{"id":671,"date":"2021-04-26T08:09:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T12:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=671"},"modified":"2021-04-26T08:09:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T12:09:46","slug":"pain-and-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/26\/pain-and-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Pain and Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In 1898, a German scientist believed he had discovered the Holy Grail of pain relief.

Heinrich Dreser, who worked as a chemist for Bayer \u2013 the corporation that had created a remarkable new drug called aspirin \u2013 was hoping to synthesize a painkiller that wouldn\u2019t lead to addiction.

The world had long known about morphine, the powerful, naturally-occurring opioid.  But morphine users inevitably discover the grim side effect to its amazing painkilling powers: the near certainty of an ongoing dependence that empties one\u2019s bank account and ruins one\u2019s health. 

Dreser cooked up a synthetic opioid called diacetylmorphine.  He declared it to be five times more powerful than morphine, but completely non-habit-forming.  Dreser recommended it as a remedy for colds, hay fever, tuberculosis, asthma, and a variety of respiratory illnesses. 

The leadership team at Bayer called it a miracle.  That\u2019s actually what they wanted to name the new drug.

Since Dreser preferred to see his creation as \u201cheroic,\u201d it came to be known as heroin. 

Bayer immediately began peddling heroin over the counter.  Sales skyrocketed.  By 1900, Eli Lilly had claimed the American market.  Millions of doses were sold on both sides of the Atlantic.  It was declared safe for pregnant and nursing mothers, and parents were encouraged to use this wonder drug to calm fussy babies.

By 1905, it was clear that something was terribly wrong.  Dreser had patient-tested his drug for only four weeks, not nearly long enough to realize it was one of the most addictive substances on the planet. 

By the 1920s, heroin had vanished from drugstores and was available only from black market or criminal underworld suppliers. 

The quest for an ideal painkiller continued to dominate the 20th<\/sup> century.

By the 1990s, the American Pain Society and several large pharmaceutical companies were committed to the idea that no one should have to feel pain<\/em>.  The APS campaigned for acceptance of the \u201cfifth vital sign.\u201d  There are four classical patient metrics:  body temperature, pulse, respiration rate, and blood pressure.  Each can be objectively measured.  Shouldn\u2019t we add pain as the fifth assessment of patient wellbeing? 

But as Harry Wiland points out in his book Do No Harm<\/em>, pain is highly subjective.  Seemingly identical injuries can produce widely varying responses.

Our experience of pain can be impacted by a variety of emotional factors, including sadness, depression, worry, fear, and childhood trauma.  How can such circumstances ever be quantified?

Pain control advocates recommended that healthcare providers regularly ask their patients to describe their pain experience, representing their level of pain on a visual scale \u2013 from a smiley face (1) to a weepy face (10).  Wiland suggests that physician guilt began to play a subtle part.  Since no one likes intense pain, and the medical community has drugs that can reduce it, shouldn\u2019t we make such products widely available?

We\u2019re still coming to terms with the events of the last three decades \u2013 how the medical establishment unwittingly found itself at the epicenter of the public health disaster known as the opioid crisis. 

The runaway distribution of Oxycontin \u2013 which, like heroin a century earlier, was proclaimed to be non-addictive despite massive evidence to the contrary \u2013 has led directly or indirectly to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each of the past few years. 

In 2016, the American Medical Association recommended that pain no longer be called \u201cthe fifth vital sign.\u201d  Some doctors rejoiced, claiming that pain is far too difficult to measure.  Other physicians despaired, asserting that pain management has now been set back by a whole generation. 

The quandary continues.  It\u2019s still widely felt that no one should have to feel pain<\/em>.  After all, we have such fabulous painkillers. 

But we just don\u2019t know how to manage them without causing more pain.  

For as long as scientists and doctors have been seeking the Holy Grail of pain relief, there have been members of the Christian community who think they have the answer.  Are you hurting and sick?  Crippled or broken?  Preachers spotlight verses like Exodus 15:26, where God says to his people, \u201cI am the Lord, who heals you.\u201d  God will take away your pain! 

It\u2019s such a wonderful blanket promise. 

But as the old saying goes, \u201cA text out of context is a pretext.\u201d 

The wider context of any verse of scripture is the entire Bible.  Whenever we\u2019re tempted to place all our hope on a single turn of phrase, the Holy Spirit gently opens our eyes to all 66 books that make up the biblical library.  What we discover is that God\u2019s people routinely suffer pain, hurt, and disappointment.  Followers of Jesus get cancer, ALS, and diabetes.  Sometimes God provides miraculous healings.  Often he does not.  Those who love the Lord grow older and weaker.  And then, in the end, we die. 

So what\u2019s the point of abandoning ourselves to such a God? 

If the medical community is convinced that no one should have to feel pain<\/em>, those who follow Jesus insist on adding two words:  No one should have to feel pain without hope<\/u><\/em>. 

That hope has three components:

First<\/em>, our pain matters to God.  <\/strong>He shared it on the cross.  Jesus knows from experience exactly what it\u2019s like to feel cut off from his Father in heaven:  \u201cMy God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d  (Matthew 27:46)

Second<\/em>, God never wastes pain.  The apostle Paul asserts that \u201csuffering produces endurance, and endurances produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us\u2026\u201d (Romans 5:3-5)  This may not jibe with what well-meaning people have told you in the past, but it\u2019s OK to feel uncomfortable.  It\u2019s OK to have days in which you feel confusion, pain, and uncertainty.  God is never absent from such circumstances.  He is forging our inner worlds.

Third<\/em>, those who trust Christ have been promised an incredible future:  \u201cHe will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.\u201d (Revelation 21:4)

In this broken world, there\u2019s no such thing as a pain-free life.

But we weren\u2019t made for life just in this world.

And the God who became one of us, and whose nerve endings have registered hurts just like ours, has promised never to leave our side. 
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In 1898, a German scientist believed he had discovered the Holy Grail of pain relief. Heinrich Dreser, who worked as a chemist for Bayer \u2013 the corporation that had created a remarkable new drug called aspirin \u2013 was hoping to synthesize a painkiller that wouldn\u2019t lead to addiction. The world had long known about morphine, the powerful, naturally-occurring opioid.  But… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[220,112],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pain","tag-suffering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions\/673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}