Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

by Timothy J. Keller

This book is an effort to do what they urge—to take life seriously. I want to help readers live life well and even joyfully against the background of these terrible realities. 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.

It is an exaggeration to say that no one finds God unless suffering comes into their lives—but it is not a big one. 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.

So is this a book for sufferers? Yes, but we must make some distinctions. We are all sufferers, or we will be. But not all of us are currently in an experience of deep pain and grief. Those who are not feeling it, but are seeing it in others, will have a host of philosophical, social, psychological, and moral questions about it. On the other hand, those who are in the grip of pain and difficulty now cannot treat it as a philosophical issue. Speaking to the questions of the nonsufferer as well as to the struggles of the sufferer in one book is a not a simple task. While the afflicted person may cry out using philosophical questions—“Why do you allow such things, God?”—the real concern is personal survival. How can you survive it? How can you get through it without losing the best parts of yourself? To speak in a detached philosophical manner to an actual sufferer is cruel. And yet the experience of pain leads almost inevitably to “big questions” about God and the nature of things that cannot be ignored.

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.

We could almost say that, like a parent with a toddler, the Bible is teaching us to walk, step by step. The Bible calls us to walk steadily through afflictions, and to do so requires that we understand its wonderfully balanced and comprehensive teaching on this subject—both profoundly realistic and yet astonishingly hopeful. This keeps us from thinking we can run from the furnace (avoid it) or quickly run through it (deny it) or just lie down hopelessly (despair in it).

Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God himself walks with us in the fire. 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?

Nothing is more important than to learn how to maintain a life of purpose in the midst of painful adversity.

Social theorist Max Scheler wrote: “An essential part of the teachings and directives of the great religious and philosophical thinkers the world over has been on the meaning of pain and suffering.” Scheler went on to argue that every society has chosen some version of these teachings so as to give its members “instructions . . . to encounter suffering correctly—to suffer properly (or to move suffering to another plane.)”

Because of this deep human “inner compulsion,” every culture either must help its people face suffering or risk a loss of its credibility. When no explanation at all is given—when suffering is perceived as simply senseless, a complete waste, and inescapable—victims can develop a deep, undying anger and poisonous hate that was called ressentiment by Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and others.16 This ressentiment can lead to serious social instability. And so, to use sociological language, every society must provide a “discourse” through which its people can make sense of suffering.

The doctrine of karma is perhaps the purest form of the moralistic view. It holds that every soul is reincarnated over and over. Into each life, the soul brings its past deeds and their latent effects, including suffering. If you are suffering now, it is likely your desserts from former lives. If you live now with decency, courage, and love—then your future lives will be better. In short, no one gets away with anything—everything must be paid for. Your soul is released into the divine bliss of eternity only when you have atoned for all your sins.

There is also what has been called the self-transcendent view.22 Buddhism teaches that suffering comes not from past deeds but from unfulfilled desires, and those desires are the result of the illusion that we are individual selves. Like the ancient Greek Stoics, Buddha taught that the solution to suffering is the extinguishing of desire through a change of consciousness. We must detach our hearts from transitory, material things and persons. Buddhism’s goal is “to achieve a calmness of the soul in which all desire, individuality, and suffering are dissolved.”

Some societies address suffering with a high view of fate and destiny. Life circumstances are seen as set by the stars or by supernatural forces, or by the doom of the gods, or, as in Islam, simply by the inscrutable will of Allah. In this view, people of wisdom and character reconcile their souls with this reality.

In Islam too, surrender to God’s mysterious will without question has been one of the central requirements of righteousness. In all these cultures, submission to a difficult divine fate without compromise or complaint was the highest virtue and therefore a way to find great meaning in suffering.

Finally, there are those cultures with a “dualistic” view of the world. These religions and societies do not see the world under the full control of fate or God but rather as a battleground between the forces of darkness and light. Injustice, sin, and pain are present in the world because of evil, satanic powers. Sufferers are seen as casualties in this war.

At first glance, these four approaches seem to be at odds with one another. The self-transcendent cultures call sufferers to think differently, the moralistic cultures to live differently, the fatalistic cultures to embrace one’s destiny nobly, and the dualistic cultures to put one’s hope in the future. But they are also much alike. First, each one tells its members that suffering should not be a surprise—that it is a necessary part of the warp and woof of human existence. Second, sufferers are told that suffering can help them rise up and move toward the main purpose of life, whether it is spiritual growth, or the mastery of oneself, or the achievement of honor, or the promotion of the forces of good. And third, they are told that the key to rising and achieving in suffering is something they must take the responsibility to do. They must put themselves into a right relationship to spiritual reality.

While other cultures see the world as consisting of both matter and spirit, Western thought understands it as consisting of material forces only, all of which operate devoid of anything that could be called “purpose.”

Richard Dawkins in his book River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life.

If you accept the strictly secular assumption that this is a solely materialistic universe, then that which gives your life purpose would have to be some material good or this-world condition—some kind of comfort, safety, and pleasure. But suffering inevitably blocks achievement of these kinds of life goods. Suffering either destroys them or puts them in deep jeopardy.

All other cultures make the highest purpose of life something besides individual happiness and comfort. It might be moral virtue, or enlightenment, or honor, or faithfulness to the truth. Life’s ultimate meaning might be being an honorable person, or being someone whom your children and community look up to, or about furthering a great cause or movement, or of seeking heaven or enlightenment. In all these cultural narratives, suffering is an important way to come to a good end to the story. All of these “life meanings” can be achieved not only in spite of suffering but through it. In all these worldviews, then, suffering and evil do not have to triumph. 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.

But the meaning of life in our Western society is individual freedom. There is no higher good than the right and freedom to decide for yourself what you think is good. Cultural institutions are supposed to be neutral and “value free”—not telling people what to live for, but only ensuring the freedom of every person to live as he or she finds most satisfying and fulfilling. But if the meaning of life is individual freedom and happiness, then suffering is of no possible “use.” In this worldview, the only thing to do with suffering is to avoid it at all costs, or, if it is unavoidable, manage and minimize the emotions of pain and discomfort as much as possible.

Philosopher Charles Taylor, in his magisterial book A Secular Age, recounts how Western society made what he calls “the anthropocentric turn,” the rise in the secular view. After this turn, Taylor says the “sense of God’s ordering presence begins to fade. The sense begins to arise that we can sustain the order [of the world] on our own.” As a result, Western society’s “highest goal is to . . . prevent suffering.”

How does Christianity compare to all of these? German philosopher Max Scheler, in his famous article “The Meaning of Suffering,” pointed out the uniqueness of the Christian approach. Scheler writes that in some ways, “Christian teaching on suffering seems a complete reversal of attitude” when compared to the interpretations of other cultures and religious systems.44 Unlike the more fatalistic view so prevalent in the shame and honor cultures, “in Christianity there is none of the ancient arrogance . . . none of the self-praise of the sufferer who measures the degree of his suffering against his own power to which others bear witness.” Instead of stoic endurance of high doom, “the cry of the suffering creature resounds everywhere in Christianity freely and harshly,” including from the cross itself.45 Christians are permitted—even encouraged—to express their grief with cries and questions.

In the light of the cross, suffering becomes “purification, not punishment.”

No, the Christian understanding of suffering is dominated by the idea of grace. In Christ we have received forgiveness, love, and adoption into the family of God. These goods are undeserved, and that frees us from the temptation to feel proud of our suffering. But also it is the present enjoyment of those inestimable goods that makes suffering bearable.

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 worldviews 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.

Nature gives us no promise that we are allowed to keep our loved ones forever or even for long.

For centuries, Eastern cultures and religions held that this material world, and the perception that human beings exist as separate entities within it, is all an illusion. The Vedas, the oldest Scriptures of Hinduism and Indian thought, taught that all differences are ultimately unreal. The ultimate truth is Tat tvam asi—“Thou art That.” In other words, the physical world appears to contain many discrete individual objects. This object A is not that object B. That’s what our senses (and science and logic) tell us. While one person suffers losses, another person has plenty. But this is a deceptive appearance called maya. There is not only no evil but no good, no individuals, no material world. Everything is actually part of the One, the All-Soul, the Absolute Spirit. Nothing is outside of it.70 Ultimately we cannot lose anything. We are part of everything.

In his first sermon, he outlined for his followers the Four Noble Truths, namely that (1) all life is suffering, (2) the cause of suffering is desire or craving, (3) suffering ends only when craving is extinguished, and (4) this can be achieved by following the Eightfold Path to enlightenment. The Eightfold path is a comprehensive approach to all areas of life—right views, intentions, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and meditation. It is an extremely balanced life, not demanding asceticism and deprivation but demanding a life of simplicity, service to others, and many disciplines of self-control.

The Christian approach to pain and evil, with both greater room for sorrow and greater basis for hope, was a major factor in its appeal.78

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.

Historian Ronald Rittgers writes that Christians asserted a single Creator who sustained the world in personal wisdom and love, “in direct opposition to pagan polytheism and pagan notions of fate.”89 He summarizes it like this: “This God had created humankind for fellowship with himself” and imposed death and suffering only when the human race broke away from this fellowship to be their own masters—“mortality and hardship were not simply part of the original nature of things.” After the Fall of the human race and the coming of pain and evil, God began a process of salvation to restore human fellowship through Christ. During this time, “trials, tribulations, and adversities” were used by God “for the proving of human souls,” and along with them, he provided “hope of deliverance from them. . . . It was he who removed the sting of death.”90 In short, while God’s ways are often just as opaque to us as a parent’s are to an infant, still we trust that our heavenly Father is caring for us and present with us to guide and protect in all the circumstances of life.

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.

St. (or Pope) Gregory the Great (c. 540–604) was perhaps the most influential author on the cure of souls at the end of the early history of Christianity. His most important works were his Book of Pastoral Rule and Moralia, a series of addresses on the book of Job.

A personal God is a purposeful God, and in the Bible, it is possible to recognize different ways that suffering operates in lives.

In his Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther includes the following: That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have been made. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

Only through weakness and pain did God save us and show us, in the deepest way possible, the infinite depths of his grace and love for us. For indeed, here was infinite wisdom—in one stroke, the just requirement of the law was fulfilled and the forgiveness of lawbreakers secured. In one moment, God’s love and justice were fully satisfied. This Messiah came to die in order to put an end to death itself. Only through weakness and suffering could sin be atoned—it was the only way to end evil without ending us.

Why should we be surprised, then, asked Luther, that our lives are often filled with darkness and pain? Even God himself in Christ did not avoid that. But though God’s purposes are often every bit as hidden and obscure as they were to Job and to the observers at the foot of the cross, we—who have the teaching of the Bible and have grasped the message of the Bible—know that the way up is down. The way to power, freedom, and joy is through suffering, loss, and sorrow.

As philosopher Charles Taylor asked, “Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?”

Taylor coins a number of unique terms to describe contemporary secularity. He says that today we live inside an “immanent frame,” the view that the world is a completely natural order without any supernatural. It is a completely “‘immanent’ world, over against a possible ‘transcendent’ one.”109 Another phrase he uses is the “buffered self.” In older times, the concept of the self was “open and porous.” It included a soul, for example, which connected us to God and the spiritual world, and therefore much of our inner nature, feelings, intuitions, and attitudes were under the influence of forces outside of us, forces that we could not control. It was often assumed that one was required to look outside of the self—to nature and to God—to learn the right way to live. Modern people, however, have a “buffered self,” a self that is bounded and self-contained. Because there is no transcendent, supernatural order outside of me, it is I who determine what I am and who I will be.

The idea of Deism is that God created the world for our benefit and now it operates on its own, without his constant or direct involvement. This world works like a clock and can be understood scientifically, without any need for divine revelation. In this understanding of things, God exists but becomes someone or something more distant, not someone we can know. Our main responsibility is not to love, worship, and obey him, seeking his forgiveness when we fail to do so. Instead, human beings’ main purpose is to use our reason and free will to support human flourishing. In short, the older Christian idea that we exist for God’s glory receded and was replaced by the belief that God exists to nurture and sustain us.

Taylor writes that when Western society believed in a world that was mysterious and unknowable by reason—and in a God who was glorious and ineffable—the problem of evil was “less acute.” In that view, inexplicable evil was to be expected.

If you believe that the world was made for our benefit by God, then horrendous suffering and evil will shake your understanding of life. Horrendous evil is now a much bigger problem for those with a residue of Christianity—with a belief in a distant God who exists for our benefit—than it was for a full-blown orthodox faith not weakened by the immanent frame. In other words, suffering and evil disprove God’s existence only if you have a particular view of God that is already a departure from the more traditional, orthodox view.

Despite the Deism of American founders such as Thomas Jefferson, several powerful spiritual awakenings kept American public culture characterized by Christian beliefs. In particular, those beliefs included the universality of human sin, that every person has a nature prone to and capable of great evil.

But America began moving away from older beliefs in human sinfulness and in spiritual blindness and helplessness apart from the assistance of God. Andrew Delbanco wrote The Death of Satan, in which he traces how, during the early nineteenth century, American culture began losing its grip on the Christian doctrines of the evil of human nature and the reality of Satan. “Pride of self,” he wrote, “once the mark of the devil, was now not just a legitimate emotion but America’s uncontested god. . . . Liberal individualism assumed its modern form in these years.”

The first relevant Christian belief is in a personal, wise, infinite, and therefore inscrutable God who controls the affairs of the world—and that is far more comforting than the belief that our lives are in the hands of fickle fate or random chance. The second crucial tenet is that, in Jesus Christ, God came to earth and suffered with and for us sacrificially—and that is far more comforting than the idea that God is remote and uninvolved. The cross also proves that, despite all the inscrutability, God is for us. The third doctrine is that through faith in Christ’s work on the cross, we can have assurance of our salvation—that is far more comforting than the karmic systems of thought. We are assured that the difficulties of life are not payment for our past sins, since Jesus has paid for them. As Luther taught, suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you. Secularity cannot give you that, and religions that provide salvation through virtue and good works cannot give it, either. The fourth great doctrine is that of the bodily resurrection from the dead for all who believe. This completes the spectrum of our joys and consolations.

When suffering, believing in God thinly or in the abstract is worse than not believing in God at all.

I knew he had died before I laid eyes on him. My very first thought was Job 1:21, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord” followed closely by 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Freedman quoted Greg M. Epstein, humanist chaplain at Harvard, who said, “What religion has to offer people at moments like this—more than theology, more than divine presence—is community. And we need to provide an alternative form of community . . . for the increasing number of people who say they are not believers.” In short, Epstein was saying that religion doesn’t offer sufferers much more than loving, supportive relationships, and that is what secular people must be able to offer as well. But our survey of cultures and history has shown that this is not true.