Photo by Jeisson Sanabria on Unsplash
A transcript of my childhood would read like a season of Leave it to Beaver. I walked around with a pearl-handled cap-gun on my hip. My big black dog thought I was the boss. Summers at the lake were interrupted only by sports camps. But, into every life a little rain must fall.
Not halfway through high school I began to learn the meaning of loss, suffering, and grief. So many wheels came off that I had little choice but to wrestle with big, tough questions. It led to the very work I have been doing for decades.
Back then, when I started to take faith seriously, it was obvious to my friends—and not in a good way. I wasn’t preachy. I wasn’t intrusive. I simply stepped back from the carousel of indulgence that kept spinning but never led anywhere.
Some friends dismissed faith as a weighted blanket for life’s hard moments. But that’s not been my experience. Christianity has never made me comfortably numb. Quite the opposite: it jolted me awake. It awakened me to my own contradictions. It brought up questions I’d rather avoid. It exposed the counterfeit satisfactions of a broken world.
Faith doesn’t roll you in bubble-wrap; it’s an avenue to self-awareness. It means refusing easy answers, being honest about suffering, and learning to distinguish hope from wishful thinking. It’s a riskier route. You wrestle with meaning rather than ignoring it. You confront pain rather than disguising it. You face the self-centeredness that has been making you shrink.
The cold hard “here it is”
As a pastor, I’m exposed to a lot of life, often right at the breaking points. Unlike in the movies, there’s no professional distance. It’s shoulder to shoulder at a graveside, where the red clay of Georgia is freshly turned. In those moments, folded into a family’s loss, spiritual sprinkles or formal incantations won’t cut it. It’s a great gift to a family to name the unique grief of the moment.
That is where faith lives. Not in clichés. Not in denial. Faith deals with the same human limitations everyone must face. But that’s also where faith can ferment.
Christianity invites us into the inherited wisdom of the ages. It’s the same way a poet draws on the formal patterns of language. It’s like a musician finding inspiration in the ancient music of their Irish roots. There’s a deep reservoir on offer in the midst of suffering.
Regularly I see people without faith trying to make sense of the senseless. They borrow fragments without the deeper commitments that have steadied humanity across generations. But even those traditions can fall short. So let’s name both the love and the limits of our attempts to explain.
Here are four perspectives that can help but also can be pushed too far–
1) That which does not kill you…
This is the gym-membership version of pain: no cross, no crown; no grind, no growth. Sometimes it’s true. Pressure can deepen patience. Loss can widen compassion. Scripture itself says endurance produces character. That which does not kill you can make you stronger.
But as any pastor, counselor, or honest friend knows, suffering might also embitter. Wounds can fester. To treat agony as a treadmill for character sounds like cold hard truth to a shivering soul. Partial truth shouldn’t be bandied about as a multitool for every kind of suffering.
Not every blow is a lesson plan.
2) It’s part of a bigger picture
You’ve heard the old yarn about the tangles under a tapestry? The view from up above makes sense of those snarls? I’ve heard people use that image to rush someone past grief. It’s like they’re saying, “There’s a reason for everything, so take two metaphors and call me in the morning.”
Comfort found in the bigger picture plays much better for you during someone else’s crisis. It’s a valid point, but here is where it falls short of a full answer. God as the lover of our souls does not treat people as means to an end. We are not cogs in His big wheel of fortune. Love does not treat one’s beloved as an interchangeable part in the engine of ultimate purpose.
Providence can weave evil toward good. But let’s not suggest God creates the tangles.
3) Love requires freedom
The issue of freedom is something I point out quite a lot. But again, it does not explain everything. The argument begins with the necessity of making creatures with real choices and consequences. Otherwise, our Creator is only programming robots or talking to Himself with sock puppets. Open the door to freedom and you open the door to harm.
It explains a lot of what hurts most: abuse, violence, indifference. We can’t blame God for every nightmare we freely create. But when chaos multiplies we wonder– “Isn’t there an an easier way?”
Free will is part of the picture, but not the entire frame.
4) Creation is broken
The world is not as God intended. This fits what we see: a creation is both glorious and groaning. Beauty and brutality live under the same roof.
But why would people break creation by falling within it? Why were the consequences so sweeping? Naming the fracture helps; it doesn’t fix the foundation.
From arguments to a story
Each of these four has its place. That’s why they keep coming up. But when grief is thick, slogans sound thin. Scripture does not really offer logic in the face of suffering. It invites lament, protest, and groans too deep for words (Rom. 8:26). Before we speak about suffering, we must learn to stand with sufferers.
Usually the best response is not an answer but a presence.
Christianity doesn’t ultimately offer a clinching argument for suffering. It gives a story of a suffering God who gets it when we suffer. Job, suffered almost as much as anyone in history. Chesterton point out that at one point he only had mystery to comfort him. But he was comforted.
“Jesus did not bear humanity’s burden so that we would not suffer, but so when we suffer, we might become like HIm.“
Great post! Thank you 🙂
Loved this, Tim. So honest and sincere, as well as very helpful!