Jasmine Timm – February 12th, 2025 – 10 min read. – client & church resource
There are some news headlines that make you say, “How?”—some events in your life that knock the wind out of you, some forms of evil that are too deep to even begin wrapping our heads around.
As a therapist, I hear stories sometimes that make my head spin, and as a fellow human being, I have walked through my own seasons of suffering that have threatened to overshadow my faith and have at times overwhelmed my sense of safety and stability. Suffering in this world can sometimes feel like a sick joke and can leave us with emotional whiplash and deep cognitive dissonance. We have a sense that it wasn’t supposed to be this way, and we are right to say that. The dilemma many of us face is wanting to know the why behind our suffering. Truth be told, sometimes we just do not know the specifics behind our suffering and the suffering in the world, and I believe sometimes we are not meant to. However, that does not mean that we know nothing. It’s a matter of knowing the specifics versus knowing the general, and I believe sometimes this can be God’s kindness toward us as feeble, dependent human beings. Some things are just too deep and hard for us to understand.
There are some forms of suffering, tragedy and evil that I believe have no “lesson” to be learned, but instead point us to this one reality: sin is much worse than we tend to think, and the effects of sin much darker than we tend to give it credit.
Sin is Worse Than We Think
Every word in the Bible exists for our benefit, and the words in Judges 19-21 are no exception. I’m not sure if you have ever read Judges 19-21, but many of us aren’t quick to go there for encouragement. It’s a disturbing passage that is hard to read, and it’s meant to be that way. The passage is intended to show us just how bad the effects of sin are and just how horrible things become when humanity rejects God as King. The picture painted of sin in the passage is meant to shock us and put on full display how wicked sin really is, and how dark the world can become because of it.
In short, it is one of the worst horror scenes in Israel’s history. Reading it is like reading the script for a horror movie filled with mob violence, abuse, callousness, rape, dismemberment, inhospitality, civil war, brothers killing brothers, kidnapping, and every horror imaginable. The scene unfolding in the passage is like a movie within a movie, reminding us of more horrible scenes from Israel’s history like Sodom and Gomorrah and the Tower of Babel. The worst horror of all is that Israel had broken its covenant with God in almost every way imaginable and as a result, devolved into utter chaos and corruption. The author is showing us that not only are things bad in Israel—they are worse than we think, to the point of near hopelessness. Spiritual and moral corruption have hit not only God’s people, but even the leaders and the priests. When there is no king in Israel—no king to lead God’s people—the consequences are grim: everyone will do what is right in their own eyes, and as a result, will destroy God’s created order and devour one another.
Why do I point us to this scene in Judges as we explore the problem of suffering? Because Judges reassures us that the problem of sin and evil and suffering really is as bad as we think it is, if not worse. When we are faced with unspeakable tragedy, something in us protests and says, “This isn’t right.” The Bible agrees with us there. The human condition apart from God is very, very dark, and should cause us to name that something is deeply wrong. This is the first place we can go when suffering hits: we can lament that something is off, something is broken, and agree with the Scriptures that whatever is happening was not supposed to be this way. We can lament evil.
But what do we long for most when we feel consumed by unspeakable pain and grief? We long to hear, “You are not alone, and you don’t have to go through this alone.” We long for answers, sure. And we long for evil to be defeated—rightfully so. But what we really need more than anything, as creatures created in God’s image who are wired for connection, is to know that we are not abandoned or left alone as we weep.
Sure, we long for answers to the specifics of suffering, and rightfully so—evil should create a type of discomfort in us that longs for resolution. However, sometimes our desire for resolution is met with, “Not yet.” But it’s coming. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not in this lifetime. But our Lord has promised to right every wrong, to wipe every tear from our eyes, to redeem all things one day when he fully unites everything in heaven and earth under his gracious rule and returns bodily to fully redeem and restore every square inch of creation. We have hope, and hope affords us the freedom to not have everything make sense yet.
The Mystery of Christ as an Answer to Our Suffering
The mystery of suffering is agonizing. But there’s another mystery God has made known to us, right here and right now: the mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). God’s greatest mystery is no longer a secret. The mystery is that he has united creation to himself through Christ, who now lives in us and who is with us as God’s redeemed people, who are being built into a new order of humanity as he heals what’s been broken in the world because of sin. All of human history has been moving toward this mystery, and it’s now here.
There are several mysteries still left for us as we wait for Christ’s return, the greatest arguably being the mystery behind the purpose of our suffering. Children don’t always understand everything their parents do, but it is possible for a child to know they are loved and not alone even when they are confused. The same is true for us with our Heavenly Father. Our union with him is one that cannot be stripped from us. He is in us and fills the church with the fullness of himself, promising to never leave or forsake us. I think it is significant that Jesus’ last words in the gospels contain the promise that he will never leave us and the reassurance that he will be with us wherever we go (Matthew 28:20). If we ascend the mountaintops of life, he will be there, and if we are thrown into the depths of unspeakable pain in Sheol, he will be there, too (Psalm 139:8). He is with us always, wherever we go, in whatever hardship we face.
In the meantime, we lament the effects of sin and evil in the world, even if we do not yet understand its purposes. We say with the hymn writer, “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,” but we don’t need to understand exactly how. God says in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Some things are too hard for us to understand, and that’s okay. I do not believe it is our role to try and make sense of the purpose behind every experience of suffering, nor to find lessons in all our pain. As a child trusts his father when life is hard and doesn’t make sense, so too our Father in heaven wants us to trust him. He is kind, not desiring that any should perish, but that all should have eternal life (2 Peter 3:9). When we don’t understand, we can turn back to what we do know: that the problem of evil and suffering really is bad, that God really does love us and walks with us. We can return to the reality that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus, and that pain and evil and death will not have the final word but will be made right someday, somehow.
The painful reality that some things are too high and hard for us to understand is contrasted with the beautiful reality we find in God making himself low to meet us in the depths of human brokenness. We look to Christ who, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
The God whose ways are higher than our ways bends down low to not only meet us in our pain, but to take it on himself as a faithful friend and brother. He says further in John 1:14 that he “took on flesh and dwelt among us,” and in Isaiah 53:3 that he is “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Even more, we know that we do not have “a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 14:5). And perhaps most remarkable of all, God saw it “fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers” (Hebrews 2:10-11). Jesus is not ashamed to identify with humanity. Think about how remarkable that is—in all the dark, twisted, chaotic evil that human beings experience, the God of the heavens, by whom and for whom all things exist, is not embarrassed to become like us, in all our weakness and pain and suffering that results from sin being in us and in the world. That God would become like humanity—in all its sin, sickness, hatred, violence and chaos—is unbelievable. He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. He is not scared off by darkness. Remarkable!
Finding Hope in What We Can Know
There is so much we don’t know in our suffering, but God does not want to confuse us about who he is, how he feels toward us in Christ, and what he is doing in the world with evil. “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:10). So with Paul, I pray for what we can know:
“…that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19).
There’s a lot we don’t know, but we know that the problem of evil is very real, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves us and does not leave us alone as we wait for creation and humanity to be fully healed of sin and sickness.
Jesus has said, “Surely, I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:20). But in the meantime, he’s also here now, walking with us and weeping with us as we wait for his return when he will judge the living and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1), where he will right every wrong.
So we respond with the saints throughout all of history, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20). And he will be faithful and true to never leave us alone as we wait.