Paul Brand

We seek pleasure; we avoid pain. Our gravitation toward pleasure and avoidance of pain is universal to human experience. We run from pain and avoid it at all costs. We self-medicate at the slightest hint of discomfort. Here’s a counter-intuitive thought: pain could be God’s way of telling us that something is wrong.
Paul Brand (1914-2003) was born to missionary parents in India. His parents welcomed everyone into their home—everyone, with one exception. Paul recalled as a seven-year-old that his father received a man who came for help yet did not allow him to enter the home or be near his children. It was the first time Paul could remember his father wearing surgical gloves. He carefully attended to the man’s wounds and sent him on his way. Paul learned later the man had leprosy, “the creeping death” to people living in India’s hill country. Paul and his wife Margaret became hand surgeons and returned to India as medical missionaries. While working in a hospital, Paul had a flashback of the man with leprosy as he listened to an expert express confusion as to why the bacterial infection called Hansen’s disease (leprosy) resulted in deformity to the hands and feet. Paul joined the quest to find the answer. He experienced opposition to his research in the early days. Leprosy was so feared that many hospitals refused to admit leprosy patients. After long hours and careful research, Paul arrived at a breakthrough moment. Leprosy attacks nerve cells and the resulting loss of feeling causes damage to the extremities. It’s not the disease but the loss of ability to feel pain that results in the deformities. In his book, The Gift of Pain, Paul wrote, “God designed the human body so that it is able to survive because of pain.” Pain is God’s way of alerting us to danger. “If there is only one gift I could give my leprosy patients, it would be the gift of pain,” Paul said. While we resist unpleasant sensations of pain, we are grateful for what it accomplishes. Paul Brand said it best, “Thank God for pain.”