Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

by Timothy Keller, 2013

The definitive book on pain and suffering and God. Why suffering exists (why does God allow evil), the different types of suffering, suffering in history, how to suffer, where is God in the suffering. It used to be that people did not find suffering such a shock or something to be avoided. Suffering was a part of life; people did not question it. In our modern world, we look at suffering as something to be avoided at all costs and that creates problems; addictions, idolatry, lack of belief and faith in God.

Suffering cannot be avoided this side of heaven but you can be sure that God is with you; cling to Him, don’t let go of Him. He is working out something magnificently beautiful, meaningful, and rich beyond our wildest imagination through our suffering. Suffering is not His intent, nor did He create it or cause it, but He is with you in it. He, alone, is the answer. Nothing in this world will ultimately cure or satisfy. Only Him.

The Bible never promises a life free from suffering (until heaven) but it does promise God with us. Jesus, the ultimate innocent sufferer, is the proof. No one suffered more than He did in enduring the punishment, the wrath of God, that we deserved for our sin. And then He experienced total separation from God, something no one in Christ will ever have to experience. Because He suffered for us, thereby conquering sin, death and evil, we never have to experience the complete separation from God (NO light, NO love, NO joy, NO goodness whatsoever). And not only that, He is with us in our suffering and because of Him, we have hope – the hope of resurrection, of a Judgment Day when all evil will be avenged and finally banished, and those who are in Christ Jesus will live with Him in eternal joy, where there will be no more death, crying, nor pain, and God Himself will wipe away every tear.

In our suffering, look to Jesus, really look at Jesus, and worship and praise Him for what He did for us on the cross. We can be sure that God is not punishing us because God put all the punishment we deserved on Jesus. And we can be certain that God cares for us, loves us, because He gave us Jesus. And we can be sure He is with us and is going to make something beautiful, even more beautiful than it would have been, because of and through our suffering.

I need to buy this book. I put a sticky note on almost every page because almost every page contains some idea or truth that I want to remember.

Here are some of the meaningful truths from this book:

In the chapter called The Victory of Christianity, he writes:

Luther preached that there was nothing more important for a person than to see that he or she could contribute nothing whatsoever to one’s own salvation. We can be fully accepted and counted leglly righteous in God’s sight through faith in Christ, solely by free grace. To understand and grasp this is to finally know freedom from the crushing burden of proving yourself–to society, family, other people, or even to yourself. It means freedom from fear of the future, from an anxiety about your eternal destiny. It is the most liberating idea possible and it ultimately enables you to face all suffering, knowing that because of the cross, God is absolutely for you and that because of the resurrection, everything will be all right in the end.
from page 49

In the same chapter:

It is as we get larger in our own eyes, less dependent on God’s grace and revelation, and surer that we understand how the universe works and how history should go that the problem of evil becomes so intolerable. And it is only as God becomes more remote–a God who is all-loving only in the abstract, not in the sense of having suffered and died for us to rescue us from evil–that he seems unbearably callous in the face of pain. In short, theism without certainty of salvation or resurrection is far more disillusioning in the midst of pain than is atheism. When suffering, believing in God thinly or in the abstract is worse than not believing in God at all.
from page 60

In telling their story of losing an infant son to SIDS and God not answering their prayers to raise him as He did Lazarus, a couple writes:

Tim Keller once said that God gives us what we would have asked for if we knew everything that He knows. The idea that the prince of Heaven would empty himself and become poor, to live and dwell among us is humbling. The idea that there is nothing in the human experience that God himself has not suffered, even losing a child, is sustaining. 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.
from pages 62 and 63

In the chapter titled, The Challenge to the Secular, he develops the ideas that Christianity provides comfort to sufferers whereas other religions and philosophies do not.

After the December 2012 Newtown shootings, “President Obama delivered a eulogy that was essentially a sermon, speaking of God “calling the children home.” He quoted extensively from 2 Corinthians 4 and 5 and used its hope for a world and life beyond this one to console and make bearable the losses we experience here and now.”

In the same chapter he writes about the historical march toward a smaller picture of God to a larger picture of self. And as we do that, we lose hope, because:

As Richard Shweder and Andrew Delbanco perceive, each in his own way, the “life story” that modern culture gives people does not have any ultimate goal more important that one’s own comfort and power. As Frankl saw, when we have no meaning beyond personal happiness, suffering can lead very quickly to suicide.
from page 77

In the same chapter in a subsection called, The Call for Humility, he writes about the story of Naaman in 2 Kings who was looking for a cure for his leprosy and went to the Israelite king who tore his robes and said, “Am I God?” Then, he writes:

The whole Western world today needs to listen to this cry of the king of Israel. When we confront suffering, we think that what will solve it is a change in public policy, or the best expertise in psychology and therapy, or technological advances. But the world’s darkness is too deep to be dispelled merely by such things. It is wrong, in our pride, to believe that we can control and defeat the darkness with our knowledge. Most of the time, we do not admit how dark the world is, but when events like 9/11 or the Newtown massacre happen, that fact presses down on us almost intolerably. And we should not be passive in the face of disasters and tragedies. If a change in public policy would prevent a particular form of the darkness from happening again, we should by all means do whatever it takes.
And yet it is crucial to realize at the same time that such measures will never be enough. Pain and evil in this world are pervasive and deep and have spiritual roots. They cannot be completely reduced to empirical causes that can be isolated and entirely eliminated.
from page 79

In the chapter called, The Problem of Evil, he delves into how a good, perfect, loving God can allow evil in the world. He starts with this:

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.
from page 85

He goes on to discuss that, as we have become more and more modern in thought and technology, and think we are in control, the problem of evil and God grows:

Modern discussions of the problem of suffering start with an abstract God–a God who, for the sake of argument, is all-powerful and all-good, but who is not glorious, majestic, infinitely wise, beginningless, and the creator and sustainer of all things. No wonder, then, that modern people are far more prone than their ancestors to conclude that, if they can see no good reason for a particular instance of suffering, God could not have any justifiable reasons for it either. If evil does not make sense to us, well, then evil simply does not make sense.
from page 87

He discusses in The Argument(s) Against God from Evil how philosophers went from believing that since evil exists, there can’t be a good, all-perfect, all-powerful God, to stating that, “The idea that evil disproves the existence of God, wrote philosopher William Alston, “Is now acknowledged on (almost) all sides to be completely bankrupt.”

In “Soul-Making” and Suffering, he discusses the idea that God uses evil to make us find Him and grow spiritually. But there are big problems with this idea: “First, pain and evil do not appear in any way to be distributed according to soul-making need. Many people with bad souls get very little of the adversity they apparently need, and many with great souls get an amount that seems to go far beyond what is necessary for spiritual growth. Also, this theodicy does not speak to or account for the suffering of little children or infants who die in pain, or even for the suffering of animals.”

He then discusses in detail in God, Freedom, and Evil, the idea that evil exists because God gave us free will. He concludes that that idea doesn’t fully explain evil in the world because first, it only explains evil caused by man, not natural evil; second, it assumes God couldn’t design us to choose good over evil in the first place (He certainly could have done that and He will give us a sin-free, perfect world in the end); and third, being free to sin takes us deeper into slavery rather than freedom. Fourth and most compelling:

There is another strand of biblical teaching that undermines the free will theodicy. 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 (cf. 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. There are scores of other examples of this. So God can give free will and still direct the outcomes of our choices to fit into his plan for history.
from pages 92 and 93

He ends the section on free will with this:

In short, could the gift and maintenance of free will be the only or main reason God allows evil?…If God has good reasons for allowing the pain and misery we see, the reasons must extend beyond the mere provision of freedom of choice.
from page 93

In The Problem with All Theodicies, the conclusion is that no one has ever come up with an airtight explanation of why God allows evil. (Theodicy is “the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.”) It leaves us with the option of choosing to believe in God or not. But Christianity is the only victorious answer because God sent His only Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). God sent Himself to suffer like no one has ever suffered, out of love for us, so that we can be with Him forever, here on earth and forever in heaven.

He writes:

Taken all together, the various theodicies can account for a great deal of human suffering–each theodicy provides some plausible explanations for some of the evil in the world–but they always fall short, in the end, of explaining all suffering. … 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.
from page 95

A woman named Mary gives her story – alcoholic mother, Jesus finding her, then an abusive first husband, finding her father and him sexually abusing her, finding a loving man (a deacon) who was married, marrying him and having children, all the children ending up bad (arrested and schizophrenic), husband has strokes, they lose everything. Here is what she writes:

Life has not changed. But God is changing me.
What I discovered about heartaches and problems, especially the ones that are way beyond what we can handle, is that maybe those are the problems He does permit precisely because we cannot handle them or the pain and anxiety they cause. But He can. …
I spent my entire life looking for, and never finding, a recipe to go from despair to hope. It did not come from anything I did or didn’t do. Hope comes not in the solution to the problem but in focusing on Christ, who facilitates the change.
from pages 108 and 109

In The Challenge to Faith, he writes about Genesis 3, the fall:

Genesis 3 confirms this intuition in great detail, showing us the origin of the world’s darkness and how it unfolded out of our refusal to let God be our lord and king. When we turned from God and lost that relationship, all other relationships fell apart. Because we rejected his authority everything about the world–our hearts, emotions, bodies, our relationships to other people, and our relationship to nature itself–stopped working as it should.
from page 114

He goes on to say:

If there really is an infinitely glorious God, why should the universe revolve around us rather than around him? If we look at the biblical God’s standards for our behavior — the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount — and then consider humanity’s record against those norms, it may occur to us that the real riddle of evil is not what we thought. Perhaps the real puzzle is this: Why, in light of our behavior as a human race, does God allow so much happiness?
from page 115

In discussing Judgment Day in The Renewal of the World, he says:

The second Christian doctrine that speaks so well to our hearts is that of the final judgment and the renewal of the world. Many people complain that they cannot believe in a God who judges and punishes people. But if there is no Judgment Day, what about all the enormous amount of injustice that has been and is being perpetrated? If there is no Judgment Day, then there are only two things to do–lose all hope or turn to vengeance.
…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.
…But it is what lies on the far side of Judgment Day that is of the deepest consolation to sufferers. Peter van Inwagen writes: “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.
As we have said, there is no fully satisfying theodicy that completely shows why God is justified in allowing evil. …
But why could it not be that God allowed evil because it will bring us all to a far greater glory and joy than we would have had otherwise? 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?
…But we must realize that the most rapturous delights you have ever had–in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace — are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1-3).
from pages 116-118

In The Wounds of God, he tries to describe the suffering Jesus went through for us – more than we could ever bear; the worst suffering imaginable–total separation from God:

The New Testament teaches that Jesus was God come in the flesh–“in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwelled bodily” (Col 2:9). He was God yet he suffered. He experienced weakness, a life filled “with fervent cries and tears” (Heb 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” (Heb 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. There is no greater inner agony than the loss of a love relationship. We cannot imagine, however, what it would be like to lose not just a human relationship that has lasted for some years but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. The separation would have been infinitely unbearable. And so Jesus experienced Godforsakenness itself on the cross when he cried out, “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?
from page 120

And Jesus suffering for us means:

See what this means? 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.
from page 121

In The Light in the Darkness, he discusses the darkness of our world and the darkness inside ourselves:

…Consider the scientific and technological advances that have brought untold benefits in health care and communication. The communication revolution has even been credited with bringing down the Iron Curtain and ending the Cold War. Yet many well-informed people now are afraid that terrorists will use that technology to bring down whole sectors of the electronic grid and wipe out trillions in wealth and bring on a worldwide depression. Nuclear energy is also a great source of power when harnessed properly, yet we know the likelihood of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. When a new development pushes back evil in one form, evil always finds a way to use that development to bring itself home to us in new shapes and form.
Why? It is because the evil and darkness of this world comes to a great degree from within us.
from page 123

I like these three statements from page 124:

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.
His death and resurrection created a people in the world who now have a unique and powerful ability to diminish the evil in their own hearts as well as a mandate to oppose and endure without flagging the evil they find in their communities and society.
The Bible says that Jesus is the light of the world. If you know you are in his love, and that nothing can snatch you out of his hand, and that he is taking you to God’s house and God’s future–then he can be a light for you in dark places when all other lights go out.
various statements from page 124

In Georgianna’s story of forgiveness, she tells how she and her husband were wrongly accused of child abuse, their children removed, the years fighting this charge until they finally regained their children, and then confronting the woman who wrongly charged them:

He miraculously changed my perspective–I suddenly saw myself in this flawed woman facing me. How many mistakes have I made in my life? How many people have I hurt, intentionally or unintentionally: How many times have I allowed pride to prevent me from doing the right thing? How, after all, was I different from my accuser?
I believe our story does have a happy ending, but the truth is, our story is never-ending. And I praise God that He is still writing chapters of my life. My family and I are humbly grateful for the suffering our Father endures with us. Without it, we would be comfortable living our “old normal,” instead of courageously living our “new normal.
from page 129

In the chapter, The Sovereignty of God, he says, “Suffering is both just and unjust. God is both a sovereign and a suffering God.” Because of these two truths, we understand that suffering is multi-faceted, there is no one-size-fits-all way to cope, and because of the cross and the new creation, we have hope. He describes the different types of suffering:

Suffering as Justice and Judgement (suffering is a result of original sin but God’s final redemption will be glorious; in the meantime, sometimes we reap what we sow.)

Suffering as Injustice and Mystery (some instances of suffering are not a result of specific sin; Job, Jesus, the man born blind in John 9-“Much suffering is mysterious and unjust.”)

Suffering as the Enemy of God (when Jesus is at the tomb of Lazarus, he is “deeply moved,” but the Greek word means “to bellow with anger;” Jesus is enraged at all the evil and suffering caused by the enemy. “So Jesus is furious at evil, death, and suffering and, even though he is God, he is not mad at himself. This means that evil is the enemy of God’s good creation, and of God himself. And Jesus’ entire mission was to take evil on and end it. But, as we have seen, evil is so deeply rooted in the human heart that if Christ had come in power to destroy it everywhere he found it, he would have had to destroy us too.”)

In Suffering, Justice, and Wisdom, here are some good statements:

But another controlling reality is that the creation order–the fabric of this world–is frayed or broken through. Suffering and pain are distributed disproportionately so that often the innocent suffer more and the wicked suffer less. In light of this second reality, we must be very slow to assume that suffering has come upon us or others because of not living right. We must not look at parents with children gone off the rails, or racial groups with a lot of poverty and crime, or gay people who are dying of AIDs and assume that, if we are not suffering in the same way as they, we are morally superior to them in God’s eyes.
…This balance–that God is just and will bring final justice, but life in the meantime is often deeply unfair–keeps us from many deadly errors.
from pages 138 and 139

In The Sovereignty of God, he writes that “God is a sovereign and yet suffering God:”

The Bible goes beyond such abstractions, presenting God as not merely omnipotent but sovereign over every event in history, and it also shows us God as not merely “good and loving” but as entering our world and becoming subject to greater evil, suffering, and pain than any of us have ever experienced.
from page 139

In the section called, God’s Plans and Our Plans, he discusses the idea of free will but also of God’s sovereignty and His directing our paths, i.e., predetermination. The examples from the Bible are Genesis 50:20 when Joseph tells his brothers, “You intended me harm, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of man lives.” Also, Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them who love God.” The crucifixion of Jesus was a definite plan of God, yet those that put Him to death are guilty of sin. Jesus says in Luke 22:22, “The Son of Man will go [to his death] as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him.”

These two paragraphs are good so I’ll include them:

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 (Ex 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 (Ex 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.
Look at the sins in the life of the patriarch Jacob, whose life is recounted in the book of Genesis. Jacob deceived his father and robbed his brother; as a result, he had to flee his homeland and experienced great suffering and injustice in a foreign land. Yet there he met the love of his life and had the children through which Jesus was descended. It is clear that his sin did not put him into a “plan B” for his life. It was all part of God’s perfect plan for him and even for the salvation of the world. Was he therefore not responsible for his sin? No, he was. Did he not suffer consequences for his foolish behavior? Yes, he did. But God was infallibly in control, even as Jacob was completely responsible.
…The sovereignty of God is mysterious but not contradictory. It means that we have great incentive to use our wisdom and our will to the best effect, knowing God holds us to it and knowing we will suffer consequences from foolishness and wickedness. 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. I don’t know a more comforting assurance than that. “God performs all things for me!” cries the psalmist (Ps 57:2).
This teaching has both high-level and practical implications for how we approach suffering. At one level, this means that, as Don Carson writes: “It must be the case that God stands behind good and evil in somewhat different ways; that is, he stands behind good and evil asymmetrically.” ²³⁰ While moral evil cannot be done outside the bounds of God’s purposes, “the evil is not morally chargeable to him” since the perpetrators are responsible.²³¹ Yet since all good impulses in the human heart come ultimately from God (James 1:17)²³²–when good things happen, they are directly attributable to him.
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.
from pages 142-144

In the story of Russ and Sue, Sue gets Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She heard God and felt His presence the night before the diagnosis: “It will be all right, I am with you.” After chemotherapy, the cancer came back with a vengeance. She had to have a stem-cell transplant, high-dose chemo, followed by radiation. The cancer was gone but she got pulmonary fibrosis that only a double lung transplant could cure. A donor was found and the transplant took place. But four months later, signs of rejection occurred. They are able to write: “Yet somehow, God eases the pain, exhaustion, and anger when we cannot bear any more, and encourages us forward. His face appears in the gracious actions of others, and our gratitude runs alongside our sorrow. We know that God is holding us up, working on our behalf. We feel it, see it, and are uplifted by it.”

“We’ve come to accept that we will not have the life of stability and comfort we had hoped. 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. Our real comfort is the promise that “in heaven our joy will be made greater as a result of the depth of our distress.”

In the chapter, The Suffering of God, he writes about Jesus’ suffering for us:

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 (Matt 27:46). This final experience, ultimately unfathomable to us, means infinite, cosmic agony beyond the knowledge of any of us on earth.
from page 150

On page 151, he describes Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus where Jesus asks him, “Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he writes, “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.”

On page 158 in the same chapter, The Suffering of God, he writes:

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.
from page 158

Then he quotes Dostoevsky:

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.²⁵⁹
from page 158

In The Reasons for Suffering, he discusses suffering to glorify God, to glorify God to others, and to glorify God when no one sees:

-To Glorify God – from C.S. Lewis: “God commands us to glorify him because it is only by doing this that we will ever find the rest, satisfaction, and joy in him that we were made for. He directs us to do this not only because it is simply right but also because we need it….All the beauty we have looked for in art or faces or places–and all the love we have looked for in the arms of other people–is only fully present in God himself. And so in every action by which we treat him as glorious as he is, whether through prayer, singing, trusting, obeying, or hoping, we are at once giving God his due and fulfilling our own design.” (from page 168)

On page 169, he talks about God’s glory:

The glory of God also means his supreme importance. The Hebrew word for “glory” is kabod, which means “weight”–literally God’s weightiness. Fortunately we have an English word that has the same lexical range and that functions in the same way–it is the word matter. Matter means “as opposed to the immaterial, something solid, something substantial,” but it can also mean “importance.” And therefore, when the Bible says that God is glorious, it means he should matter, and does matter, more than anything else or anyone else. And if anything matters to you more than God, you are not acknowledging his glory. You are giving glory to something else.
[Then follows a description of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ring of Power and how when it was destroyed, all of Sauron’s power collapses.]
…Only if you make God matter the most–which means only if you glorify him and give him the glory–will you have a safe life.
from page 169

More on God’s Glory:

Glorifying God does not mean obeying him only because you have to. It means to obey him because you want to–because you are attracted to him, because you delight in him. This is what C.S. Lewis grasped and explained so well in his chapter on praising. We need beauty. We go to lengths to put ourselves in front of beautiful places, or surround ourselves with beautiful music, or hang out with beautiful people. But these will leave us empty if we don’t learn to see all of these things as mere tributaries and God himself as the fountain, the headwaters of it all.
So to see God as glorious is not only to admit his incomprehensibility and beyondness, and make him the thing that matters the most, but it is also to work our heart so it finds him the most pleasurable and beautiful thing you know.
from page 170

In Elisabeth Elliot’s 1966 novel, No Graven Image, the main character, Margaret, is helping natives in Ecuador and she gives a man with an infected leg a shot of penicillin and it kills him. God does not save him as she asked and her work there is over because that man is the only one who could help her translate the Bible into their language.

By allowing this man to die, God freed her to worship Him truly, not her image of Him:

Now she had been liberated to put her hope not in her agendas and plans but in God himself. If she could make this change, it would bring a rest and security she had never had. In short, suffering had pointed her to a glorious God, and it had taught her to treat him as such. And when she did so, it freed her from the desperate, doomed, exhausting effort to seek to control all the circumstances of her life and of those she loved.
from pages 172 and 173

Again, the cross:

But, as Jesus says, the hour at which God’s glory was most brilliantly revealed was on the cross (John 12:23, 32). There we see that God is so infinitely, uncompromisingly just that Jesus had to die for sin, but also that God is so absolutely loving that Jesus was willing and glad to die…And so to trust God’s wisdom in our suffering, even when we don’t understand it, is to remember the glory and meaning of the cross.
…So one of the purposes of suffering is to glorify God by simply treating him as the infinite, sovereign, all-wise, and yet incarnate and suffering God that he is. This glorifies God to God–the most fitting thing that can be done. And if we do what fits God and our souls, we will find, as Elisabeth Elliot argues, a rest not based on circumstances.
from page 174

On pages 176 and 177 he tells about a shooter in an Amish community in October of 2006 who murdered five students, then killed himself. The Amish community was able to forgive the shooter. “The forgiveness and love shown by the Amish community toward the shooter and his family was the talk of the entire country.” It was so powerful that the writers of a movie about this created a fictional character who was unable to forgive the gunman, but that was not the truth. The Amish community forgave the shooter. “At the heart of their faith was a man dying for his enemies, and if you are a member of a community that speaks and sings about it–rehearses and celebrates it–constantly, then the practice of forgiving even the murderers of one’s children will not seem impossible.”

In the section, Glorifying God When No One Sees, he writes:

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.
from page 180

We see in Scripture that many of those He loved deeply are also those who suffered greatly.
from page 185, “Life Story: The Canvas of Suffering,” by Gigi

In “Learning to Walk,” “What About Our Glory?” he writes about Matthew 5:6 and 10:39 where Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” And, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

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.
This could not be more contradictory to our Western culture of expressive individualism. And it applies directly to how Christians face suffering. As we have seen, we should trust God because he is God and not our personal assistant or life coach. We should trust him because it is his due, he is worthy of it, not because it will get us something. If we love and obey God for his own sake, not ours, it begins to turn us into something strong and great and wise. If we don’t seek to find ourselves but to find God, we will eventually find both God and ourselves.
from pages 186 and 187

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, because we only feel virtuous when we are in pain. Even without such perspective, suffering tends to make you self-absorbed. If it is seen as mainly about you and your own growth, it will strangle you truly. 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 hear to him as never before.
from pages 187 and 188

Haidt speaks of two basic ways to cope with it–what he calls “active coping and reappraisal” and “avoidance coping and denial.”³⁰³ The latter strategy can lead to disaster, for it includes “working to blunt one’s emotional reactions by denying or avoiding the events, or by drinking, drugs, and other distractions.” The former strategy can lead to real gains, as it combines doing the hard inner work of learning and growing with seeking to change the painful external circumstances. Put another way, Haidt and Davies distinguish steadily walking through suffering from standing still, lying down, or just running away from it.
from pages 189 and 190

In “How God Uses Suffering:”

The Bible explains and confirms the findings of psychologists such as Haidt and Davies. In a host of New Testament passages–Hebrews 12:1-17; Romans 8:18-30; 2 Corinthians 1:3-12, and 4:7-5:5, 11:24-12:10, as well as nearly all of 1 Peter–the Bible teaches us that God uses suffering to remove our weaknesses and build us up.
First, suffering transforms our attitude toward ourselves. It humbles us and removes unrealistic self-regard and pride. It shows us how fragile we are. As Davies points out, average people in Western society have extremely unrealistic ideas of how much control they have over how their lives go. Suffering removes the blinders. It does not so much make us helpless and out of control as it shows us we have always been vulnerable and dependent on God. Suffering merely helps us wake up to that fact and live in accordance with it.
Suffering also leads us to examine ourselves and see weaknesses, because it brings out the worst in us. Our weak faith, sharp tongues, laziness, insensitivity to people, worry, bitter spirit, and other weaknesses in character will become evident to us (and others) in hard times. Some of us are too abrasive, critical, and ungenerous. Some are impulsive and impatient. Others are argumentative, stubborn, and poor listeners. Many people have a great need to control every situation. Some are simply too fragile and self-pitying when discomfited over anything. Suffering will throw these inner flaws into relief during times of stress in a way that enables us to get out of denial and to begin working on them.
Second, suffering will profoundly change our relationship to the good things in our lives. We will see that some things have become too important to us….
Third, and most of all, suffering can strengthen our relationship to God as nothing else can. C.S. Lewis’s famous dictum is true, that in prosperity God whispers to us but in adversity he shouts to us. Suffering is indeed a test of our connection to God. It can certainly tempt us to be so angry at God and at life that we have no desire to pray. Yet it also has the resources to greatly deepen our divine friendship. It starts with analysis. 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….Suffering reveals the impurities or perhaps the falseness of our faith in God. In a sense it is only in suffering that faith and trust in God can be known to be in God, and therefore it is only in suffering that our love relationship with God can become more and more genuine.
Suffering drives us toward God to pray as we never would otherwise. At first this experience of prayer is usually dry and painful. But if we are not daunted and we cling to him, we will often find greater depths of experience and, yes, of divine love and joy than we thought possible. As pastor John Newton wrote to a grieving woman, “Above all, keep close to the throne of grace [in prayer]. If we seem to get no good by attempting to draw near him, we may be sure we shall get none by keeping away from him.”³⁰⁵
from pages 190-192

In “Learning to Walk,” he compares suffering to being in God’s gymnasium:

And so this metaphor tells us that when life is going along just fine, the flaws in our character can be masked and hidden from others and from ourselves. But when troubles and difficulties hit, we are suddenly in “God’s gymnasium”–we are exposed. Our inner anxieties, our hair-trigger temper, our unrealistic regard of our own talents, our tendency to lie or shade the truth, our lack of self-discipline–all of these things come out. Perhaps the trouble was brought on by the presence of these negative qualities. Or maybe the new situation demands a certain response, and it reveals the absence of the positive qualities we need. Either way, the gymnasium shows you who you really are, inescapably.
…The biblical author is right when he says that suffering is painful “at the time” but later yields a harvest.
from page 194

More on suffering as “God’s Gymnasium:”

It takes away self-pity, as we consider what he endured for us without complaining. If he endured infinite suffering and loss for us, we should be able to endure finite grief and loss, knowing that God is working behind the hateful evil to bring out some good in our lives. If we keep our eyes “fixed” on Jesus, we will come through the pain and experience with the deeper peace that can be the result.
from page 196

In “Preparing the Heart for Suffering,” he writes:

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.
Philosopher Simone Weil writes that a soul in affliction finds it difficult to love anything. It must therefore almost force itself to keep loving God and others “or at least wanting to love, though it may only be with an infinitesimal part of itself.” If, during affliction, “the soul stops loving it falls, even in this life, into something almost equivalent to hell.”³⁰⁹ …
If you are going to get through it all, you will need God being with you, helping you pick your way through by learning, grasping, and cherishing many ideas and truths that become powerful and consoling to you.
from pages 198 and 199

The Bible says a great deal about suffering, but it is one thing to have these things stored in the “warehouse of the mind.”³¹⁸ 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.
So we must not ignore either the mind or the heart. By itself mere intellectual reasoning will fall short of what we require for life in this world, and it is cruel to shower a person currently in pain with theological arguments about how God is not responsible for evil and why his wisdom is beyond searching out. As one of the biblical proverbs says, “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart” (Prov 25:20 NIV).
And yet–the theoretical and the practical are intertwined. The experience of suffering automatically raises more philosophical questions in the mind. “Why? What kind of God would allow this?” So using the intellect to make some sense out of suffering is important, but it must be accompanied not merely with knowing about God, but with knowing God.
from pages 201 and 202

A man with ALS says:

I have found that singing hymns and African-American spirituals in my head, because I have not been able to speak for the last eight years, has been helpful. Many hymns are about suffering and speak deeply to my need for a sense of his presence with me in the midst of my pain. These hymns are treasures that modern Christian music doesn’t even approach, some of the best reminders that this world and its troubles is not our true home. Recently, I have been diagnosed with a terminal liver disease. Sometimes I say that I am unfairly suffering, but the only one who went through suffering unfairly was Jesus. His separation from the father on the cross is far beyond anything I could ever experience. How can I complain when he went through that cosmic pain for me? I remember Tim Keller relating the story of a man who was terminally ill and who told him that the sweetness of his life with God as a result of his illness he wouldn’t trade for more years. I have found that to be true in my life as well.
from page 204

In the chapter, “The Varieties of Suffering,” he writes:

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.³¹⁹ But God often appoints some aspect of the brokenness of the world (caused by sin in general: Gen. 3, Rom 8:18ff) to come into our lives to wake us up and turn us to him. The severity of this depends on our heart’s need.
…A Christian man who develops lymphoma should not think he is being punished for a sin, though he must not, on the other hand, miss this opportunity to put his roots down into God and discover a dimension of spiritual growth and wisdom he would never otherwise have had access to.
from page 208

In writing about types of suffering he quotes a biblical scholar named Don Carson in his writing about Job’s friends:

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 cliches that they grate rather than comfort.³²⁹
from page 216

A man named John Feinberg whose family is in dire physical shape made two lists of things people did and said that either helped him or hurt him. Tim Keller writes:

Feinberg’s story is helpful for anyone. But for me as a pastor, the two lists were quite striking. I recognized some things on his “discouraging” list were things that I had seen help suffering people greatly, and some items on his “encouraging” list were ideas that I had seen irritate and anger them. This reveals the remarkable diversity of suffering.
from page 218

A lady named Gloria was diagnosed with double lung cancer and cancer in her brain and lymph nodes just as she was planning to retire. After 9 months of treatment, the tumors shrink in her brain but not her lungs. She now has to be satisfied with containment and CT scans every three months and she feels like maybe she should have opted for a more aggressive treatment at the start. She writes:

However, instead of seeing the tumor stability as good news, I began to feel defeated and blamed myself for not requesting a more aggressive treatment. I became discouraged and could not feel Jesus’ peace in my daily quiet time. What I experienced was not physical pain but misery in the soul, which was totally self-inflicted. But, once again, God reached out to me with an invitation from Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding.” That trust in Jesus required a further total and absolute surrender to His will on a continual basis. Because of God’s profound mercy, I began to see my submission in terms of a greater participation with Christ in His suffering on the cross and His absolute submission of self to the Most High. I continue to pray for God’s grace to accept and guide my surrendering.
Now I have found freedom in anchoring my days and nights with Jesus’ spirit. To live one day at a time without fretting over tomorrow frees me and soothes my suffering. With renewed trust in Jesus comes renewed love, hope, and faith. My focus turns from my pain to His love. I have discovered a new treasure–the gift of pain is the gift of God Himself. In the end, He alone is truly my delight and comfort. I have learned the meaning of 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.”
from page 221

In the section called, “Walking,” he writes about the inevitability of suffering in life but God being with us. Here is Isaiah 43:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. 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 (Isa 43:2-3, 5).
Floods and fire are “terms of extreme hardship.”³³⁶ And notice that, just as in the famous Psalm 23, there is no promise to believers of exemption from trouble. 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.
from page 227

Peter talks about suffering being like a refiner’s fire:

…Like fire working on gold, suffering can destroy some things within us and can purify and strengthen other things.
Or not. It depends on our response. Peter urges his readers in various ways not to be shocked by suffering (1 Pet 4:12), not to give up hope. While suffering, they should “commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good” (1 Pet 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 Pet 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. God himself says in Isaiah 43 that he will be with us, walking beside us in the fire. Knowing him personally while in our affliction is the key to becoming stronger rather than weaker in it.
from pages 228 and 229

In talking about Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego in the fiery furnace:

The “I just know he will rescue us” kind of approach may seem confident on the surface, but underneath, it is filled with anxiety and insecurity. We are scared that maybe he won’t answer the prayer for deliverance. But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego really believed “all the way down” to God. So they were not nervous at all. They were already spiritually fireproofed. They were ready for deliverance or death–either way, they knew God would be glorified and they would be with him. They knew God would deliver them from death or through death.
Their greatest joy was to honor God, not to use God to get what they wanted in life. And as a result, they were fearless. Nothing could overthrow them.
from page 231

In the chapter, Weeping, in the section, A Bruised Reed He Will Not Break:

It is not right, therefore, for us to simply say to a person in grief and sorrow that they need to pull themselves together. We should be more gentle and patient with them. And that means we should also be gentle and patient with ourselves. We should not assume that if we are trusting in God we won’t weep, or feel anger, or feel hopeless.
…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.
…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 broken hearted and heals our wounds (Ps 147:3; Isa 61:1).
[He then gives the example of the prophet Elijah who is suicidal.]
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.
from pages 242 and 243

In the same chapter:

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. A man who lost three sons at various times in his life wrote about grief in The View from a Hearse:
“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.”³⁴⁷
from page 245

In Weeping in the Dark, he gives the example of Psalm 88 by Heman the Ezrahite who is weeping in the dark and asking God, “Where are You?:”

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.
…As we read this [Psalm 88] we learn, first, that believers can stay in darkness for a long time….The effect is to say it is possible to pray and pray and endure and things not really get any better. The Psalm ends without a note of hope, and so its teaching is that a believer can live right and still remain in darkness. Darkness may symbolize either outside difficult circumstances or an inner spiritual state of pain.
…Heman is not praising God–he’s weak and falling apart–yet here is his prayer in the Psalter. It’s an encouragement to be candid about our inner turmoil, to pour it out and express it honestly.
…In the darkest moments we feel we are getting absolutely nothing out of God or out of our relationship to him. But what if then–when it does not seem to be paying or benefiting you at all–you continue to obey, pray to, and seek God, as well as continue to do your duties of love to others? If we do that–we are finally learning to love God for himself, and not for his benefits.
And when the darkness lifts or lessens, we will find that our dependence on other things besides God for our happiness has shrunk, and that we have new strength and contentment in God himself.
from pages 246-249

In The Darkness of Jesus:

It was Jesus who truly experienced the ultimate darkness–the cosmic rejection we deserved–so that we can know the Lord will never leave of forsake us (Heb 13:5). Because he was truly abandoned by God, we only seem to be or feel to be abandoned by him. But we aren’t, despite our failures.
from page 250

In Grieving and Rejoicing:

We should end with a final note on what it means to “rejoice in suffering.” This is not the last time we will treat this subject, but it should now be clear that we should not conceive of this biblical exhortation in purely subjective, emotional terms. Rejoicing cannot strictly mean “have happy emotions.” Nor can it mean that Christians are to simply keep a stiff upper lip and say defiantly, “I won’t let this defeat me!” That is a self-absorbed and self-sufficient response, acting as if you have the strength you need when it will be found only in God. It is unrealistic and even dangerous. Suffering creates inner sorrow, it does make you weak. To deny your hurt–to tell yourself you are just fine, thank you–means you will likely pay a price later. You may find yourself blowing up, or breaking down or falling apart suddenly. Then you will realize you were kidding yourself. You hurt more than you thought you did.
from pages 251 and 252

In Trusting the Hidden God:

It is perhaps most striking of all to realize that if God had given Joseph the things he was likely asking for in prayer, it would have been terrible for him. And we must realize that it was likely that God essentially said no relentlessly, over and over, to nearly all Joseph’s specific requests for a period of about twenty years.
…During all this time in which God seemed hidden, Joseph trusted God nonetheless. As we saw, in the dungeon, Joseph immediately turned to God for help to interpret the dream. He had an intact relationship with the Lord–he had not turned away from him.
We must do the same thing….
from pages 262 and 263