Six years ago, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s is a gastrointestinal disease that causes abdominal pain and exhaustion, along with a higher risk of colon cancer. For me, it also caused narrowing at the end of my small intestine that had to be removed through surgery.
When I was initially going through treatment, it was disorienting. I was constantly exhausted, which made it hard to be emotionally present. As I had more appointments, doctors started talking about the risk of an ostomy bag and cancer. I felt scared, frustrated, and confused.
As I was going through the process for treatment and surgery, there were many times that I questioned God. Why was the medication not working? Where was he in my sadness and pain? Why was remission elusive?
It was only after my surgery that I encountered God’s love in a deeper way than I had before. As my wife and I sat down for our first meal together after I was discharged from the hospital, I experienced God’s presence in a profound way. As we reflected on God’s faithfulness throughout my treatment, I felt an overwhelming sense that God is a savior who sympathizes with us in our pain and promises an eternity of experiencing his love.
When Jesus sees us in our suffering, his heart is not calloused, distant, or apathetic. According to Matthew 11, at the very core of his being, Jesus is gentle and lowly. He welcomes the weary and exhausted. When others saw needy crowds, he saw sheep in need of a shepherd.
When we encounter suffering, our tendency is often to distance ourselves. But for Christ, sickness and disease always prompted deeper tenderness and affection. Our weakness only makes him love us more.
Instead of remaining distant from our suffering, Jesus took it upon himself. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “Human religiosity directs people in need to the power of God in the world…. The Bible directs people toward the powerlessness and the suffering of God; only the suffering God can help.” For Bonhoeffer, this was more than an abstract theological idea. This was the reality that gave him hope as he was persecuted and eventually murdered by the Nazi regime.
Jesus was also intimately familiar with suffering and persecution. Isaiah calls him the “man of sorrows.” He was afflicted, grieved, persecuted, rejected, and ultimately crucified. Which is exactly what makes him so radical. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, the gods were known for their power, immortality, and selfishness. But the Gospels teach that our all-powerful and sovereign God chose to become vulnerable as an act of love. He brings healing, not through impenetrable strength, but through his wounds.
Dorothy Sayers writes, “For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. … He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.” The suffering of Jesus shows that God is not absent in our pain. God loves us so much that he was willing to take evil onto himself so that we could experience his goodness.
Over the years, people have frequently asked me how God could allow evil. This question is both philosophical and deeply personal. As a pastor, I walk with people through the worst areas of suffering. The physical abuse that broke a marriage. A murder that robbed a family of their child. An earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people near a friend’s hometown. If God is loving, why does he allow war, abuse, disease, and death?
Philosophers have also wrestled with this question. The atheist intellectual J. L. Mackie writes: “In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists.”
Scholars call this the logical problem of evil. But surprisingly, most philosophers today reject this argument. The explanation from Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has been widely accepted. Plantinga shows that if you can provide at least one reason that God might permit evil, then the logical objection is satisfied. He then provides a hypothetical “free will defense.” He argues that God could choose to permit evil so that human beings could have free will. Therefore, evil and God can co-exist.
In fact, the existence of evil is difficult to explain without a belief in God. Secular intellectuals have recognized the intimate bond between God’s existence and objective morality. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre writes that “everything is permissible if God does not exist.” The atheist scientist Richard Dawkins holds that “the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Objective morality collapses without a moral lawgiver.
If anything, the existence of evil is evidence for God. Thomas Aquinas writes: “There would be no evil if the order of good were taken away…. But this order would not exist if there were no God.” Without God, there is no transcendent moral order. But because God exists, it is possible to distinguish good from evil.
This argument converted the renowned philosopher Alister McGrath. When he started his undergraduate studies at Oxford, he was a committed atheist who was deeply passionate about justice. But during his studies, he realized that he lacked a metaphysical basis for his belief in human rights. Science could explain how things operate, but it could not explain why things matter. Objective morality could only exist if God provided it. He embraced Christianity, not to replace his longings for justice, but to fulfill them.
While this is logically consistent, what about the existential ache we all feel when faced with grief? Every worldview is confronted with this question. Buddhism explains suffering as karma, a kind of payback for our mistakes. Atheism implies that suffering is pointless. We are a collection of atoms in a meaningless universe.
But Christianity offers something better. Our pain has a purpose because we suffer in the presence of a loving God who suffered with us and for us. God can even use suffering in our lives to make us into people of greater joy and love.
This theme is everywhere in the Old Testament. While Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, God used this betrayal to make Joseph the leader of a nation and the protector of his family. Esther was forced into a harem but became a queen who rescued her people from genocide. Daniel faced the lions’ den, but God rescued him to show the Babylonians his power.
While this ancient view of suffering has endured for millennia, the modern West has largely rejected it. As Charles Taylor observes, people no longer see suffering as something useful or formative. In a society obsessed with the internal feelings of the self, suffering must be avoided at all costs.
While this utopian ideal sounds appealing, it is ultimately unlivable. We will all face suffering. The question is not whether we will suffer but how. And Christianity offers, by far, the greatest resources for facing suffering with hope.
Christianity teaches that suffering is both excruciating and remarkably formative. George MacDonald writes, “The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” When Jesus suffered, it was an expression of sacrificial love and a pathway to greater joy. His humiliation led to his exaltation and his death to new life.
The same is true for every Christian. In God’s hands, every cross we carry is a chisel. He uses suffering to carve the love of Christ deeper into our souls. This means that when we have a medical scare, or watch another dream fade, or face the tragedy of death, Jesus is present with us in our pain and sympathizing with us. Through every area of suffering, God brings us closer to his heart.
Last year, I was talking with a friend of mine who recently lost his wife to cancer. He told me about multiple close friends and family members that he had lost. He shared about caring for his mom while she was dying of cancer, providing respite care for his dad while he passed, and losing multiple close friends through sudden accidents. Then he said, “God used all of those deaths to prepare me to love my wife through her cancer.” The deaths themselves were horrible, a result of the fallenness of our world. But even through the worst suffering, God demonstrated his love in and through him.
Because of Jesus, any suffering Christians experience is not a punishment but instead a preparation for glory. In 2 Corinthians 4:17, Paul writes, “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” Suffering in this life is temporary, but the joy we experience in heaven will be eternal. Samuel Rutherford writes, “When we shall look back to pains and sufferings, then shall we see … that our little inch of time suffering is not worthy of our first night’s welcome home to heaven.” An eternity of love will outweigh any earthly sorrow.
While hope in heaven gives Christians hope, it is not without its critics. Karl Marx accused Christians of devaluing our present lives, saying that religion is “the opium of the people.” By this, he meant that although religion may bring relief in suffering, it is ultimately illusory and even manipulative.
But study after study confirms the opposite. Practicing Christians are far more likely to donate money and prioritize volunteering. Religious people also have longer life spans and higher rates of happiness. Religion is less like dope and more like a miracle drug.
History shows the same. Over the last 2,000 years, hope in heaven has compelled Christians to restore the world around them. C. S. Lewis writes,
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. … Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Following the example of Jesus, Christians work to establish heaven on earth.
Our work to restore creation is based on the resurrection. Through his resurrection, Jesus inaugurated his kingdom and began the process of renewing creation. Today, Christians do the same. We are like gardeners stewarding the world around us as we wait for the return of our Savior.
But the resurrection is not merely an example to follow. It is also the foundation of our hope in heaven. Because Jesus rose again, we will be raised too. Some think that this is unscientific or even absurd. But the historical evidence is clear—we have all the evidence we would expect if Jesus truly did rise from the dead two thousand years ago.
The resurrection is God’s blueprint for overcoming evil. Death is reversed, suffering is healed, and grief gives way to hope. It is the ultimate declaration that God can bring a greater good out of any evil. Out of the greatest evil imaginable—the death of the Son of God on a cross—God accomplished our salvation.
Because the resurrection is real, death has died. Tim Keller found hope in this promise as he faced his own cancer and eventual death. He writes, “Death used to be able to crush us, but now all death can do is plant us in God’s soil so we become something extraordinary.” Death is now a doorway to new life.
I experienced this last fall when I lost my great-aunt, Rosa. She was like a grandmother to me. And her last year was full of suffering. After talking with her while she was in the hospital, I wept. But at her graveside service, her pastor spoke with confidence and hope. He said, “Anyone who knew Rosa knew that the person she loved more than anyone was Jesus Christ. Today, she is with her greatest love, experiencing unsurpassable joy.”
While death is real and tragic, it is also a weak and dying enemy on its last leg. Heaven is the ultimate answer to evil. All suffering will one day end. We look forward to a day when we will behold God’s face and encounter his love in a way greater than we can imagine.
