Originally published in 1993 and republished in 1997, The Gift of Pain: Why We Hurt and What We Can Do About It by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey was on my to-read list for a few years before something last year (I think it was a blog post I read) highlighted it on my radar again. I put it on my Christmas list, and thanks to my roommate, it was one of the books I unwrapped Christmas afternoon.
It wasn’t long before I started reading, and it didn’t take me long to finish. While I looked forward to learning from this book, I didn’t expect to be so engrossed in Brand’s biographical stories or challenged by his deep reflections about pain (not to mention caught up in the clear, descriptive writing style that brings every scene and idea to life).
First published in 1993 by Zondervan, The Gift of Pain is divided into three sections. The first section, “My Path into Medicine,” introduces us to Paul Brand as a child growing up on the mission field in India, where he gained exposure to a variety of maladies among the people (specifically witnessing the horrors of the disease known as leprosy, modernly called Hansen’s Disease), and then as a young main training for his own career in medicine in England during World War II. (If you’re easily squeamish, there are some descriptions you’ll want to pass over.)
The second section, “A Career in Pain,” follows Dr. Brand back to India, where he established a career as a physician studying and treating leprosy. His unique approaches and tests gave him the opportunity to understand more about the disease than any other doctor, and he became a world-renowned expert on leprosy. Namely, he discovered that leprosy itself doesn’t devour flesh and bone but rather attacks and deadens nerves (eliminates pain), meaning the deformities commonly associated with leprosy aren’t a result of the disease itself but rather result from injuries that go untended (or happen in the first place) because of the lack of pain.
In the third section, “Learning to Befriend Pain,” Dr. Brand provides several chapters of reflection—physiological, psychological, and spiritual—on what pain is, where it comes from, what it does, and how to respond to it. Gained from decades of medical practice treating leprosy patients, these insights run radically counter-culture to the modern West’s worship of comfort and offer an uncommon but powerful mindset toward pain.
While I loved learning about Dr. Brand’s journey into medicine, the miraculous intricacies of the human body, the culture and people of India, and one doctor’s enormous contributions to the medical field, most of my underlines, stars, and margin notes are found in the last section of the book.
I’d love to share some of my takeaways from The Gift of Pain in the hopes that they can encourage you—and inspire you to get and read your own copy.
1. Pain is a blessing
You may not always feel like it. I get it. But imagine life without pain. Without the sensors that tell you something is wrong. Without the most advanced communication system (that man can’t come close to replicating) that keeps you from danger and, ultimately, saves your life.
Dr. Brand demonstrates the power of pain (and the gift it is) in his descriptions of leprosy patient after leprosy patient who faced life-altering and even life-threatening injuries that could have been avoided with functional pain sensors.
He writes,
The very unpleasantness of pain, the part we hate, is what makes it so effective at protecting us.
p. 191
God gave us pain for a reason. Pain protects us. Pain keeps us safe from outside injury and internal damage. Pain keeps us alive.
2. Pain is not a problem
When we feel pain, the first thing we want to do is either remove ourselves or remove the source of pain. In other words, we don’t want to feel pain.
That’s understandable, based on why God gave us pain in the first place.
Yet what astounded me from The Gift of Pain was the portrait of another culture that doesn’t shrink from pain.
I can’t put it better than Dr. Brand’s own words:
On my travels I have observed an ironic law of reversal at work: as a society gains the ability to limit suffering, it loses the ability to cope with what suffering remains. (It is the philosophers, theologians, and writers of the affluent West, not the Third World, who worry obsessively about ‘the problem of pain,’ and point an accusing finger at God.) . . .
The average Indian villager knows suffering well, expects it, and accepts it as an unavoidable challenge of life. In a remarkable way the people of India have learned to control pain at the level of the mind and spirit, and have developed endurance that we in the West find hard to understand. Westerners, in contrast, tend to view suffering as an injustice or failure, an infringement on their guaranteed right to happiness.
~pp. 187-88
This is where the idea of pain (and suffering in general) crosses from the physical realm of medicine to the spiritual realm of theology.
3. Pain is part of life
Rather than run from pain or smother pain, Dr. Brand suggests we befriend pain: we learn how to strengthen ourselves for it, through it, and from it.
In Chapter 15, “Weaving the Parachute,” he lists five ways to prepare for pain that, in the moment, also serve to lessen pain:
- gratitude
- listening to your body
- activity
- self-mastery
- community
In his discussion of self-mastery, he writes of spiritual disciplines and the physical as well as spiritual fruits they bear in our lives and bodies:
In modern times we have turned away from such practices, so that spiritual disciplines are often regarded as quaint and burdensome. But I have found that disciplines of the spirit can have an extraordinary effect on the body, and especially on pain. . . . It did not surprise me at all to learn recently from a medical researcher that people who have strong religious faith have a lower incidence of heart attack, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and hypertension than those who do not.
~pp. 235-36
Conversely, in Chapter 17, “Intensifiers of Pain,” Dr. Brand also lists five things that increase pain:
- fear
- anger
- guilt
- loneliness
- helplessness
We should avoid these intensifiers if possible and take whatever steps may be needed–physical or spiritual–to rectify these emotions and situations.
In between these two chapters, in Chapter 16, “Managing Pain,” he includes a significant point that won a star in the margin from my pencil:
“One specialist at a chronic pain center told me that many patients want to wait until the pain subsides before they resume normal functioning. But he has learned that coping with chronic pain depends on a patient’s willingness to exercise and increase productive activity despite the feeling of pain. Chronic pain management succeeds when the patient accepts the possibility of living a useful life in the presence of pain.”
~p. 254, bold emphasis mine
The reason I share this quote in particular is because it echoes a principle that is foundational to understanding the Christian life: it can be hard and good at the same time.
Rather than expect a perfect, easy life from God, we should accept the trials He delivers to us (and delivers us through) as part of His sovereign, good plan of sanctification and redemption.
Finally, Dr. Brand concludes his discussion in Chapter 18, “Pleasure and Pain,” with the idea that pain and pleasure are not opposites but twins.
It is a great irony, he suggests, that the more we eliminate pain, the more we take away true pleasure.
Ever elusive, [happiness] appears at unexpected moments, as a by-product rather than a product.
p. 291
Without going deep into Scripture or theology, Dr. Brand points to simple examples and experience (more from cultures of the East than the West) to demonstrate that contentment is an inner state cultivated by the individual, not a condition created by circumstances.
He quotes the insightful words of M. Scott Peck:
Simply seek happiness, and you are not likely to find it. Seek to create and love without regard to your happiness, and you will likely be happy much of the time. Seeking joy in and of itself will not bring it to you.
~p. 302
When we eliminate pain, discomfort, hardship, and strain, we remove one of the key ingredients that make up that sweet elixir called pleasure.
In other words, without pain there is no pleasure.
There’s so much more I could praise about this book, with plenty more ideas I would love to discuss: the role of the mind in the creation and perception of pain, the importance of human community, the power of Christian compassion, the remarkable testimony and legacy of Dr. Brand and others, additional spiritual principles and applications . . .
But I’ll leave the rest behind the closed covers that I hope you’ll open for yourself. These pages brim with perspective that you’ll find at the very least thought-provoking, if not life-changing, as you’re challenged to consider pain not a curse but a blessing.
This book has heightened exponentially my appreciation for the human body (no wonder it was the crown of God’s creation), men like Dr. Brand, writers like Philip Yancey, and gifts that come in uncommon, unsightly, and sometimes unpleasant packaging—gifts like pain.
Melissa J. Troutman 