Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

By Timothy Keller

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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 a single massive event—a cyclone, a tsunami, an earthquake—it makes headlines around the world and everyone reels from the devastation. But 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 trigger no headlines because pain and misery is the norm in this world.

Ernest Becker warned about the danger of denying this reality. When we hear of a tragedy, a deep-seated psychological defense mechanism goes to work. We think such things happen to other people, to poor people, or to people who failed to take precautions. But the loss of loved ones, debilitating and fatal illness, personal betrayal, financial reversal, and moral failure—all of these will eventually come upon you if you live out a normal life span. No one is immune. No matter what precautions you take, no matter how well you have assembled a good life, something will inevitably ruin it. No amount of money, power, or planning can prevent bereavement, dire illness, relationship betrayal, or financial disaster from entering your life. Human life is fatally fragile and subject to forces beyond our power to manage. Life is tragic.

This recognition cuts to the heart of the questions people ask about God. How could a good God, a just God, a loving God, allow such misery, depravity, pain, and anguish? Doubts in the mind can grow alongside pain in the heart. When suffering comes upon you, you finally see not only that you are not in control of your life but that you never were.

C. S. Lewis observed that 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 one man facing the potential loss of both his career and his family put it: “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.”

The Bible itself treats suffering as one of its great themes. Genesis begins with how evil and death entered the world. Exodus recounts Israel’s forty years of intense testing in the wilderness. The wisdom literature is largely dedicated to the problem of suffering. The Psalms provide a prayer for every situation in life, and it is striking how filled they are with cries of pain and blunt questions to God about the seeming randomness and injustice of suffering. At the heart of why people disbelieve and believe in God, why people decline and grow in character, how God becomes less real and more real to us—is suffering.

And yet the great theme of the Bible 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. 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.

How do you actually walk with God in such times? How do you orient yourself toward him so that suffering changes you for the better rather than for the worse? In perhaps the most vivid depiction of suffering in the Bible, in the third chapter of Daniel, three faithful men are thrown into a furnace meant 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.

Each chapter of this book is based on one main strategy for connecting with God in that furnace of pain and suffering.

Part One — Understanding the Furnace

Chapter 1: The Cultures of Suffering

Dr. Paul Brand, a pioneering orthopedic surgeon who spent the first part of his career treating leprosy patients in India and the latter part in the United States, noticed a stark difference between the two cultures. In the United States, he encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all costs. Patients lived at a greater comfort level than any he had previously treated, but they seemed far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it.

The secular worldview helps explain why. If this material world is all there is, then the meaning of life is to have the freedom to choose what makes you most happy. In that framework, suffering can have no meaningful part—it is a complete interruption of your life story. If you approach hardship this way, suffering always wins. It can’t take you home; it can only keep you from the things you most want.

Other traditions handle suffering differently. Each sees evil as having some purpose—as a punishment, a test, or an opportunity. If patiently, wisely, and heroically faced, suffering can actually accelerate the journey to your desired destination. It can be an important chapter in your life story and a crucial stage in achieving what you most want. The things that need to be done are forms of internal “soul work”—learning patience, wisdom, and faithfulness.

C. S. Lewis captured the contrast between ancient and modern approaches: “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. For secular people, it’s all up to us—we’re alone. That is why, for secular people, there can be an additional layer of urgency and despair.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus 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 further shows that suffering does not correlate neatly with moral inferiority—God condemns Job’s friends for insisting otherwise. And Jesus himself, who deserved a good life on the basis of character and behavior more than anyone, did not receive one.

While other worldviews lead you 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. You must not waste your sorrows. As one believer described it: “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.”

Chapter 2: The Victory of Christianity

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, you must learn how to conquer the inevitable terrible fear of these irreversible losses.

Suffering takes away the loves, joys, and comforts you rely on to give life meaning. You can maintain your poise—even your peace and joy—only if you locate your meaning in things that can’t be touched by death. That means placing the answers to “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 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 or flee the cities as most pagan residents did. Instead they stayed to tend the sick and faced their death with calmness.

For Christians, suffering was not to be dealt with primarily through the control and suppression of negative emotions by 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. Christians do not face adversity by stoically decreasing love for the people and things of this world so much as by increasing love and joy in God. Only when your greatest love is God—a love you cannot lose even in death—can you face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. Not all weeping proceeds from unbelief or weakness—the Lord also wept.

Christianity would seem to be the only version of salvation that enables you to not only transcend the fear of death but also to beat death itself. You should not rail against cruel, blind fate but bear suffering patiently, like Job.

Suffering in the world serves a number of purposes in the divine economy. Some suffering is given to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm). Some 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 you have the strength and competence to rule your own life and save yourself. 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 they were looking at the greatest act of salvation in history. Even the observers of the crucifixion could not clearly perceive the ways of God—they saw only darkness and pain. Human reason is sure God cannot be working in and through that.

Atheist writer Susan Jacoby wrote that when she sees homeless people shivering in the wake of a deadly storm, she does not have to ask why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen. She is right at one level. If you don’t believe in God, you don’t struggle with that question—it just is. But you also have none of the powerful comforts and joys that Christian belief can give you.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord. — Job 1:21

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. — 1 Thessalonians 5:18

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. The end hasn’t been written.

Chapter 3: The Challenge of the Secular

Henri-Frédéric Amiel wrote: “You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.”

Viktor 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 while others could not. The difference came down to what Frankl called meaning.

Frankl argued that increased faith in the camps was not only natural but was one of the only ways to go on in an environment that stripped you of all earthly sources of significance, security, and purpose. 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 you suffer that comprises one of the main ways you become great and Christ-like, holy and happy, and a crucial way you show the world the love and glory of your 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 your life like smelling salts to wake you up to all sorts of facts about life and your own heart to which you were blind.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. — Psalm 34:18

Each time you truly connect with another person in their pain, you can be thankful for the gift of your own pain. It reminds you of your vulnerability and dependence.

Chapter 4: The Problem of Evil

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 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? Then where does evil come from? Many insist that this is the single strongest objection to the existence of God in general and the plausibility of Christianity in particular.

The free-will argument. In its simplest form: 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, he had to make us capable of also choosing evil. Our free will can be abused, and that is the reason for evil. As Berdyaev put it, “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, followed by Aquinas and others, taught that evil is not a substance or force in itself but the condition that results when some good thing God made is twisted or corrupted from its original design or purpose.

The limits of the free-will theodicy. This argument assumes that if God gives us free will, he cannot control its outcomes. But the Bible shows in many places that God can sovereignly direct our choices in history without violating our freedom and responsibility. Jesus’ crucifixion was clearly foreordained and destined to happen, and yet all the people who brought it about were still making their choices freely and were responsible for what they did (Acts 2:23). This indicates it is possible to be free and nevertheless to have your course directed by God—at the same time, compatibly.

Furthermore, consider: 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”? Of course not. You would snatch her out of the path. Why couldn’t God have done that with us? And the book of Job itself warns that it is both futile and inappropriate to assume any human mind could comprehend all the reasons God might have for any instance of pain and sorrow. The Bible may be warning us not to try to construct these theories at all.

The question becomes: if God is infinitely knowledgeable, why couldn’t he have morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil that you simply 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.

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 you could look at any particular occurrence and understand a millionth of what it will bring about.

As one believer expressed it: problems don’t disappear and life continues, but God replaces the sting of heartache with hope. You come to believe that life will not always be as it is now, and you find comfort in being able to stop focusing on the heartache and focus on the One who will someday take heartache away completely and forever.

Part Two — Facing the Furnace

Chapter 5: The Challenge of Faith

The evil you see today was not part of God’s original design. It was not God’s intent for human life. That means even a peaceful death at ninety years old is not the way things were meant to be. Those 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. We often tell people that death is a 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.

The biblical doctrine of Judgment Day, far from being a gloomy idea, enables you to live with both hope and grace. If you accept it, you get hope and incentive to work for justice—no matter how little success you may have now, you know that justice will be established fully and perfectly. All wrongs, all moral evil, will be redressed. But it also enables you to be gracious, to forgive, to refrain from vengefulness and violence. If you are not sure there will be a final judgment, when you are wronged you will feel an almost irresistible compulsion to take up the sword. But if you know that no one will get away with anything, you can live in peace. The doctrine warns you that you have neither the knowledge to know exactly what people deserve nor the right to mete out punishment when you are a sinner yourself.

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 you do not merely receive a consolation for the life you have lost but a restoration of it—not only the body and life you had but the body and life you wished for and had never before received.

In the book of Job, we encounter the most difficult and severe truth about suffering: in the end we cannot question God. Job calls on God to explain his sorrows and griefs, but the questioner is radically challenged in 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.

Yet God was not only above suffering—he entered into it. 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. 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 pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceed ours.

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 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 capable of trusting them and living securely. That is what they really need.

Consider what would have happened at Jesus’ first coming if he’d arrived with a sword in his hand and the power to destroy all sources of suffering and evil. It would have meant there would be no human beings left. 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. 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.

Chapter 6: The Sovereignty of God

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—spiritual alienation, inner psychological pain, social and interpersonal conflict and cruelty, natural disasters, disease, and death (Genesis 3:17). All natural and moral evil is understood as stemming from the foundational rupture of our relationship with God. Suffering begins when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden (Genesis 3:23–24)—the original infliction of suffering as judgment.

Yet while the human race as a whole deserves the broken world it inhabits, evil is not distributed in a proportionate, fair way. Bad people do not have worse lives than good people. And the best people often have terrible lives. Job is one example, and Jesus—the ultimate “Job,” the only truly, fully innocent sufferer—is another. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man and takes pains to show his disciples that the man was not in that condition because of his sin or that of his parents, but in order to fulfill God’s inscrutable purposes. Suffering people should not automatically be blamed for their condition.

The story of Jesus at Lazarus’s tomb reveals something stunning. Why did the sight of the tomb and the family’s grief enrage Jesus? He knew full well he was about to turn the mourning into shouts of wonder and joy—he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. So why was he furious? The distress of Mary and her companions brought home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its “violent tyranny.” In Mary’s grief, he contemplated the general misery of the whole human race and burned with rage against the oppressor of men. It is death that is the object of his wrath, and behind death the one who has the power of death, and whom he has come into the world to destroy.

God’s plan works through your choices, not around or despite them. Your choices have consequences, and you are never forced by God to do anything—you always do what you 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, yet he nonetheless holds Assyria responsible. “I send him against a godless nation,” says God, “but this is not what he intends, this is not what he has in mind, his purpose is to destroy” (verses 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 a cruel 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 is Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh in Exodus 7–14. Over several chapters the text tells us Pharaoh “hardened” his heart and stubbornly refused to let the people go. But the text also 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). Did God do it or did Pharaoh? The biblical answer to both is yes.

As one couple reflected: “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.”

Chapter 7: The Suffering of God

The Gospels show 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 tempted and assaulted by the devil (Matthew 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, when Jesus appears to Saul on the road to Damascus, he asks, “Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). Jesus so identifies with his people that he shares in their suffering. When they are hurt or in grief, so is he.

And remarkably, this greatest 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).

Chapter 8: The Reason for Suffering

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.

One believer, facing terminal illness, described his suffering this way: in the middle of many operas there is a crucial aria, a “sad and moving solo” in which the main character turns sorrow into something beautiful. He 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?”

Psychologists including Jonathan Haidt and James Davies have argued 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 the first—but perhaps hardest to grasp—purpose for 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). 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 Paul could write to believers not to be discouraged by his imprisonment—his suffering was a way to show people his Savior’s character.

The forgiveness and love shown by the Amish community toward a school shooter and his family was the talk of the entire country. The way they handled their suffering was a powerful testimony to the truth of their faith and to the grace and glory of their God.

One woman wrestling with the death of a friend found clarity through two passages of Scripture. Luke 15:10 talks about the angels rejoicing in heaven over a repentant sinner. Ephesians 3:10 says that the angels are looking at what happens inside the church. In the book of Job, the suffering of Job is watched by a great council of angels and by the devil as well.

Chapter 9: Learning to Walk

Suffering can lead to personal growth, training, and transformation, but you must never see it as primarily a way to improve yourself. That view could lead to a form of masochism, an enjoyment of ache. Instead, you 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? You don’t, really. In times of health and prosperity, it is easy to think you have a loving relationship with 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 you can hear God “shouting” a set of questions: “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 your 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. — 2 Corinthians 1:3–4

Suffering does not automatically or naturally lead to growth and good outcomes. It must be handled properly—faced patiently and faithfully. You have to be prepared in your mind and heart before suffering strikes so that you are not surprised by it.

But suffering is not just an intellectual issue—“Why is there so much evil and suffering?”—it is a personal problem—“How will I get through this?” This second question is in a different universe from the first. You 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 you.

Chapter 10: The Varieties of Suffering

An old saying goes, “The same sun that melts wax hardens clay.” The same traumatic experience can ruin one person and make another stronger and even happier. You must learn not to assume that every sufferer needs the same medicine.

”David-type” suffering: caused by our own failures. When King David’s life fell apart, there was a specific sin that caused it. He had violated the law of God by having an affair with Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband killed. Then his young son became sick and died. David realized God was saying he had to change his ways or lose his kingship and his life.

Was God “punishing” David for his sins? Not exactly. Romans 8:1 says there is “no condemnation” for a believer. If Jesus has received our punishment and made payment for our sins, God cannot then exact a second payment from 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 to come into your life to wake you up and turn you to him.

Hidden faults are often revealed only through trouble and difficulty. The Psalmist prays, “Cleanse me from hidden faults” (Psalm 25). In general, it is only suffering that can bring such things to the surface.

Suffering caused by good and brave behavior. Paul gives a list of what he endured as a messenger of God: working far harder than others, frequent imprisonments, severe floggings, exposure to death again and again. Five times he received the forty lashes minus one. Three times he was beaten with rods, once pelted with stones, three times shipwrecked. He was constantly on the move, in danger from rivers, bandits, his own countrymen, Gentiles, the city, the country, the sea, and false believers. He labored and toiled, often without sleep, knowing hunger, thirst, cold, and nakedness—besides the daily pressure of his concern for all the churches (2 Corinthians 11:23–28).

When facing grief, Christians must learn to direct their minds and hearts to the forms of comfort and hope that faith offers. Paul tells a group of bereaved believers not to “grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) and writes, “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.”

The marks of affliction. Simone Weil identifies several toxic dimensions of deep suffering:

Isolation. A barrier goes up between you and even your closest friends. You sense a new gulf between yourself and anyone who has not experienced what you are going through. Others stay away because they feel incompetent—they don’t know what to say or do. Some fear being drawn into and drowning in your pain. Others need to believe you somehow brought it on yourself, so they can assure themselves it could never happen to them.

Implosion. Intense physical pain makes you unavoidably self-absorbed. You cannot think about anyone else or anything else.

A sense of doom. Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time—more absent than a dead man, more absent than light in utter darkness. During this absence there is nothing to love. You may know intellectually that someone loves you, or even believe that God loves you, but it doesn’t seem real to your heart.

Anger. A fourth aspect of affliction is usually anger.

Temptation toward complicity. Suffering can little by little turn the soul into its accomplice, injecting a poison of inertia. You become complicit with the affliction—comfortable with your discomfort, content with your discontent.

Different identities, different responses. People of different personalities, genders, and cultures process emotions differently. They also have different internal values and commitments. A father may love his children deeply but identify personally more with his career. His wife may be dedicated to her vocation but identify her worth more closely with how her children are faring. If there is a career reversal, the husband may be more “overthrown,” while if a child gets seriously injured, the mother may be more disconsolate. Same trouble, different responses, because there is a different identity structure within the heart.

”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).

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.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. — Proverbs 3:5

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. — Psalm 119:71

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. — Psalm 27:4

My focus turns from my pain to His love.

Part Three — Walking with God in the Furnace

Chapter 11: Walking

One of the Bible’s main metaphors for facing affliction is walking—walking through something difficult, perilous, and potentially fatal. Sometimes it is walking in darkness: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4; cf. Isaiah 50:10, 59:9; Lamentations 3:2). Another image is 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; cf. Psalm 69:15; 88:17; 124:4; Job 22:11). There is also the hint of walking carefully on slippery and dangerous mountain paths (Psalm 73:2).

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 you from the experience of suffering. The promise is that God will be with you, walking beside you in it. Isaiah takes the metaphor 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—it won’t enter and poison their souls, harden their hearts, or bring them to despair.

Peter echoes this when he writes that 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). He urges his readers 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), with the promise 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). The fiery furnace does not automatically make you better. You must recognize, depend on, speak with, and believe in God while in the fire.

This promise became literally true in the story of three Jewish exiles in Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar. Facing the furnace, they declared:

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

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, but they were not so arrogant as to be sure they were “reading God right.” Their posture was: we do not defy you because we think we are going to live—we defy you because our God is God.

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 such a profound trust in God that you are fortified against life’s disappointments? Do you want simply to be wise about how life goes? None of these 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 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 must you do to grow instead of being destroyed by suffering? You must walk with God. That means treating God as God and as there. It means pouring out your heart in prayer. It means trusting him. But preeminently, it means seeing with the eyes of your heart how Jesus plunged into the fire for you when he went to the cross.

Throughout the Bible, sufferers are called to walk, to grieve and weep, to trust and pray, to think, thank, and love, and to hope. These activities are complementary strategies—none can be left out, but some may be more important depending on the type of suffering and the person’s temperament and unique circumstances. They must not be seen as a set of steps, nor should you think of them as all equally important for every person. No two paths through suffering are identical. And yet none of the things the Bible calls sufferers to do can be ignored.

Chapter 12: Weeping

A great number of the Psalms are called “Psalms of Lament”—poignant cries of distress and grief. Often the psalmist complains about the actions of others or is troubled by his own thoughts. But some Psalms express frustration with God himself: “Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?” (Psalm 44:23) and “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?” (Psalm 89:49).

When Job first receives the devastating news about the deaths of his children and the loss of his estate, he gets up and tears his robe, falls to the ground, and cries out (Job 1:20). Yet the author adds, “In all this Job sinned not” (Job 1:22). Here is a man already behaving in a way that many pious people would consider unseemly or showing a lack of faith—he rips his clothes, falls to the ground. He does not show stoical patience. By the middle of the book, Job is cursing the day he was 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.

Consider the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 18–19. He is a mighty man of God, but he is cracking under the pressure of his ministry. The people have turned against him and his message. A human being can take only so much disappointment, opposition, and difficulty. He is despondent and suicidal—he travels 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 troubled sleep. Here is someone flickering, his candle ready to go out. He is not handling his suffering well—he is not saying, “I’m just rejoicing in the Lord!” He wants to die.

So God sends him an angel. And the first thing the angel does is cook him a meal. The angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” There by his head was bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. The angel came back a second time: “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” Strengthened by that food, Elijah traveled forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God. Eventually God comes to him, asks questions, gets him talking, challenges his interpretation of things, and reveals he still has a plan for Israel (1 Kings 19:9–17). But reasoning and explaining are not the first things God does. He knows Elijah is a physical being—exhausted, spent. He needs rest and food, touch and gentleness. The talking comes later.

One person’s account captures this: “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 that stands out even among the Psalter’s “sad songs.” Most Psalms of lament end on a note of praise, or at least some positive expectation. But Psalm 88 and 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, then we see that God has not censored out prayers like these. God does not say, “Real believers don’t talk like that! I don’t want anything like that in my Bible.”

And Jesus himself, on the cross, cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:45–46). If he could weep and cry out in anguish, so can you.

Chapter 13: Trusting

”If God were small enough to be understood, he wouldn’t be big enough to be worshipped.”

Sometimes you may wish that God would send you your book—a full explanation of why this is happening. But even though you cannot know all the particular reasons for your crosses, you can look at the cross and know God is working things out.

Chapter 14: Praying

Job’s response to his initial catastrophe 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). Job’s friends, however, misapply truth. Eliphaz says, “Blessed is the man that God corrects; do not despise the discipline of the Almighty” (Job 5:17). That is true. But as Old Testament commentator Frances Anderson says about these speeches, “True words can be thin medicine for a man in the depths.” Even though Job’s friends piece together strings of technically true statements, their pastoral mistakes stem from an inadequate grasp of the grace of God.

When God finally appears to Job, he comes 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 had been afraid that if God actually appeared, “he would crush me with a storm” (Job 9:17). And indeed, God shows up in the most fierce, overwhelming, majestic form possible—as the Storm King. The paradox 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. As Elisabeth Elliot wrote: “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.”

Chapter 15: Thinking, Thanking, Loving

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. — Philippians 4:4–12

Paul tells us that the peace of God is not merely an absence of fear—it is a presence. In Philippians 4:7, the peace of God will “guard your hearts and your minds.” The Greek word for “guard” means to completely surround and fortify a building or city to protect it from invasion. If you have an army all around you, you can sleep well—that’s the idea. Today, books on overcoming anxiety usually say: remove negative thoughts, expel them, control them. But Paul’s peace is not the absence of negative thoughts—it is the presence of God himself. “The God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9).

Paul speaks of three disciplines in which to engage. Those who practice these more often find God’s peace along the way.

Thinking. 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.” When we hear “noble” and “right,” we might think Paul is recommending inspirational thoughts in general. But scholars of Pauline literature say he is referring specifically to the teaching of the Bible about God, sin, Christ, salvation, human nature, and God’s plan of salvation. Paul uses the word logizdomai—an accounting word meaning “to reckon” or “to count up.” If you want peace, think hard and long about the core doctrines of the Bible.

Secular books for people under stress never ask them to think about questions like “What are we here for?” They advise you to not think so hard, to relax and find pleasurable experiences. Paul says the opposite: Christian peace comes not from thinking less but from thinking more, and more intensely, about the big issues of life.

Think of climbing to some high point on a mountain and turning around to view all the terrain you have traversed. Suddenly you see the relationships—the creek, the foothills, the town from which you started. Your high vantage point gives you perspective, clarity, and a sense of beauty. That is what Paul calls you 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, all his promises to you, and what he is accomplishing.

Thanking. In Philippians 4:6, Paul says, “Don’t be anxious, but make requests to God with thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving is set against anxiety. But notice—it is counterintuitive. You would expect Paul to say: first make your requests, then if you get them, thank God. But that is not what he says. You thank him as you ask, before you know the response to your requests.

Loving. The Stoics taught that most people cannot live contented, poised lives because they love things too much. Don’t love success too much—even if you get it, you’ll be anxious about losing it. Don’t set your heart primarily on family—even a good family will make you worried.

Augustine rejected the Stoic approach as untenable. He argued instead that “only love of the immutable can bring tranquility.” The immutable is that which cannot change. Your virtue, career, family, and fortunes can and will change. The reason you don’t have peace is that you are loving mutable things—things circumstances can take away. But there is one thing that is immutable: God, his presence, and his love.

When you suffer, look around your life to see if your suffering has been unnecessarily intensified because you have set your heart and hopes on some things too much. You must relocate your glory and reorder your loves. If you cultivate a deep rest in God, an existential grasp of his love for you, then suffering can sting and cause pain, but it can’t uproot you or overthrow you—because suffering can’t touch your Main Thing: God, his love, and his salvation.

How can you feel more love for God? Don’t try to work directly on your emotions—that won’t work. You can’t 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 come to love the immutable and find tranquility. Look at what Jesus did for you—that is how to find God irresistibly beautiful.

Chapter 16: Hoping

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?

"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!”

Epilogue

If you know the biblical theology of suffering and have your heart and mind engaged by it, then when grief, pain, and loss come, you will not be surprised, and can respond in the ways laid out in Scripture. Here they are organized into ten practices.

1. 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 regardless of how you live—death of a loved one, illness, financial reversals, or your own imminent death. A final kind could be called the horrendous—such as mass shootings. Many actual cases combine several of these types. Each brings somewhat different 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 share common themes and are addressed in common ways, each also requires its own specific responses.

2. Recognize distinctions in temperament. 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.

3. Weep. 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 you when you are desperate. Pour out your soul to him.

4. Trust. Despite the invitation to pour out your heart with emotional reality, you are also summoned to trust God’s wisdom (since he is sovereign) and 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.

5. Pray. 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, read the Bible, pray, and attend worship even if 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.

6. Think. Meditate on the truth and gain the perspective that comes from remembering all God has done for you and is going to do. Do “self-communion”—both listening to your heart and reasoning with it. Say, “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 a certain way but directing your thoughts until your heart, sooner or later, is engaged. Much of this thinking has to do with Christian hope. Heaven, 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.

7. Self-examine. Every time of adversity is an opportunity to ask: how do I need to grow? What weaknesses is this time of trouble revealing?

8. Reorder your loves. Suffering reveals that there are things you love too much, or that you love God too little in proportion to them. Your suffering is often aggravated and doubled because you turned good things into ultimate things. Suffering will only make you better—rather than worse—if, during it, you teach yourself to love God better than before. This happens by recognizing God’s suffering for you in Jesus Christ, and by praying, thinking, and trusting that love into your soul.

9. Seek community. Do not shirk community. Find a Christian church where sufferers are loved and supported.

10. Give and receive grace. Some forms of suffering—particularly those brought on by your own behavior or caused by the betrayal of others—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, you will have to learn how to repent and seek reconciliation with God and others. When your suffering is caused by betrayal and injustice, it is crucial to learn forgiveness. You must forgive the wrongdoers from the heart, laying aside vengefulness, if you will ever be able to pursue justice effectively.