Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

Book Review (Tim Keller)

"Is there anything you would revisit now, having spelled out the theory, now that you have lived the practice of it; is there anything you'd write differently or think differently now? Would you change anything about this book, now that you are facing death?"

Tim Keller: "No".

I wish I had read this book last year, but perhaps I was not ready for it. Keller wrote this book after many years of pastoral experience, and his own experience with thyroid cancer. However the quote above is taken from an interview four months before his recent death from pancreatic cancer. When faced with his own impending mortality, Keller said that he wouldn't change anything this book, but that he had had to learn to live these lessons in a new and deeper way.

[I apologise that this is quite a lengthy review. I went on a tangent of personal reflection which I hope is valuable to you as well.]

This book falls into three parts. The first is a more philosophical treatment of the idea of suffering and evil in the world, and how various philosophies and cultures understand it, and how we ought to understand it on a more intellectual level. Part two puts together the biblical data to provide a more personal approach to suffering and evil. Part three then comes down to the nuts and bolts of facing suffering and enduring it.

Part 1: Understanding the Furnace

The first thing I appreciate about this section is that it doesn't begin with the 'problem of evil', but instead a different question - how do different cultures/religions/traditions make sense of suffering and provide resources to face it? Given the fact of human suffering, we see that (traditional) cultures come up with various ways to face it, explaining its cause, resolution, and appropriate response. Here Keller draws upon sociology and anthropology to show, for example, how a Fatalistic approach sees suffering as destiny, its resolution is glory and honour, and the appropriate response is resolute endurance. One can see this in, e.g. some European traditional religions (Norse for instance), as well as Stoicism.

In contrast, secular western societ(ies), by embracing a naturalistic worldview that thinks the only purpose in life is happiness and comfort, can provide no greater meaning or significance for suffering, and so suffering is only and ever an interruption of our pursuit of the good life. This being so, it is uniquely ill-equipped to provide people with the resources to make sense, or make it through, suffering.

Christianity stands against the typology of four different approaches: it asserts the reality of suffering against the idea of illusion, gives space to heartfelt expression of grief instead of stalwart silence, believes that suffering is often unjust and unwarranted in the face of karmic doctrines, and does not trade on a dualistic worldview that sees suffering as ipso facto virtuous. Lastly, "contra secularism, suffering is meaningful" - it serves a purpose, and learning to walk through suffering serves that purpose.

Keller also talks about the way that Christianity offers a better psychological resource for facing suffering. He finds this, for example, in the early church's apologetic that Christians "suffered and died better" than pagans. Why? Because they had "both a greater room for sorrow and a greater basis for hope". The Christian doctrine of resurrection gives a hope of a personal future existence (with our loved ones); death is no longer the crusher of all our dreams. It also gave greater room for sorrow, because when our greatest love is God, a love that cannot be lost, we can face (and grieve) the loss of everything else with heartfelt sorrow that does not crush us.

Also of great interest is the way that he argues that specifically Deism and the loss of the immanent frame (drawing on Charles Taylor), create the conditions for a kind of belief in God specifically unable to cope with the problem of suffering. A view of God as distant and uncaring, of humans as able to understand everything, and of the world existing for our benefit, creates the crisis that God and suffering are incompatible.

Secularism as a philosophy has no way to make sense of suffering except as an intractable evil. It cannot see a purpose to suffering, and so the question of why a god, all good and all powerful, would allow suffering is always, for the secularist, that such a god could not have any possible reason to do so. This leads into chapter four's treatment of the 'problem of evil' on a philosophical level. Here Keller treats theodicies and defences of God alike. I think most powerfully, he shows how the idea that suffering is a moral problem for the existence of God is an unsustainable objection precisely because it relies upon, and existentially hits us, with the sense that suffering is an evil. The very existence of our moral objection testifies to our sense of objective morality, to something greater than the natural world. A consistent atheist ought to be (I would say), a nihilist, committed to the meaninglessness of existence.

You know, since Keller died a little over a week ago, I've been reading this book, and listening to some of his talks, and both reading and watching some of the memorials for him (I've put together something of a collection now at the end of that post), and one of the thoughts that has come to me as I read this section was to reflect on how suffering shows you what your functional saviours and idols of the heart are - the things that you think "Oh, well I can't be happy without X". This is part of Keller's reading of Luther.

But Keller combines this with his reading of Augustine, in that the problem we have is not that we are too attached to the good things on of this world. Or, at least, that's not quite the right way to frame our problem. I think that that is often how we think - "oh, I care too much about my friends and family and reputation and success and being thought-well-of and pleasing people and enjoying x, y, z" and so we correspondingly think, "I need to care less about this transitory things". This isn't Christianity, it's Buddhism (or sometimes Stoicism). It's the idea that our attachment to things is the cause of our suffering, and so the solution is detachment. Christianity offers something different - yes, we are grieved when we suffer the loss of good things, most of all when death takes those we love. We are supposed to be grieved. But the remedy is not detachment, it's that we are supposed to love God more. When our greatest love and our deepest joy are found in God, we find a deeper security, a surer anchor, a greater joy, which stops us idolising these other things, and lets us love them in second place where they are meant to be instead of first place where God is meant to be.

Here’s Keller quoting C.S.Lewis on the same:

It is probably impossible to love any human being simply “too much.” We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the many, that constitutes the inordinacy. (p.283, from C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

Honestly, I found this an incredibly encouraging and liberating thought. Because it made me realise that "caring less" wasn't necessarily what I need, and in fact isn't really right at all. That of course we are supposed to love people, yet love them properly and truly. And we ought to want our loves to endure beyond death. That is part of why death is such a profound tragedy, a great evil. It ought not be so. Why we are right to grieve at the death of those we love, because death stands as the enemy that robs us of our hopes and denies us our loves and swallows us all in the end. Only one thing can treat this - the hope of resurrection. This is why the comfort of the resurrection - Jesus' and then ours - is likewise such a profound one. It does not take away the darkness of the night, but instead promises the glimmer of the dawn.

What I needed then, was not to care less about people, not to detach myself and shut my heart down and become indifferent to people. Rather, to care more - about God. Finding my greatest love and greatest joy more and more and more in him, so that I can also love and enjoy people in him rather than in themselves. That, lately, has been more and more my prayer and my longing and my experience. Our heart's true north, its home from restless wandering, its pearl of great price, its deepest delight and greatest love is supposed to be God.

Photo by Ludomił Sawicki on Unsplash

Part 2: Facing the Furnace

It's one thing to philosophise suffering. It's another to speak to one's heart when it's happening. In this section Keller puts together a multifaceted way to understand the Bible's teaching in relation to suffering. Here we find the clear expression that suffering and evil are not part of God's original intent for human life, but are the tragic consequence of the Fall; that while suffering in general is a judgment and consequence, suffering in particular is not (usually or necessarily) a judgment for any particular sin; that future judgment means God will put an end to evil, and that future restoration means that God will set the world aright; that in the incarnation God became subject to suffering, and experienced its greatest depths on the cross, so that we know that whatever reason God has for allowing suffering, it can't be because he doesn't love us.

This section is rich in theological goodness. Putting together the sovereignty and suffering of God helps us to see how both are needed, how they work together to provide a better account of suffering than our alternatives.

In the second half of this part (chapters 8-10), Keller then begins to turn to how suffering may work in our lives for the good. How suffering can magnify God's glory, and how it can be a part of our stories in shaping us into better people. Not in a shallow moral sense, but in a profound sense - suffering so often strips away so many of our earthly idols, and our false conceptions of God, and leaves us on the rock, face to face with God as he is, strengthening and sustaining us through the storm.

Lastly in this part, Keller considers the varieties of suffering: those brought on by our own (culpable) actions (like David or Jonah), suffering at the hands of others especially as the cost of doing right (like Paul or Jeremiah), the suffering of loss (the common lot of all in this life, like Mary and Martha), and the mysterious suffering that comes from nowhere (like Job). This is a helpful little analysis, and dovetails with a consideration of how the right medicine for each person in each situation varies and differs. No one treatment helps all people in all cases.

I should note before moving on that every chapter in the first two parts ends with a personal story from someone on their own walking through suffering story. Pretty much all of these are gripping and moving, some are stories of incredible sorrow. But in each there shines through the goodness of God, and how they got through, and what God did not do for them, but to them, through that experience.

Part 3: Walking with God in the Furnace

But how does one, especially as a Christian, endure suffering well? Keller begins by noting how the predominant metaphor in the Bible for this is walking - not standing, not avoiding, but walking through suffering. Slow, steady, progress through the darkness or the fire. He then offers eight ways that help us do so. Not steps, not necessarily all relevant all the time to all people, but a set of seven things that all work together in overlapping ways to help us walk through. They are weeping, trusting, praying, thinking, thanking, loving, and hoping.

As I read these chapters I think I realised that I had in fact done many of these things, but had learnt to do them in a new way too. And yet, these aren't just short chapters of "okay, you need to pray". No, these are full-bodied chapters in which Keller brings various parts of the Scripture to bear on these practices. I often think of good Bible interpreters in light of Matthew 13:52:

He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”

That is, a good reader of Scripture helps you see new facets, new dimensions, of the old, old story. There's some of that wonder in here too. For example, in the chapter on trusting, I saw new dimensions and depths to the Joseph story. In the chapter on praying I saw new dimensions to the book of Job, despite the fact that I spent ten weeks leading a study on it earlier this year. And those insights make me go, "Huh, why did I never quite see that before?" and "Gee, I want to share this with others!"

If you’re a human, you will face suffering. If you haven’t yet faced anything substantial, just keep living. Christianity offers so much. It doesn’t give one ‘all the answers’, but we have a sovereign God who uses evil to defeat itself and to work all things for a wondrous good more marvellous than we can fathom, and at the same time deeply loves us so much that he suffered with us and for us. And in the Scriptures we find a cornucopia of ways to help us walk through suffering, through the furnace, and come out the other side the better for it.

I could wish not to have suffered, but I could not wish to be the person I was before suffering. Suffering will either drive you closer to God, or away from him. I hope that for you, reader, as for me, it draws you ever closer to him.

Post-Script:
Among the several reflections I’ve read/watched/listened to in the last week from close friends of Keller, one of the (several) things that strikes me is how in the last years of his life he felt the need and desire to be ever more prayerful; that one of the things that he most wished he’d learnt earlier was to pray more; that the book he most wanted people to be reading was his book on prayer. It has been such a spur to me, to think that there is nothing quite so needed in my daily life than to simply be in the presence of the Lord, conversing with him.