In this movie, Will Smith plays an aging hitman who is being targeted by a clone of his younger self. In this brief preview, Smith's character is trying to understand why he is on the hitlist and why he has a 25-year-old clone trying to kill him.
I was not super-intrigued by the movie until one of Smith's colleagues, in trying to explain the clone, says, "He has all of your gifts without your pain."
I have to admit, I've been chewing on this line for two months now.
"He has all your gifts without your pain."
What kind of person would I be without my pain?
It's easy to look back on life and wonder how things would be different if certain events hadn't taken place. Maybe I'd be able to trust people. Or maybe I would be more confident. Perhaps, without my pain, I would be able to speak my mind and share my insights more freely. Maybe I would finally be able to tell people no - put my foot down when I don't agree. What kind of person would I be without my pain?
Would the "me-without-pain" be someone I would want to be friends with? Work with? Live with?
Is pain a gift or a liability?
I usually think about my past as being a liability - something that has happened that has made me weak or hurt me to such a degree that I'm considered a used good. But what if my liabilities are actually strengths? Not in the religious view of the more beat down I am the greater God's power can be seen in me - but more of an awareness that the more pain I lean into and let shape me, the more I can empathize with others and the more I am transformed to look and act like Jesus.
Jesus knew pain. Jesus knew loss. Jesus knew suffering.
It is this suffering-Jesus, wrapped up in full-humanity, that I can connect with.
The haunting reality is that the resurrected Jesus showed the scars of the cross to his disciples. Jesus told his disciple Thomas to, "Reach here your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand, and put it into My side..." (John 20:27) Could it be Jesus' scars still exist, not to remind us of his pain, but to reassure us of Jesus' ability to understand the pain - an acknowledgment of how his pain has shaped him just like our pain shapes us. Our pain should not become our identity, but it does leave us reminders of the transforming that has gone on in our lives.
Not that any of us would want to voluntarily sign-up for a painful experience, but I have to consider the shaping I have gone through because of my pain, not despite it. I wouldn't trivialize my experiences by calling them "blessings," but I do acknowledge how they have softened my rough edges and given me more compassion and empathy for others.
I remember John Wimber saying never to trust a leader without a limp. Our limp shows our wrestling with our humanity and brings our conscience attention to our fragility and need for a Savior. The 25-year-old clone without a limp, without pain, is not human. It is our pain that bridges our connections with one another and draws us to Jesus. Pain is the equalizer we have all experienced and been shaped by. Does our pain soften us or toughen us? I imagine it would be possible to become cold and calloused to the pain, or we can submit to the pain, letting it wash over us, moving with it like waves in the sea, allowing it to shape us.
Me without my pain? That would be a woman I would not want to meet.
