Pain is a terrible theologian.
- Amy Loflin
- Jun 8
- 2 min read
Pain has a way of becoming a narrator. When life falls apart, suffering doesn't just hurt—it starts talking. And if we're not careful, we'll begin to believe everything it says.
Sometimes pain whispers that God is incompetent. If He really is all powerful, surely He would have prevented this. He must have dropped the ball somewhere along the way.
Other times, pain convinces us that God is absent. We pray, we wait, we ache, and heaven feels silent. We wonder if God has stepped away or simply stopped paying attention.
And sometimes, in our deepest heartbreak, pain paints God as cruel. We assume He is angry, punishing, or indifferent to our suffering.
However, pain is a terrible theologian.
When suffering becomes the lens through which we interpret God, His character becomes distorted. We begin drawing conclusions about who He is based on what we're experiencing rather than what He has revealed.
This is why Scripture repeatedly calls us to fix our eyes on Jesus. Jesus didn't come merely to teach us about God. He came to show us what God is actually like.
When we look at Jesus, we don't find a distant God. We find One who steps into the grief of Martha and Mary and weeps beside them. We find One who touches lepers, welcomes outcasts, and moves toward the hurting rather than away from them. We find a Savior willing to enter our suffering so completely that He carried it all the way to the cross.
Jesus is the clearest picture of the Father's heart.
So when life doesn't make sense, perhaps the question isn't, "What does my pain tell me about God?"
The better question is, "What does Jesus show me about God in the middle of my pain?"
Instead of viewing God through the lens of our suffering, we can learn to view our suffering through the lens of His love.
And from that perspective, we begin to see something pain could never tell us on its own: God is not absent in our suffering. He is present within it. He does not waste it, ignore it, nor cause it for sport. The truth is God is here to redeem our pain, shape us through it, and walk with us every step of the way.
Because pain may have a voice.
But Jesus has the final word.
If you've ever wrestled with the question, "Where is God in my suffering?" I unpack this conversation more deeply on a recent podcast episode. See details below.
Reflections
When you are hurting, what assumptions do you typically make about God?
Viewing your pain through the lens of God’s love, what do you sense Him wanting to reveal to you?
“The Son is the image of the invisible God..." — Colossians 1:15
Coffee and Bible Time Podcast
When you’re living through a period of suffering, grief, or unanswered questions, trusting that God is still working for your good can seem impossible.
Amy recently joined Ellen Krause on Coffee and Bible Time Podcast to discuss how suffering distorts our view of God, what it looks like to cling to faith when life doesn’t make sense, and how Jesus meets us in the middle of our pain.
