Honest Talk about Suffering

Politics was dominating the news until a few weeks ago--and then the Coronavirus flooded the media radar 24/7.  Now it's wall-to-wall virus-tracking and infection stats and prognostications of how all this COVID-19 business will play out.

Like it or not, the present moment confronts the world with big questions about God and life and the reality of suffering.  How can we make sense of it all (here's a podcast that speaks to the issues)?  Question is:  are we able to handle such questions and challenges?  Are you "prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15)?

Tim Keller’s book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, provides crucial help for these current (and perennial) challenges.

In an interview at The Gospel Coalition, Keller says, “Most cultures—unlike our own—expect suffering as inevitable and see it as a means of strengthening and enriching us. Our secular culture, on the other hand, is perhaps the worst in history at helping its members face suffering.”

The Bible’s teaching on suffering is “profoundly realistic because it tells us suffering is inevitable.  No one escapes it.  We shouldn’t be surprised and shocked by it.  The Bible is terribly matter-of-fact about the reality that the world is filled with misery.  Yet it offers not merely a spiritual afterlife but the hope of a renewed creation, the resurrection, and a material world wiped clean of decay and suffering and death.  No other religion promises such a thing.”

And from the book:  “You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have” (p. 5).  “Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t cer­tain that God is for you and with you” (58).  “Suffering is actually at the heart of the Christian story” (77).  “The best people often have ter­ri­ble lives. Job is one example, and Jesus—the ultimate ‘Job,’ the only truly, fully innocent sufferer—is another” (133).  “Jesus lost all his glory so that we could be clothed in it.  He was shut out so we could get access. He was bound, nailed, so that we could be free. He was cast out so we could approach.  And Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you: that is being cast away from God” (180-81).

Joni Eareckson Tada has herself written extensively on the topic of suffering (see, e.g., this article written on the 50th anniversary of the accident when she broke her neck), and she highly recommends Keller's book:  "Walking with God through Pain and Suffering may be the most comprehensive contemporary book on the subject. And for me, that’s saying something.... Tim Keller does a righteous job of showcasing to us, and to the world, that Jesus is worth trusting. Period. End of argument."

Friends, if you can make time now in the midst of the virus quarantines to read this Bible-rich book, do it.  You'll find that it’s good medicine.