What did Jesus say about why we suffer?
Jesus rejected the assumption that suffering is punishment for sin, twice and directly. He gave very little explanation for why suffering happens, and instead moved toward suffering people constantly. He also told his followers plainly that they would have trouble in this world rather than promising them exemption.
What Jesus said
In Luke 13 people bring him two recent tragedies and he refuses the premise. Do you think they were worse sinners than everyone else, he asks. No. He dismantles the explanation without replacing it with another one.
In John 9 the disciples ask whose sin caused a man to be born blind, his or his parents. Neither, he says. The question itself was wrong.
What he does instead is act. The overwhelming majority of his response to suffering in the gospels is contact: touching people no one touched, stopping for interruptions, weeping at a grave.
And he is honest about what following him involves. In this world you will have trouble, he says on his last night, followed by take heart. He does not remove the first half.
The hard part
He does not answer the why. He clears away bad answers and then largely leaves the question open, which is unsatisfying if what you need is a reason. What he offers instead is that God is not distant from it, having entered it himself, and whether that helps depends on what you were hoping for.
What this looks like today
- •Stop looking for what you did to deserve it. He rejected that framework outright, twice.
- •Go toward someone suffering rather than explaining suffering. That was his entire pattern.
- •Let the question stay open. The gospels do not close it and you are not failing by not closing it either.
Luke 13:1-5, John 9:1-3, John 11:33-35, John 16:33
Go deeper: this comes up in the 40 days