exactly right. But you’re going to welcome it on some level as an instrument that God’s using to transform you and make you more like his son.

Watch the full film Elevation from the Faith & Co. film series from Seattle Pacific University.

This video serves as an illustration to the TOW Bible Commentary article Job's Complaints Take on Special Significance for Our Work (Job 24).