By Tim Keller
My Personal Takeaways →Tim Keller confronts suffering with theological depth and pastoral realism: pain is not rare disruption but a central feature of life in a fallen world. The book explains why suffering destabilizes identity, how different worldviews handle loss, and how the Christian story offers both honest lament and durable hope.
Keller does not minimize grief; he teaches how to endure it through prayer, community, meaning, and a deeper union with God that often forms only in affliction. Read this if you want categories for sorrow that are intellectually credible and spiritually grounding. Implement it by preparing before crisis, practicing truthful prayer in hardship, receiving support from the church, and reframing trials as places where character, compassion, and trust in God can mature.
By Timothy Keller
INTRODUCTION: THE RUMBLE OF PANIC BENEATH EVERYTHING
I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and be glad. O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together! (Psalm 34:1–3)
When enormous numbers of deaths happen in one massive event—such as the 1970 Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, or the 2010 Haiti earthquake—each of which killed 300,000 or more at once—it makes headlines around the world and everyone reels from the devastation. But statistics are misleading. Such historic disasters do not really change the suffering rate. Tens of thousands of people die every day in unexpected tragedies, and hundreds of thousands around them are crushed by grief and shock. The majority of them trigger no headlines because pain and misery is the norm in this world.
Author Ernest Becker spoke about the danger of denying the misery of life and the randomness of suffering. When we hear of a tragedy, there is a deep-seated psychological defense mechanism that goes to work. We think to ourselves that such things happen to other people, to poor people, or to people who do not take precautions.
The loss of loved ones, debilitating and fatal illnesses, personal betrayals, financial reversals, and moral failures—all of these will eventually come upon you if you live out a normal life span. No one is immune.
Therefore, no matter what precautions we take, no matter how well we have put together a good life, no matter how hard we have worked to be healthy, wealthy, comfortable with friends and family, and successful with our career—something will inevitably ruin it.
No amount of money, power, and planning can prevent bereavement, dire illness, relationship betrayal, financial disaster, or a host of other troubles from entering your life. Human life is fatally fragile and subject to forces beyond our power to manage. Life is tragic.
As I took up life as a minister, I tried to understand why so many people resisted and rejected God. I soon realized that perhaps the main reason was affliction and suffering. How could a good God, a just God, a loving God, allow such misery, depravity, pain, and anguish? Doubts in the mind can grow along with pain in the heart.
When pain and suffering come upon us, we finally see not only that we are not in control of our lives but that we never were.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” Believers understand many doctrinal truths in the mind, but those truths seldom make the journey down into the heart except through disappointment, failure, and loss. As a man who seemed about to lose both his career and his family once said to me, “I always knew, in principle, that ‘Jesus is all you need’ to get through. But you don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”
Finally, as I grew in my understanding of the Bible itself, I came to see that the reality of suffering was one of its main themes. The book of Genesis begins with an account of how evil and death came into the world. The book of Exodus recounts Israel’s forty years in the wilderness, a time of intense testing and trial. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament is largely dedicated to the problem of suffering. The book of Psalms provides a prayer for every possible situation in life, and so it is striking how filled it is with cries of pain and with blunt questions to God about the seeming randomness and injustice of suffering.
I came to realize that at the heart of why people disbelieve and believe in God, of why people decline and grow in character, of how God becomes less real and more real to us—is suffering.
We came to see that the great theme of the Bible itself is how God brings fullness of joy not just despite but through suffering, just as Jesus saved us not in spite of but because of what he endured on the cross. And so there is a peculiar, rich, and poignant joy that seems to come to us only through and in suffering.
The experience of pain leads almost inevitably to “big questions” about God and the nature of things that cannot be ignored.
The Bible calls trials and troubles “walking through fire” (Isaiah 43:2) or a “fiery ordeal” (1 Peter 4:12). But it also likens suffering to a fiery furnace (1 Peter 1:6–7). The biblical understanding of a furnace is more what we would call a “forge.” Anything with that degree of heat is, of course, a very dangerous and powerful thing. However, if used properly, it does not destroy. Things put into the furnace properly can be shaped, refined, purified, and even beautified. This is a remarkable view of suffering, that if faced and endured with faith, it can in the end only make us better, stronger, and more filled with greatness and joy. Suffering, then, actually can use evil against itself. It can thwart the destructive purposes of evil and bring light and life out of darkness and death.
But how do we actually walk with God in such times? How do we orient ourselves toward him so that suffering changes us for the better rather than for the worse? Each chapter is based on one main strategy for connecting with God in the furnace of pain and suffering.
In perhaps the most vivid depiction of suffering in the Bible, in the third chapter of the book of Daniel, three faithful men are thrown into a furnace that is supposed to kill them. But a mysterious figure appears beside them. The astonished observers discern not three but four persons in the furnace, and one who appears to be “the son of the gods.” And so they walk through the furnace of suffering and are not consumed.
Dr. Paul Brand, a pioneering orthopedic surgeon in the treatment of leprosy patients, spent the first part of his medical career in India and the last part of his career in the United States. He wrote: “In the United States, I encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all costs. Patients lived at a greater comfort level than any I had previously treated, but they seemed far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it.”
In the secular view, this material world is all there is. And so the meaning of life is to have the freedom to choose the life that makes you most happy. However, in that view of things, suffering can have no meaningful part. It is a complete interruption of your life story.
You must not waste your sorrows.
Each one sees evil as having some purpose as a punishment, or a test, or an opportunity.
If patiently, wisely, and heroically faced, suffering can actually accelerate the journey to our desired destination. It can be an important chapter in our life story and crucial stage in achieving what we most want in life. But in the strictly secular view, suffering cannot be a good chapter in your life story—only an interruption of it. It can’t take you home; it can only keep you from the things you most want in life. In short, in the secular view, suffering always wins.
The things that need to be done are forms of internal “soul work”—learning patience, wisdom, and faithfulness.
“For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For modernity, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.”
For people of faith, “God is in control, and God’s love will see the world through. Whereas for secular people, it’s all up to us. We’re alone here. That’s why I think that, for secular people, there can be an additional layer of urgency and despair.”
In the Garden of Gethsemane, he said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow even to the point of death” (Mark 14:34) and his anguish was such that his bloody sweat fell to the ground as he prayed (Luke 22:44). He was the opposite of tranquility. He did not detach his heart from the good things of life to achieve inner calm but instead said to his Father, “Not my will but thine be done” (Mark 14:36).
The book of Job is of course the first place this is clearly stated, when God condemns Job’s friends for their insistence that Job’s pain and suffering had to be caused by a life of moral inferiority. We see this most of all in Jesus. If anyone ever deserved a good life on the basis of character and behavior, Jesus did, but he did not get it.
Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.
While other world-views lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy.
When I needed God’s comfort, the image in my head was me clinging to Jesus and him hugging me. My image now is me just completely collapsed, and him carrying me—and it is awesome.
What do we desire above everything else? It is to be understood and loved rather than be alone, and therefore above all “not to die and not to have our loved ones die on us.”
To live well and freely, capable of joy and love, we must learn how to conquer the inevitable terrible fear of these irreversible losses.
Suffering takes away the loves, joys, and comforts that we rely on to give life meaning. How can we maintain our poise, or even our peace and joy, when that happens? The answer is that we can do that only if we locate our meaning in things that can’t be touched by death. But that means locating the answers to the questions “What is human life for?” and “What should I be spending my time doing here?” in things that suffering cannot destroy.
Early Christian speakers and writers not only argued vigorously that Christianity’s teaching made more sense of suffering, they insisted that the actual lives of Christians proved it. Cyprian recounted how, during the terrible plagues, Christians did not abandon sick loved ones nor flee the cities, as most of the pagan residents did. Instead they stayed to tend the sick and faced their death with calmness.
Not all weeping proceeds from unbelief or weakness. The Lord also wept. He wept for one not related to Him.”
For Christians, suffering was not to be dealt with primarily through the control and suppression of negative emotions with the use of reason or willpower. Ultimate reality was known not primarily through reason and contemplation but through relationship. Salvation was through humility, faith, and love rather than reason and control of emotions. And therefore, Christians don’t face adversity by stoically decreasing our love for the people and things of this world so much as by increasing our love and joy in God.
Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.
Even religions that teach heavenly bliss for the eternal soul can offer only a consolation for the life we lost, but Christianity offers a restoration of life. We get our bodies back—indeed, we get the bodies we never had but wished we had, and one beyond our greatest imaginings. We get our lives back—indeed, we get the life we longed for but never had. It’s all because the Christian hope is not just an ethereal disembodied existence but one in which the soul and the body are finally perfectly integrated, one in which we dance, sing, hug, work, and play. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection is, then, a reversal of death’s seeming irreversibility.
Christianity would seem to be the only version of salvation that enables us to not only transcend the fear of death, but also to beat death itself.
We should not rail against cruel, blind fate but bear our suffering patiently, like Job.
Suffering in the world is of many different kinds and serves “a number of purposes in the divine economy.” Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given “not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones” (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom.
Suffering dispels the illusion that we have the strength and competence to rule our own lives and save ourselves. People “become nothing through suffering” so that they can be filled with God and his grace.
Those looking at Jesus as he was dying on the cross had no idea that they were looking at the greatest act of salvation in history. Could the observers of the crucifixion “clearly perceive” the ways of God? No—even though they were looking right at a wonder of grace. They saw only darkness and pain, and the categories of human reason are sure God cannot be working in and through that.
Atheist writer Susan Jacoby wrote in The New York Times that “when I see homeless people shivering in the wake of a deadly storm, when the news media bring me almost obscenely close to the raw grief of bereft parents, I do not have to ask, as all people of faith must, why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen.” She is right, of course, at one level. If you don’t believe in God at all, you don’t struggle with the question of why life is so unjust. It just is—deal with it. But you also have none of the powerful comforts and joys that Christian belief can give you, either.
Job 1:21, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord”
1 Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
And the idea that in His resurrection, Jesus’ scars became His glory is empowering. God will use these scars for His glory, as they become our glory. Indeed, the end hasn’t been written.
You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived three years in the Nazi death camps, observed how some of his fellow prisoners were able to endure the horror and pass through it while others could not. The difference came down to what Frankl called meaning.
The problem is that contemporary people think life is all about finding happiness. We decide what conditions will make us happy and then we work to bring those conditions about. To live for happiness means that you are trying to get something out of life. But when suffering comes along, it takes the conditions for happiness away, and so suffering destroys all your reason to keep living. But to “live for meaning” means not that you try to get something out of life but rather that life expects something from us. In other words, you have meaning only when there is something in life more important than your own personal freedom and happiness, something for which you are glad to sacrifice your happiness.
Frankl argued that this increased faith was not only natural, but it was one of the only ways to go on in an environment that stripped you of all earthly sources of significance, security, and purpose.
As Victor Frankl recognized in the death camps, people who are their own legislators of morality and meaning have nothing to die for, and therefore nothing to live for when life takes away their freedom.
It is how we suffer that comprises one of the main ways we become great and Christ-like, holy and happy, and a crucial way we show the world the love and glory of our Savior.
One of the main teachings of the Bible is that almost no one grows into greatness or finds God without suffering, without pain coming into our lives like smelling salts to wake us up to all sorts of facts about life and our own hearts to which we were blind.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
Each time I truly connect with another in their pain, I am thankful for the gift of my pain. It reminds me of our vulnerability and dependence.
The “problem of evil” is well known. If you believe in a God who is all-powerful and sovereign over the world and at the same time is also perfectly good and just, then the existence of evil and suffering poses a problem.
Is he willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing?
Many insist that this problem is the single strongest objection to the existence of God in general and the plausibility of Christianity in particular.
In its simplest form, it might be stated like this: God created us not to be robots or animals of instinct but free, rational agents with the ability to choose and therefore to love. But if God was to make us able to choose the good freely, then he had to make us capable of also choosing evil. So our free will can be abused and that is the reason for evil.
“The man who wants to be loved does not desire the enslavement of the beloved. If the beloved is transformed into an automaton, the lover finds himself alone.”
Augustine, who was later followed by Thomas Aquinas and others, taught that evil is, rather, the condition that results when some good thing that God made is twisted or corrupted from its original design or purpose.
The theodicy assumes that if God gives us the gift of free will, then he cannot control the outcomes of its usage. But the Bible shows in many places that God can sovereignly direct our choices in history without violating our freedom and responsibility for our actions. For example, Jesus’ crucifixion was clearly foreordained and destined to happen, and yet all the people who, by God’s plan, brought it about were still making their choices freely and thus were responsible for what they did (Acts 2:23). This indicates that it is possible to be free and nevertheless to have our course directed by God—at the same time, compatibly.
What if you saw a child walking into the path of an oncoming car? Would you say: “I can’t violate her freedom of choice! She will have to take the consequences.”? Of course not. You would not consider her freedom of choice more important than saving her life. You would violate her freedom of will as fast as you could possibly do it. You would snatch her out of the path of the car and teach her how to keep that from happening again. Why couldn’t God have done that with us?
And we can add to these warnings the book of Job itself. Surely one of the messages, as we will see, is that it is both futile and inappropriate to assume that any human mind could comprehend all the reasons God might have for any instance of pain and sorrow, let alone for all evil. It may be that the Bible itself warns us not to try to construct these theories.
The argument is: A truly good God would not want evil to exist; an all-powerful God would not allow evil to exist. Evil exists. Therefore, a God who is both good and powerful cannot exist. But the believer in God could respond by pointing out that the argument against God from evil has a hidden premise, namely that God does not have any good reasons to allow evil to exist.
To show the skeptic that his premise is untrue, the believer could point out that we ourselves often allow suffering in someone’s life in order to bring about some greater good. Doctors often inflict painful procedures and treatments on people, all for the purpose of the greater good of better health and longer life. Parents who punish bad behavior with the loss of toys or privileges are causing pain (especially from the child’s perspective), but the alternative is that the child will grow into an adult with no self-control and would therefore experience far greater suffering. And most people will grant some truth to the saying attributed to Nietzsche: “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Many can point to adversity in their lives that, however excruciating, taught them lessons that helped them avoid greater suffering later. So the principle of allowing pain for the good reason of bringing about a greater happiness is valid and one we understand and use ourselves. That means there is no automatic inconsistency between God and the existence of evil and suffering.
“If God is infinitely knowledgeable—why couldn’t he have morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil that you can’t think of?”
The belief, that because we cannot think of something, God cannot think of it either, is more than a fallacy. It is a mark of great pride and faith in one’s own mind.
Now, if even the effects of a butterfly’s flight or the roll of a ball down a hill are too complex to calculate, how much less could any human being look at the tragic, seemingly “senseless” death of a young person and have any idea of what the effects in history will be? If an all-powerful and all-wise God were directing all of history with its infinite number of interactive events toward good ends, it would be folly to think we could look at any particular occurrence and understand a millionth of what it will bring about.
Problems don’t disappear and life continues, but He replaces the sting of those heartaches with hope, which has been an amazing realization. I have come to believe that life will not always be as it is now. I find even more comfort in being able to stop focusing on all the heartache, and focus on the One who will someday take heartache away completely and forever.
The evil we see today was not part of God’s original design. It was not God’s intent for human life. That means that ultimately, even a peaceful death at the age of ninety years old is not the way things were meant to be. Those of us who sense the “wrongness” of death—in any form—are correct. The “rage at the dying of the light” is our intuition that we were not meant for mortality, for the loss of love, or for the triumph of darkness. In order to help people face death and grief we often tell people that death is a perfectly natural part of life. But that asks them to repress a very right and profound human intuition—that we were not meant to simply go to dust, and that love was meant to last.
And so the biblical doctrine of Judgment Day, far from being a gloomy idea, enables us to live with both hope and grace. If we accept it, we get hope and incentive to work for justice. For no matter how little success we may have now, we know that justice will be established—fully and perfectly. All wrongs—what we have called moral evil—will be redressed. But it also enables us to be gracious, to forgive, and to refrain from vengefulness and violence. Why? If we are not sure that there will be a final judgment, then when we are wronged, we will feel an almost irresistible compulsion to take up the sword and smite the wrongdoers. But if we know that no one will get away with anything, and that all wrongs will be ultimately redressed, then we can live in peace. The doctrine of Judgment Day warns us that we have neither the knowledge to know exactly what people deserve, nor the right to mete out punishment when we are sinners ourselves.
At some point, for all eternity, there will be no more unmerited suffering: this present darkness, “the age of evil,” will eventually be remembered as a brief flicker at the beginning of human history. Every evil done by the wicked to the innocent will have been avenged, and every tear will have been wiped away.
The resurrection of the body means that we do not merely receive a consolation for the life we have lost but a restoration of it. We not only get the bodies and lives we had but the bodies and lives we wished for but had never before received.
Isn’t it possible that the eventual glory and joy we will know will be infinitely greater than it would have been had there been no evil? What if that future world will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost? If such is the case, that would truly mean the utter defeat of evil. Evil would not just be an obstacle to our beauty and bliss, but it will have only made it better. Evil would have accomplished the very opposite of what it intended.
This is an effort to convey the same idea that J. R. R. Tolkien does when he envisions a time in which “everything sad is going to come untrue.”
In the Old Testament book of Job, we have the most difficult and severe truth about suffering—namely, that in the end we cannot question God. Job calls on God to explain why such sorrows and griefs have come upon him. But in response, “the questioner is radically challenged to his right to pose the question in the first place.” God confronts Job with his own finitude, his inability to understand God’s counsels and purposes even if they were revealed, and his status as a sinner in no position to demand a comfortable life.
He was God yet he suffered. He experienced weakness, a life filled “with fervent cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). He knew firsthand rejection and betrayal, poverty and abuse, disappointment and despair, bereavement, torture, and death. And so he is “able to empathize with our weaknesses” for he “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). On the cross, he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and a pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours.
Yes, we do not know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason is not. It cannot be that he does not love us. It cannot be that he does not care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself. He understands us, he has been there, and he assures us that he has a plan to eventually wipe away every tear. Someone might say, “But that’s only half an answer to the question ‘Why?’” Yes, but it is the half we need.
If God actually provided an explanation of all the reasons why he allows things to happen as they do, it would be too much for our finite brains. Think of little children and their relationship to their parents. Three-year-olds cannot understand most of why their parents allow and disallow what they do. But though they aren’t capable of comprehending their parents’ reasons, they are capable of knowing their parents’ love and therefore are capable of trusting them and living securely. That is what they really need.
Now do you see what would have happened at Jesus’ first coming to earth if he’d come with a sword in his hand and a power to destroy all sources of suffering and evil? It would have meant there would be no human beings left. If you don’t think that is fair, I would argue that you don’t know your own capabilities, your own heart. But Jesus did not come to earth the first time to bring justice but rather to bear it. He came not with a sword in his hands but with nails through his hands. Christian teaching for centuries has been this: Jesus died on the cross in our place, taking the punishment our sins deserve, so that someday he can return to earth to end evil without destroying us all.
After Adam and Eve disobey their Creator, God describes what the fallen world will look like. It is virtually a catalogue of all forms of suffering—including spiritual alienation, inner psychological pain, social and interpersonal conflict and cruelty, natural disasters, disease, and death (Genesis 3:17). All this natural and moral evil is understood as stemming from the foundational rupture of our relationship with God. And suffering begins when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:23–24). Their exile is the original infliction of suffering as judgment.
While the human race as a whole indeed deserves the broken world it inhabits, nevertheless evil is not distributed in a proportionate, fair way. Bad people do not have worse lives than good people. And, of course, the best people often have terrible lives. Job is one example, and Jesus—the ultimate “Job,” the only truly, fully innocent sufferer—is another.
The New Testament testifies to the same view of things. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man and takes pains to show his disciples that he was not in that condition because of his sin or that of his parents, but in order to fulfill God’s inscrutable purposes. Thus, suffering people should not automatically be blamed for their condition.
Why did the sight of Lazarus’s tomb and his family’s grief enrage Jesus? In some ways, his anger and tears seem inappropriate. He knows full well that he is about to turn all the grieving and mourning into shouts of wonder and joy—he is about to raise Lazarus from the dead (verses 42–44). So why is he quite literally furious?
The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its “violent tyranny” as Calvin (in verse 38) phrases it. In Mary’s grief, he “contemplates”—still to adopt Calvin’s words (in verse 33)—“the general misery of the whole human race” and burns with rage against the oppressor of men. Inextinguishable fury seizes upon him; his whole being is discomposed and perturbed. It is death that is the object of his wrath, and behind death him who has the power of death, and whom he has come into the world to destroy.
God’s plan works through our choices, not around or despite them. Our choices have consequences, and we are never forced by God to do anything—we always do what we most want to do. God works out his will perfectly through our willing actions.
In Isaiah 10, God calls Assyria “the rod of my anger” (verse 5). He says he is using Assyria to punish Israel for its sins, and yet he nonetheless holds Assyria responsible for what it is doing. “I send him Assyria against a godless nation, Israel,” says God, “but this is not what he intends, this is not what he has in mind, his purpose is to destroy” (verse 6–7). While God uses Assyria as his rod according to his wise and just plan, that nation’s inner motivation is not a passion for justice but merely a cruel and proud desire to dominate others. And so God will judge the instrument of his judgment. Assyria’s actions are part of God’s plan, and yet the Assyrians are held accountable for their free choices. It is a remarkable balance.
In Genesis 50:20, Joseph explains how his brothers’ evil action of selling him into slavery was used by God to do great good. “You intended me harm, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
One of the most fascinating examples of this biblical perspective is found in the account of Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh in Exodus 7–14. Moses continually calls Pharaoh to release the Israelites from bondage and declares that this is the will of God. Over several chapters the text tells us Pharaoh “hardened” his heart and he stubbornly refused to let the people go. This obstinate refusal led to untold misery and death for the Egyptians. But the text is fascinating, because it tells us that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:3; 9:12; 10:1; 11:10; 14:4, 8) almost the same number of times it tells us Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Exodus 8:15, 32; 9:34; 10:3; 13:15). So which is it? Did God do it or did Pharaoh do it? The biblical answer to both is yes.
In the end, the Christian concept of God’s sovereignty is a marvelous, practical principle. No one can claim to know exactly how both of these truths fit together. And yet even in our own ordinary experience, we know something of how to direct people along a path without violating their free will. Good leaders do this in part—why would the infinite God not be able to do it perfectly?
On the other hand, there is an absolute promise that we cannot ultimately mess up our lives. Even our failures and troubles will be used for God’s glory and our benefit.
At the most practical level, we have the crucial assurance that even wickedness and tragedy, which we know was not part of God’s original design, is nonetheless being woven into a wise plan. So the promise of Romans 8, “that all things work together for good,” is an incomparable comfort to believers.
We’ve come to realize that we should not have been striving for stability and comfort but for total dependence on God, from whom we draw strength. This requires a daily effort to give up all to Him.
The gospels show us Jesus experiencing the ordinary pressures, difficulties, and pains of normal human life. He experienced weariness and thirst (John 4:6), distress, grief, and being “troubled in heart” (Mark 3:5; John 11:35; 12:27). His suffering was such that throughout his life he offered up prayers “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7; Luke 22:44). He knew what it was like to be completely misunderstood by his best friends and rejected by his family and hometown (John 7:3–5; Matthew 13:57; Mark 3:21). He was also tempted and assaulted by the devil (Matt 4:2). And amazingly, we are told that Jesus “learned” from what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8).
He was abandoned, denied, and betrayed by all the people he had poured his life into, and on the cross he was forsaken even by his father (Matthew 27:46).
In Acts 9 we have the account of the conversion of St. Paul. As a zealous Pharisee, Saul (later Paul) had been persecuting Christians. When Jesus appears to him on the road to Damascus, he asks him, “Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). Here we see that Jesus so identifies with his people that he shares in their suffering. When they are hurt or in grief, so is he.
“This sin of sins, the murder of the Son, provides the opportunity for love to be carried to its very peak, for there is no greater love than to give one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13).”
So, while Christianity never claims to be able to offer a full explanation of all God’s reasons behind every instance of evil and suffering—it does have a final answer to it. That answer will be given at the end of history and all who hear it and see its fulfillment will find it completely satisfying, infinitely sufficient.
For God has purposed to defeat evil so exhaustively on the cross that all the ravages of evil will someday be undone and we, despite participating in it so deeply, will be saved.
In the middle of many operas there is a crucial aria, a “sad and moving solo” in which the main character turned sorrow into something beautiful. And Greg said: This is my moment to sing the aria. I don’t want to, I don’t want to have this chance, but it’s here now, and what am I going to do about it?
Haidt, James Davies, and other psychologists are arguing that there is a common sense as well as empirical basis for the idea that suffering produces endurance, character, and hope.
According to all branches of Christian theology, the ultimate purpose of life is to glorify God. That means that the first—but perhaps hardest to grasp—purpose for our suffering is the glory of God. The words suffering and glory are linked in a surprising number of biblical passages. Paul says repeatedly that our sufferings prepare for us an eternal glory (Romans 8:17–18; 2 Corinthians 4:17). Peter adds that our sufferings enhance our eventual joy at our future glory (1 Peter 4:13). Then, in Ephesians 3:13, Paul tells his readers that his imprisonment and sufferings are for their glory.
Our sufferings, if handled properly, bring the Lord glory.
That is why later he could write to believers not to be discouraged by his imprisonment (Ephesians 3:13) because his suffering was a way to show people his Savior’s character.
The forgiveness and love shown by the Amish community toward the shooter and his family was the talk of the entire country. The way they handled their suffering had been a powerful testimony to the truth of their faith and to the grace and glory of their God.
When Joni heard that Denise had finally died, she shared her struggle with some of her friends. One of them opened a Bible and turned first to Luke 15:10, which talks about the angels rejoicing in heaven over a repentant sinner. Then she turned to Ephesians 3:10, where it says that the angels are looking at what happens inside the church. If they had thought of it, they also could have gone to the book of Job. There the suffering of Job is watched by a great council of angels and by the devil as well. And suddenly Joni got it.
What if I told you that tomorrow, for one day, there would be a special camera that was going to put everything you said, everything you did, and everything you thought, on television? It would beam it around the world and probably a billion people would see it. Would that make any difference in how you lived tomorrow? I think it would. It would bestow enormous meaning and significance on even the most fleeting thoughts and minor actions. It would be somewhat frightening, of course, because you would need to be on your best behavior. But it would also be thrilling. You might say, “There are a couple of things I have always wanted to tell the world. Now I really can.” It would make an enormous difference. It would make the day incredibly meaningful. But if Christianity is true—this is already happening. Don’t you see that you are already on camera? There is an unimaginable but real spiritual world out there. You are already on the air. Everything you do is done in front of billions of beings. And God sees it, too. As Joni wrote about her friend Denise, “Angels and demons stood amazed as they watched her uncomplaining and patient spirit rising as a sweet smelling savor to God.” No suffering is for nothing.
There is a principle at the heart of the Christian life that is expressed by two famous sayings of Jesus Christ: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). “Whoever finds their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). In the first Jesus is saying, “Happy is the one who seeks not happiness but righteousness.” Happiness is a by-product of wanting something more than happiness—to be rightly related to God and our neighbor. If you seek God as the nonnegotiable good of your life, you will get happiness thrown in. If, however, you aim mainly at personal happiness, you will get neither. The same principle is conveyed in the second saying. If you are willing to lose your life for his sake—if you are willing to set aside personal safety, comfort, and satisfaction in order to obey and follow Jesus—then in the end you will find yourself. You will discover who you really are in Christ and finally come to be at peace. If instead you try to achieve personal comfort and satisfaction without centering your life on God in Christ, you will find that you are left with a fatal lack of self-knowledge and inner emptiness.
Suffering, as we will see, can lead to personal growth, training, and transformation, but we must never see it as primarily a way to improve ourselves. That view could lead us to a form of masochism, an enjoyment of ache,
Instead, we must look at suffering—whatever the proximate causes—as primarily a way to know God better, as an opening for serving, resembling, and drawing near to him as never before.
Average people in Western society have extremely unrealistic ideas of how much control they have over how their lives go. Suffering removes the blinders.
When times are good, how do you know if you love God or just love the things he is giving you or doing for you? You don’t, really. In times of health and prosperity, it is easy to think you have a loving relationship to God. You pray and do your religious duties since it is comforting and seems to be paying off. But it is only in suffering that we can hear God “shouting” a set of questions at us: “Were things all right between us as long as I waited on you hand and foot? Did you get into this relationship for me to serve you or for you to serve me? Were you loving me before, or only loving the things I was giving you?” Suffering reveals the impurities or perhaps the falseness of our faith in God.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
So suffering does not automatically or naturally lead to growth and good outcomes. It must be handled properly or faced patiently and faithfully. But what does that mean? It is time to begin laying out exactly how we are to walk through pain and suffering. We have to be prepared in our mind and heart before suffering strikes so that we are not surprised by suffering.
But, as we have shown, suffering is not just an intellectual issue—“Why is there so much evil and suffering in life?”—but a personal problem—“How will I get through this?” This second question is in a different universe from the first. And therefore, we must prepare not only the mind for suffering but also the heart, and that means developing a consistent, vibrant, theologically deep yet existentially rich prayer life.
As Paul says (in Romans 9:19–21), the creature has no right to haul the Creator into the courtroom of human moral judgments and put him on trial as though he has done something wrong. God has total power and authority over me.
The Bible says a great deal about suffering, but it is one thing to have these things stored in the “warehouse of the mind.” It is quite another to know how to apply them to your own heart, life, and experience in such a way that they produce wisdom, endurance, joy, self-knowledge, courage, and humility. It is one thing to believe in God but it is quite another thing to trust God. It is one thing to have an intellectual explanation for why God allows suffering; it is another thing to actually find a path through suffering so that, instead of becoming more bitter, cynical, despondent, and broken, you become more wise, grounded, humble, strong, and even content.
An old saying goes, “The same sun that melts wax hardens clay,” and so the same traumatic experience can ruin one person and make another person stronger and even happier.
Learn not to assume that every sufferer needed the very same medicine.
One kind of suffering is directly caused by our own failures.
Similarly, when King David’s life fell apart, there was also a specific sin that caused it. And God was sending a specific message through the suffering. David had violated the law of God by having an affair with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, and by arranging to have her husband killed. Then the new young son of David and Bathsheba became sick and died. And David realized that God was saying to him that he had to change his ways or lose his kingship and his life.
Was God “punishing” David and Jonah for their sins? Not exactly. Romans 8:1 says that there is “no condemnation” for a believer. That means, simply, that if Jesus has received our punishment and made payment for our sins, God can not then receive a second payment out of us as well. God does not exact “retribution” from a believer, because of Jesus and because, if he really punished us for our sins, we’d all have been dead long ago. But God often appoints some aspect of the brokenness of the world (caused by sin in general: Genesis 3; Romans 8:18) to come into our lives to wake us up and turn us to him.
It is quite important to distinguish between a “David” experience of suffering and a “Job” type experience.
Psalm 25: “Cleanse me from hidden faults.” In general, it is only troubles and difficulties that can reveal such things to us.
So there is suffering caused by bad behavior. But, then, there is the suffering caused by good and brave behavior.
Paul gives us a nonexhaustive list of what he has gone through as a messenger of God: I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
But mainly, when facing grief Christians must learn to direct their minds and hearts to the various forms of comfort and hope that their faith offers them. Paul directs a group of bereaved believers to not “grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) and “We do not lose heart, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.”
But Job-type suffering requires a process of honest prayer and crying, the hard work of deliberate trust in God, and what St. Augustine called a re-ordering of our loves.
Weil observes that one of the marks of affliction is isolation. A barrier goes up between us and even our closest friends. One reason is that you the sufferer suddenly sense a new gulf between yourself and almost anyone who has not experienced what you are going through.
Why do we so often avoid a person in affliction? It may be as simple as the feeling of incompetence—we don’t know what to say or do. It may also be the sheer fear of being drawn into and drowning in the sufferer’s pain. Others stay away because, like Job’s friends, we need to believe that the afflicted person somehow brought this on or wasn’t wise enough to avoid it. That way we can assure ourselves that it could never happen to us.
A second aspect of affliction we can call implosion. Intense physical pain makes you unavoidably self-absorbed. You cannot think about anyone else or anything else.
“Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent than light in the utter darkness of a cell. During this absence there is nothing to love.” We may know intellectually that someone loves us, or even believe that God loves us, but it doesn’t seem real to our hearts.
A third mark of affliction is a sense of doom, of hopelessness, and of condemnation.
A fourth aspect of affliction is usually anger.
Weil adds a final toxic effect of affliction that often occurs. It is temptation—the temptation toward complicity. Suffering can “little by little, turn the soul into its accomplice, by injecting a poison of inertia into it.” We become complicit with the affliction, comfortable with our discomfort, content with our discontent.
People of different personalities, genders, and cultures process emotions differently. They also have different internal values and commitments. A father, for example, may love his children deeply but identify personally more with his career. His wife may be quite dedicated to her vocation but identify her worth more closely with how her children are faring. And so, if there is a career reversal, the husband may be more “overthrown” and despondent, while if one of their children gets seriously injured, the mother may be more disconsolate than the father. Same trouble, different responses, because there is a different identity structure within the heart.
There is a way of using theology and theological arguments that wounds rather than heals. This is not the fault of theology and theological arguments; it is the fault of the “miserable comforter” who fastens on an inappropriate fragment of truth, or whose timing is off, or whose attitude is condescending, or whose application is insensitive, or whose true theology is couched in such culture-laden clichés that they grate rather than comfort.
“God never promised to give you tomorrow’s grace for today. He only promised today’s grace for today, and that’s all you need” (Matthew 6:34).
There are multiple truths that the Bible teaches about suffering, and these different truths need to be applied in a different order depending on circumstance, stage, and temperament.
“When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me” (Psalm 23:4). As it turns out, there is more than one path in that valley. And the Lord, the perfect Guide, will help you find the best way through.
Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding.”
My focus turns from my pain to His love.
Psalm 119:71: “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.” Psalm 27:4 will now guide my journey till the end. “One thing I ask of my Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to seek Him in His temple.”
As we have observed, one of the main metaphors that the Bible gives us for facing affliction is walking—walking through something difficult, perilous, and potentially fatal. Sometimes it is characterized as walking in darkness. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4; Isaiah 50:10, 59:9; Lamentations 3:2). Another image is that of passing through deep waters. “I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters” (Psalm 69:2; Psalm 69:15; 88:17; 124:4; Job 22:11; Exodus 15:19). There is also the hint of walking carefully on slippery and dangerous mountain paths (Psalm 73:2). What ties all these metaphors together is the insistence that suffering is something that must be walked through. The walking metaphor points to the idea of progress. Many ancients saw adversity as merely something to withstand and endure without flinching, or even feeling, until it goes away. Modern Western people see suffering as something like adverse weather, something you avoid or insulate yourself from until it passes by. The unusual balance of the Christian faith is seen in the metaphor of walking—through darkness, swirling waters, or fire. We are not to lose our footing and just let the suffering have its way with us. But we are also not to think we can somehow avoid it or be completely impervious to it either. We are to meet and move through suffering without shock and surprise, without denial of our sorrow and weakness, without resentment or paralyzing fear, yet also without acquiescence or capitulation, without surrender or despair.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Do not be afraid, for I am with you (Isaiah 43:2–3, 5).
God does not say, “If you go through the fire” and flood and dark valleys but when you go. The promise is not that he will remove us from the experience of suffering. No, the promise is that God will be with us, walking beside us in it. Isaiah takes the metaphor one step further and says that, while God’s people will experience the heat, it will not “set them ablaze.” That seems to mean that while they will be in the heat, the heat will not be in them. That is, it won’t enter and poison their souls, harden their hearts, or bring them to despair.
Trials have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Peter 1:7).
Peter urges his readers in various ways not to be shocked by suffering (1 Peter 4:12), not to give up hope. While suffering, they should “commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good” (1 Peter 4:19), promising that “the God of all grace, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong” (1 Peter 5:10). Peter is saying that the fiery furnace does not automatically make us better. We must recognize, depend on, speak with, and believe in God while in the fire.
This promise of Isaiah 43:2–3 became literally true in the story of three Jewish exiles in Babylon under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar.
“We have no need to answer you in this matter. Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you set up” (Daniel 3:17–18).
The answer is that their confidence was actually in God, not in their limited understanding of what they thought he would do. They had inner assurance that God would rescue them. However, they were not so arrogant as to be sure they were “reading God right.”
We do not defy you because we think we are going to live—we defy you because our God is God.
If we say, “I know you will answer this prayer, God. You can’t not answer it”—then our confidence is not really in God’s wisdom but in our own. As a pastor, I have heard countless people say, “I trusted God, and I prayed so hard for X, but he never gave it to me. He let me down!” But to be more precise, their deepest faith and hope was actually set on an agenda they had devised for their lives, and God was just a means they were deploying to get to that end. At best, they were trusting in God-plus-my-plan-for-my-life.
Do you want to know who you are, your strengths and weaknesses? Do you want to be a compassionate person who skillfully helps people who are hurting? Do you want to have such a profound trust in God that you are fortified against the disappointments of life? Do you want simply to be wise about how life goes? Those are four crucial things to have—but none of them are readily achievable without suffering. There is no way to know who you really are until you are tested. There is no way to really empathize and sympathize with other suffering people unless you have suffered yourself. There is no way to really learn how to trust in God until you are drowning.
So what do you have to do in order to grow instead of being destroyed by your suffering? The answer is that you must walk with God. And what is that? It means we must treat God as God and as there. Of course that means to speak to him, to pour out your heart to him in prayer. It means to trust him. But preeminently, it means to see with the eyes of your heart how Jesus plunged into the fire for you when he went to the cross.
Walking is something nondramatic, rhythmic—it consists of steady, repeated actions you can keep up in a sustained way for a long time.
A walk is day in and day out praying; day in and day out Bible and Psalms reading; day in and day out obeying, talking to Christian friends, and going to corporate worship, committing yourself to and fully participating in the life of a church. It is rhythmic, on and on and on. To walk with God is a metaphor that symbolizes slow and steady progress.
Throughout the Bible, we see many different actions and ways that sufferers face their suffering. We are called to walk, to grieve and weep, to trust and pray, to think, thank, and love, and to hope. For the remainder of this book, we will explore each one of these in its own chapter. These activities are complementary strategies, none of which can be left out, but some of which may be more important depending on which type of suffering it is, as well as on the person’s temperament and other unique circumstances. And so the several strategies or ways of dealing with suffering we will now discuss must not be seen as a set of steps, nor should we think of them as all equally important for every person. As we have said, no two paths through suffering are identical. And yet none of the things the Bible calls sufferers to do can be ignored.
A great number of the psalms are called “Psalms of Lament.” They are poignant cries of distress and grief. Often the psalmist is complaining about the actions of others, or is even troubled by his own thoughts and actions. But some of the Psalms are expressions of frustration with God himself. Psalm 44:23 reads “Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?” and Psalm 89:49 says “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?”
In the first chapter, for example, when Job first gets all the bad news about the deaths of his children and the loss of his estate, we are told that “Job got up and tore his robe” and then he “fell to the ground” (Job 1:20), but then the author adds, “In all this Job sinned not” (Job 1:22). Here is a man already behaving in a way that many pious Christians would consider at least unseemly or showing a lack of faith. He rips his clothes, falls to the ground, cries out. He does not show any stoical patience.
By the middle of the book, Job is cursing the day he is born and comes very close to charging God with injustice in his angry questions. And yet God’s final verdict on Job is surprisingly positive.
Isaiah 42 describes the mysterious Suffering Servant who, Isaiah 53 reveals, will have the guilt of our transgressions put upon him so that, by his suffering, our condemnation will be taken away. In Isaiah 42:3, it says about the Servant that “a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out until in faithfulness he brings forth justice.” The Hebrew word translated as “bruise” does not mean a minor injury. It denotes a deep contusion that destroys a vital internal organ—in other words, a deathblow. If applied to a person, it means an injury that doesn’t show on the surface but that is nonetheless fatal. When it refers to a bruised reed, it means a stalk of grain that has been broken at an angle, not into two pieces. But because it has been thus broken, it is never going to produce grain. And yet this servant does what no one else can do. He can heal it so it produces grain again. Who is this Servant? The Christian church has since its very beginning understood this to be Jesus Christ himself (Acts 8:32–33) and in Matthew 12:20, it is said that Jesus will not break the bruised reed or snuff out the dying candle. It means Jesus Christ the servant is attracted to hopeless cases. He cares for the fragile. He loves people who are beaten and battered and bruised. They may not show it on the outside, but inside they are dying. Jesus sees all the way into the heart and he knows what to do. The Lord binds up the brokenhearted and heals our wounds (Psalm 147:3; Isaiah 61:1).
Let me give you an example. In 1 Kings 18–19, we read about the ministry of Elijah. Elijah is a mighty prophet, a great man of God, but he is cracking under the pressure of his ministry. The people have turned against him and his message. Though he speaks in the name of the Lord, they are not listening. Elijah is a great prophet but a human being can take only so much disappointment, opposition, and difficulty. He is despondent; he is suicidal. He travels out into the wilderness and says to God, “Take away my life. I don’t even want to live” (1 Kings 19:4). Then he lies down under a bush and falls into a troubled sleep. Now here is a despondent man, a bruised man. Here is someone flickering, his candle ready to go out. And he is not handling his suffering and stress all that well. He is not saying, “I’m just rejoicing in the Lord!” No, he wants to die. So God sends him an angel. And do you know the first thing the angel does? The angel cooks him a meal. An angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.
If you read the narrative, you know this is not all that Elijah needs. Eventually, God comes to him and challenges him out of despair. God asks him questions, gets him talking, and challenges his interpretation of things, showing him it is not as hopeless as he thinks. And God reveals that he still has a plan for Israel (1 Kings 19:9–17). But reasoning and explaining are not the first things God does with Elijah. He knows the prophet is also a physical being—he is exhausted, spent. He needs rest and food. He needs touch and gentleness. Later, he talks to him.
The point is this—suffering people need to be able to weep and pour out their hearts, and not to immediately be shut down by being told what to do. Nor should we do that to ourselves, if we are grieving.
I was sitting, torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly, he said things I knew were true. I was unmoved, except to wish he’d go away. He finally did. Another came and sat beside me. He didn’t talk. He didn’t ask leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left. I was moved. I was comforted. I hated to see him go.
Psalm 88 is a lamentation Psalm, but even within the category of the Psalter’s “sad songs,” it stands out. Most Psalms of lament end on a note of praise, or at least some positive expectation. But this one and one other, Psalm 39, are famous for ending without any note of hope at all.
If we believe that God through the Holy Spirit inspired and assembled the Scriptures for us, then we see that God has not “censored” out prayers like this. God does not say, “Oh! Real believers don’t talk like that! I don’t want anything like that in my Bible.”
From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) (Matthew 27:45–46).
“If God were small enough to be understood, he wouldn’t be big enough to be worshipped.”
The Joseph story tells us that very often God does not give us exactly what we ask for. Instead he gives us what we would have asked for if we had known everything he knows.
Sometimes we may wish that God would send us our book—a full explanation! But even though we cannot know all the particular reasons for our crosses, we can look at the cross and know God is working things out.
Job’s response is to express great grief but nonetheless to bow and worship, saying famously, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21).
Eliphaz says to Job in 5:17, “Blessed is the man that God corrects; do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” That again is true. But, as Old Testament commentator Frances Anderson says about these speeches by Job’s friends, “True words can be thin medicine for a man in the depths.” Even though Job’s friends can piece together strings of technically true statements, their pastoral mistakes stem from an inadequate grasp of the grace of God.
Nevertheless, despite the intimacy of the name Yahweh and the mode of address, God appears to Job in a storm—literally, a “storm-wind.” Ancient people knew nothing more terrifying or destructive than a hurricane-force windstorm. Job’s children had been destroyed by one (Job 1:19). Job was afraid that, if God actually did appear to him, “he would crush me with a storm” (Job 9:17) and indeed, when God shows up, he comes in the most fierce, overwhelming, majestic form possible—as the Storm King.
The paradox, then, should not be missed. God comes both as a gracious, personal God and as an infinite, overwhelming force—at the very same time.
Job never sees the big picture, he sees only God. But that’s what we really need—for all eternity.
If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.
But the crucial thing to notice is this: Through it all, Job never stopped praying. Yes, he complained, but he complained to God. He doubted, but he doubted to God. He screamed and yelled, but he did it in God’s presence. No matter how much in agony he was, he continued to address God. He kept seeking him. And in the end, God said Job triumphed. How wonderful that our God sees the grief and anger and questioning, and is still willing to say “you triumphed”—not because it was all fine, not because Job’s heart and motives were always right, but because Job’s doggedness in seeking the face and presence of God meant that the suffering did not drive him away from God but toward him. And that made all the difference.
Read the Scriptures even if it is an agony. Eventually, you will sense him again—the darkness won’t last forever. The strength you need for suffering comes in the doing of the responsibilities and duties God requires. Shirk no commands of God. Read, pray, study, fellowship, serve, witness, obey.
We must learn what we can about ourselves by an honest look at our feelings. But we must not only listen to our hearts, we should also talk to them. We should listen for the premises of the heart’s reasoning but we should challenge those premises where they are wrong, and they often are. We may hear our heart say, “It’s hopeless!” but we should argue back. We should say, “Well, that depends on what you were hoping in.”
Have you realized that so much of the unhappiness in your life is due to the fact you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? So this man stands up and says: “Self, listen for a moment… .” Then you must go on to remind yourself of who God is, and what God is and what God has done and what God has pledged himself to do.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want (Philipians 4:4–12).
The second thing Paul tells us is that this peace is not merely an absence—it is a presence. It is not just an absence of fear. It is a sense of being protected. That does not come out as well in the English translation. It says in verse 7, “the peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds.” The Greek word translated as “guard” means to completely surround and fortify a building or a city to protect it from invasion. If you have an army all around you protecting you, then you can sleep really well—that’s the idea. And this is getting at something very important. Today, when you read books or websites on overcoming anxiety and handling fear, they usually talk about removing thoughts. They say: Do not think about that; do not think those negative thoughts. Control your thoughts, expel the negative ones. But here we see the peace of God is not the absence of negative thoughts, it is the presence of God himself. “The God of peace will be with you” (Philipians 4:9).
Paul speaks of three sorts of disciplines in which to engage. Those who do these things more often find God’s peace along the way. I will call these disciplines: a kind of thinking, of thanking, and of loving.
In Philippians 4:8–9, Paul says, “Brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure … think about such things. And the God of peace will be with you.” Now, when we hear terms like “noble” and “right” we might think that Paul is merely recommending high and inspirational thoughts in general. But scholars of Pauline literature tell us that is not the case. He is not referring to general loftiness of mind but rather to the specific teaching of the Bible about God, sin, Christ, salvation, the world, human nature, and God’s plans for the world—the plan of salvation. And Paul also uses the word logizdomai to describe how we are to think about these things. That is an accounting word, sometimes translated “to reckon” or “to count up.” Paul is saying if you want peace, think hard and long about the core doctrines of the Bible.
It is no wonder that secular books for people under stress never ask them to think about questions such as “What are we here for?” Instead, they advise you to not think so hard about everything but to relax and to find experiences that give you pleasure. Paul is saying Christian peace operates in almost exactly the opposite way. Christian peace comes not from thinking less but from thinking more, and more intensely, about the big issues of life.
There is nothing more thrilling than climbing up to some high point on a mountain and then turning around and viewing from there all the terrain you have just traversed. Suddenly, you see the relationships—you see the creek you crossed, the foothills, the town from which you have journeyed. Your high vantage point gives you perspective, clarity, and a sense of beauty. Now this is what Paul is calling us to do. Think big and high. Realize who God is, what he has done, who you are in Christ, where history is going. Put your troubles in perspective by remembering Christ’s troubles on your behalf, and all his promises to you, and what he is accomplishing.
His simple point was that a Christian should be happy, “whatever his outward circumstances are.” Then he makes his case in three propositions, which I paraphrase. For Christians: Their “bad things” will work out for good (Romans 8:28). Their “good things”—adoption into God’s family, justification in his sight, union with him—cannot be taken away (Romans 8:1). Their best things—life in heaven, new heavens and the new earth, resurrection—are yet to come (Revelations 22:1).
In Philippians 4:6, Paul says, “Don’t be anxious, but make requests to God with thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving is put over against anxiety. But look carefully—it is a little counterintuitive, isn’t it? We would expect Paul to say first you make your requests to God and then, if you get your requests, you thank him for his answers. But that is not what Paul says. He says you thank him as you ask, before you know the response to your requests.
The Stoics taught that the reason most people are not able to live contented, poised lives is that they love things too much. You should not love success too much, because even if you get it, you will always be anxious. You will never have peace because you will be afraid of losing it. Also, you shouldn’t set your heart primarily on your family, because even if you get a good family, you will always be worried about it. You will always be anxious that something will go wrong with them.
Augustine rejected the Stoics approach as untenable. He argued instead that “only love of the immutable can bring tranquility.” The immutable is that which cannot change. Your virtue can and will change, as will your career, your family, your fortunes. The reason we don’t have peace is we are loving mutable things, things that circumstances can take away from us. But there is one thing that is immutable. It is God, his presence and his love.
Your problem is not so much that you love your career or family too much, but that you love God too little in proportion to them.
It is probably impossible to love any human being simply “too much.” We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the many, that constitutes the inordinacy.
Here, then, is what we must do when we suffer. We should look around our lives to see if our suffering has not been unnecessarily intensified because there are some things that we have set our hearts and hopes upon too much. We must relocate our glory and reorder our loves.
If we cultivate within ourselves a deep rest in God, an existential grasp of his love for us, then we will find that suffering can sting and cause pain, but it can’t uproot us, overthrow us. Because suffering can’t touch our Main Thing—God, his love and his salvation.
How can we feel more love for God? Don’t try to work directly on your emotions. That won’t work.
You can’t just go home and try to love God in the abstract. You have to look at Jesus—at who he is and what he has done for you. It is not by gazing at God in general, but at the person and work of Christ in particular, that you will come to love the immutable and find tranquility. Look at what Jesus did for you—that is how to find God irresistibly beautiful.
Human beings are hope-shaped creatures. The way you live now is completely controlled by what you believe about your future.
Do you believe in “new heavens and new earth”? Do you believe in a Judgment Day when every evil deed and injustice will be redressed? Do you believe you are headed for a future of endless joy?
“Would you rather be run over by a truck, or by its shadow?” His daughter replied, “By the shadow of course. That can’t hurt us at all.” Dr. Barnhouse replied, “Right. If the truck doesn’t hit you, but only its shadow, then you are fine. Well, it was only the shadow of death that went over your mother. She’s actually alive—more alive than we are. And that’s because two thousand years ago, the real truck of death hit Jesus. And because death crushed Jesus, and we believe in him, now the only thing that can come over us is the shadow of death, and the shadow of death is but my entrance into glory.”
“Come on, crosses, the lower you lay me, the higher you will raise me! Come on, grave, kill me and all you will do is make me better than before!”
Let’s summarize what we have learned. If we know the biblical theology of suffering and have our hearts and minds engaged by it, then when grief, pain, and loss come, we will not be surprised, and can respond in the various ways laid out in Scripture. Here they are organized into ten things we should do. First, we must recognize the varieties of suffering. Some trials are largely brought on by wrong behavior. Some are largely due to betrayals and attacks by others. Then there are the more universal forms of loss that occur to all regardless of how they live, such as the death of a loved one, illnesses, financial reversals, or your own imminent death. A final kind of suffering could be called the horrendous—such as mass shootings in elementary schools. Of course, many actual cases of suffering combine several of these four types. Each kind of suffering brings somewhat different kinds of feelings—the first brings guilt and shame; the second, anger and resentment; the third, grief and fear; the fourth, confusion and perhaps anger at God. While all these forms of suffering share common themes—and are addressed in common ways—each also requires its own specific responses.
Second, you must recognize distinctions in temperament between yourself and other sufferers. You must be careful not to think that the way God helped some other sufferer through the fire will be exactly the way he will lead you.
Third, there is weeping. It is crucial to be brutally honest with yourself and God about your pain and sorrow. Do not deny or try too much to control your feelings in the name of being faithful. Read the Psalms of lament or Job. God is very patient with us when we are desperate. Pour out your soul to him.
Fourth, there is trusting. Despite the invitation to pour out our hearts to God with emotional reality, we are also summoned to trust God’s wisdom (since he is sovereign) and also to trust his love (since he has been through what you’ve been through). Despite your grief, you must eventually come to say, as Jesus did (after first honestly entreating, “Let this cup pass from me”), “Thy will be done.” Wrestle until you can say that.
Fifth, we must be praying. Though Job did a lot of complaining and cursed the day he was born—he did it all in prayer. It was to God he complained; it was before God that he struggled. In suffering, you must read the Bible and pray and attend worship even though it is dry or painful. Simone Weil said, if you can’t love God, you must want to love God, or at least ask him to help you love him.
Sixth, we must be disciplined in our thinking. You must meditate on the truth and gain the perspective that comes from remembering all God has done for you and is going to do. You should also do “self-communion.” This is both listening to your heart and also reasoning and talking to your heart. It means saying, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Forget not his benefits, his salvation” (Psalm 42; Psalm 103). This is not forcing yourself to feel in a certain way but rather directing your thoughts until your heart, sooner or later, is engaged. Much of the thinking and self-communing that we must do has to do with Christian hope. Heaven and the resurrection and the future-perfect world are particularly important to meditate on if you are dealing with death—your own or someone else’s. But it is crucial in all suffering.
Seventh, we should be willing to do some self-examining.
Every time of adversity is an opportunity to look at ourselves and ask—how do I need to grow? What weaknesses is this time of trouble revealing?
Eighth, we must be about reordering our loves. Suffering reveals that there are things we love too much, or we love God too little in proportion to them. Our suffering is often aggravated and doubled because we turned good things into ultimate things. Suffering will only make us better (rather than worse) if, during it, we teach ourselves to love God better than before. This happens by recognizing God’s suffering for us in Jesus Christ, and by praying, thinking, and trusting that love into our souls.
Ninth, we should not shirk community.
Find a Christian church where sufferers are loved and supported.
Tenth, some forms of suffering—particularly the first two among the four types listed above—require skill at receiving grace and forgiveness from God, and giving grace and forgiveness to others. When adversity reveals moral failures or sinful character flaws, it means we will have to learn how to repent and seek reconciliation with God and others. When our suffering is caused by betrayal and injustice, it is crucial to learn forgiveness. We must forgive the wrongdoers from the heart, laying aside vengefulness, if we will ever be able to pursue justice effectively.