What is the purpose of suffering? Can meaning be found in suffering? How does Christian faith relate to suffering?

These are some of the hardest questions to ask, even for Christians with a deep faith in God. No one goes through life unscathed by suffering. Not even Jesus did so. We enter life through the pain of childbirth and we know our earthly lives will end in death.

Even the Bible does not directly provide answers, although “faith, hope and love abide.” There is inherent tension between the concepts that God is all powerful and all good yet suffering and evil exist in the world.

The book of Job addresses this classic problem called theodicy: justifying God’s ways to man. Many would say that it is not only impossible but impious to question God’s purposes. But it is human to do so.

Job endured the most grievous afflictions. Like Jesus, he does not want to drink from the cup of sorrows and like Jesus on the cross, he feels abandoned. Job’s reactions from the beginning to the end of his sufferings call to mind the modern understanding of the different stages of grief. God never does directly answer Job’s questions, but he does finally elicit Job’s humility in the face of God’s omnipotence and omniscience.

Theologian Peter Kreeft in his book “Making Sense Out Of Suffering” says this:

“We cannot know what the meaning of every event is, but we can know that every event is meaningful.

“If we love God, we will understand that everything is grace, that Job’s sores were grace, that Job’s abandonment was grace, that even Jesus’ abandonment was grace. Even the delay of grace is grace. Suffering is grace. The cross is grace. The grave is grace. Even hell is made of God’s love and grace, experienced as pain by those who hate it.

“There is nothing but God’s love. Everything is grace.”

Although Job questioned God about the reasons for his suffering, he remained faithful. Jesus’ anxiety over his imminent suffering and death elicited bloody sweat, yet he remained faithful to his divine purpose.

Therein are examples for Christians in facing their own personal suffering.

Despite our supposed 21st-century intellectual sophistication, we can only explore the answers to the questions about suffering but not fully answer them. But we can and must act.

Our faith must have legs, however wobbly, in the face of great suffering by others. Faith without works is dead, according to the letter of James.

Jesuit priest and writer Henri Nouwen wrote that the obligation of the Christian in the face of suffering is to provide consolation. This can mean words or merely one’s physical presence. We are to be the face of Christ to others at all times, but especially when they need consolation, however uncomfortable it may be for us.

Nouwen said:

“To offer consolation is one of the most important ways to care … we often wonder what we can do to alleviate the immense suffering we see. We can and must offer consolation. To console does not mean to take away the pain, but rather to be there and say, ‘You are not alone, I am with you. Together we can carry the burden. Don’t be afraid. I am here.’ ”

One of the greatest living theologians, Hans Kung, in his magnum opus “On Being a Christian” says it this way:

“In the presence of inarticulate suffering, often only silence is appropriate. In the face of sickness and death … how often the answers stick in our throat, how difficult it is to spell out words of consolation.

“And yet the very experience of these extreme human situations demands expression in words … any material or spiritual help of its nature is clothed in speech.

“In the light of the cross of Christ, the Christian does not merely stand there dumb, without an answer. … The Christian does not stand there in silence when he lets the Crucified speak.

“Man is expected to fight suffering by every means. But it is not granted to him to be finally victorious.”

Offering consolation in the name of Christ pulls us out of our personal isolation and inward focus on our own suffering and pain. Being a Christian is about taking up our crosses and helping others with theirs.