Well good evening everyone and welcome to my sixty fifth episode. In the previous episode, I took a look at Isaiah chapter 15 as part of my study of the book of Isaiah. Tonight, I want to step back from that study and say a few things about suffering and grief. This is a topic of discussion that is hugely important for all churches in the West. It is primarily important because all of us – every single person – will have to endure suffering and grief in our lifetime. But it’s also important because there are a few misconceptions about how the Bible addresses this topic. These misconceptions can be quite damaging to people in their most vulnerable moments. What I hope to accomplish in this episode is to alert you about some of these misunderstandings and warn you against the resulting deceptions and temptations. These are the kinds of issues that can really cause a person to go sideways in their life.
So let’s start off with something that you might be familiar with. That is the Kubler-Ross model for the five stages of grief. According to Kubler-Ross, the five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. As many times as you’ve heard of this model, you’ve probably also heard that every person grieves in their own way – and that these stages can be experienced in any order or for some stages – not at all. But it gets even more complicated than that. Each individual outwardly expresses inward realities in different ways. So one person might express profound sadness by laughing and making jokes. Another might express anger by crying in such a way that makes them look sad not angry.
All of those caveats are symptomatic of the problem with the Kubler-Ross model – or for that matter – any model that attempts to generalize something like an individual’s suffering and grief. The fact is that it is impossible produce a general, flow-chart style methodology for grieving. The only chance you have at guiding a person through their suffering and their grief is by getting close enough to them to understand the individual elements of who they are and the nuance surrounding their individual circumstance. Painting with broad strokes does not work when it comes to prescribing correct movements for a grieving person. But, it does work when it comes to providing caution against incorrect movements. That is the thrust of this episode.
So the first and most common mistake that is made in the Christian community is believing that suffering and grief are indicators of weak faith. Why would you be upset if you really believed that your loved one was now in heaven with Jesus? Christians who make this mistake typically do not know their Bible or are attempting to side-step their pain. Instead of entering a state of euphoric joy, the Bible teaches the exact opposite response to the loss of a loved one. Scripture teaches that it is okay to feel pain and that it is okay to be angry with God in the immediate aftermath of a loss. In point of fact, God’s chosen people are called Israel – and in Hebrew the name Israel means “those who wrestle with God.” First, let’s consider the piece about crying and feeling pain following a loss. This truth is best illustrated in the story of Jesus and Lazarus in John chapter 11. Sit back and allow me to read you this story:
11 A man named Lazarus was sick. He lived in Bethany with his sisters, Mary and Martha. 2 This is the Mary who later poured the expensive perfume on the Lord’s feet and wiped them with her hair.[a] Her brother, Lazarus, was sick. 3 So the two sisters sent a message to Jesus telling him, “Lord, your dear friend is very sick.”
4 But when Jesus heard about it he said, “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it happened for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.” 5 So although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, 6 he stayed where he was for the next two days. 7 Finally, he said to his disciples, “Let’s go back to Judea.”
8 But his disciples objected. “Rabbi,” they said, “only a few days ago the people[b] in Judea were trying to stone you. Are you going there again?”
9 Jesus replied, “There are twelve hours of daylight every day. During the day people can walk safely. They can see because they have the light of this world. 10 But at night there is danger of stumbling because they have no light.” 11 Then he said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but now I will go and wake him up.”
12 The disciples said, “Lord, if he is sleeping, he will soon get better!”13 They thought Jesus meant Lazarus was simply sleeping, but Jesus meant Lazarus had died.
14 So he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15 And for your sakes, I’m glad I wasn’t there, for now you will really believe. Come, let’s go see him.”
16 Thomas, nicknamed the Twin,[c] said to his fellow disciples, “Let’s go, too—and die with Jesus.”
17 When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. 18 Bethany was only a few miles[d] down the road from Jerusalem, 19 and many of the people had come to console Martha and Mary in their loss. 20 When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 “Yes,” Martha said, “he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.”
25 Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life.[e] Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. 26 Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she told him. “I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come into the world from God.” 28 Then she returned to Mary. She called Mary aside from the mourners and told her, “The Teacher is here and wants to see you.”29 So Mary immediately went to him.
30 Jesus had stayed outside the village, at the place where Martha met him. 31 When the people who were at the house consoling Mary saw her leave so hastily, they assumed she was going to Lazarus’s grave to weep. So they followed her there. 32 When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him,[f] and he was deeply troubled.34 “Where have you put him?” he asked them.
They told him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Then Jesus wept. 36 The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” 37 But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”
38 Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance. 39 “Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them.
But Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested, “Lord, he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.”
40 Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” 41 So they rolled the stone aside. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me. 42 You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me.” 43 Then Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him go!”
What’s interesting about this story is Christ’s reaction to the death of his friend Lazarus. Verse 35 says, “Jesus wept.” A whole verse dedicated to the imagery of Jesus crying following a loss. And think about it: Jesus knew the whole time that he was going to raise Lazarus. So he knew that Lazarus’s future was life everlasting but he still cried as he connected with the pain of loss. In the same way, it is okay for us to cry when we lose our loved ones – and it absolutely does not mean that we have weak faith when it comes to them being in heaven.
So the first warning is this: do not feel expected, nor attempt to, side-step your pain. Many people who are going through immense suffering will turn to substance abuse as a way of numbing themselves. Many people will try to push their trauma down into their subconscious and pretend like it never happened. The long-term results of both of these efforts are the inability to heal and the emergence of psychopathology. So you need to square with the reality of your pain and allow yourself to feel it. Don’t beat yourself up if this is too hard to do at first. There’s good evidence that suggests you need about 18 months recovery after a trauma before you can effectively begin to relive and connect with the memories that cause the most pain. During those 18 months, self-care should be your priority. Stay away from drugs and alcohol and try to maintain a proper sleep schedule as well as a healthy diet – even though you won’t feel like eating and sleep will be difficult for you.
Grief and suffering are always a dark valley. And we know that attempting to avoid going through this dark valley by way of substance abuse or denial is a trap. So that leaves only one option: walking into the darkness voluntarily. This is the right way and the only way to heal. Listen to me very carefully: you cannot allow yourself to heal unless you also allow yourself to feel. Before this tragedy struck your life, you probably always thought that your faith would be a light at the end of the dark valley. But now that you have to walk through that valley, there is no light that you can see. It’s nothing but pain and darkness. This is okay and normal.
Take the first few steps into the darkness on faith. It’s going to feel like touching a hot stove. It’s going to hurt so bad that you are going to think you’ve made a mistake and that you should turn around and run back. This is also normal. Keep your faith that God is with you and take a few more steps forward. Continue to connect with your pain in manageable sessions. If you have memories that make you cry, write them out in the highest amount of detail that you can. It is in these dark and terrible moments that you are going to feel abandoned by God. Jesus himself felt this on the cross when he said: Eli, Eli! Lama sabachthani? Which is Aramaic for My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me? God knows about your pain. God is not some ethereal being who is watching you struggle from a distance. He is here with you. He fed himself into this fallen world to suffer and struggle alongside you.
There are memories, places and thoughts that inspire so much pain that you are terrified of experiencing them. But these are precisely the memories, places, and thoughts that you must expose yourself to so that you can allow yourself to heal. It is best to do this under the guidance of a trained professional therapist. This is touching the hot stove – over and over again. You’ll notice that without faith in something worth gaining on the other side of this dark valley – it makes absolutely no sense to continue to down it. And that’s how the story goes for many people. They push it aside and turn toward various forms of escapism, addiction, and sometimes projection of their pain onto others. But the fact is, there is something worth gaining on the other side of this valley.
As you continue to walk out into the darkness by faith, the light on the other side will be revealed to you. There is no resurrection without the crucifixion, and feeling this pain is your crucifixion. Our word excruciating comes from the Latin term excruciatus, which means out from the cross. Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 16:24:
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
As time goes by and you continue to do this, a day will come when the pain doesn’t hurt as much as it did before. I want to warn you that this is usually where the second temptation emerges. This second temptation is to confuse your pain with the love you had for the person you lost. C.S. Lewis, the famous Christian author, dealt with this in the aftermath of losing his wife to cancer. As he progressed in his healing he began to notice that the pain didn’t hurt so much. This made him feel tremendously guilty. At this point, the guilt causes many people to cling to their pain and prevent themselves from continuing to heal. The thinking goes like this: If I’m able to live without my wife, what does that say about me or how much I loved my wife? Maybe I didn’t love her that much after all? Okay, that is the wrong way to think about it. That is the deception. C.S. Lewis figured that out and so will you.
There are two reasons why these guilty thoughts are wrong. The first is that the pain does not actually get less severe – you get braver. It’s like when you go to the gym. If you go to the gym and just stare at the weights for six weeks, you don’t get any stronger and they don’t get any lighter. This is the person who won’t walk into the dark valley and instead tries to numb themselves or ignore it. But if you’re at the gym and you connect with the weights and start working out with them, you get stronger across time and the weights feel lighter. But the reality is that they are not any lighter – you are just stronger. So the gravity of the loss of your person does not wane with time. You just don’t hurt as much because there is more of you than there was at the beginning. Quite literally, confronting the pain and the unknown causes your DNA to code for new proteins which unlocks dormant sections of your genetic code. And there is no upper limit to that.
Recovery is not a betrayal of your loved one. Your pain is not the love you have for them. Your pain is just your pain. Your resurrection from your grief and your pain is not evidence that you didn’t love the one you lost. It’s evidence that there is a God in heaven who loves you. When Jesus was crucified and laid in the tomb, the Bible says that He was resurrected by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the same way, you are not the one who is making yourself heal. The Holy Spirit is healing you, but allowing yourself to feel your pain is the way you allow Him to do it.
One last warning and then I’ll close this episode with a summary of the points we have covered. As you experience the worst time of your life, the evil and sinful part of you is going to want to use this pain as an excuse to give up. It’s going to treat this pain like a crutch that prevents you from being all that God intends you to be. This part of you does not want to fulfill God’s purpose for your life. If you allow this side of yourself to get the best of you, you will quickly lose your sense of meaning and purpose – and depression follows swiftly.
There is a part of you that is going to tempt you to blame God and others for your own sinful behavior in the wake of your tragedy. Worst of all, there is a part of you that is going to want to use this pain as a justification for revenge on God Himself. The people who fall all the way to the bottom of this pit are the same ones who perpetrate mass crimes. The people who use their misery and resentment as permission to treat others sadistically are the ones who have chosen enmity with God. This is where Satan desires you to be. You must keep your eyes open, keep your heart clear, and pay attention for when the tempter – the deceiver – comes looking for you. And remember, his power is nothing compared to the love that God has for you and the extent to which God will go to forgive you.
At the beginning of this episode I told you that we cannot generalize the grief and suffering of individuals. There is no way that I can guide you through your suffering without being close enough to you to understand your characteristics, how you express emotions, and the nuance of your particular circumstance. Trained psychotherapists can do this, and they are a valuable resource for the hurting individual. Even though there is no flow-chart for getting through your suffering, there are pits and traps that are universally wrong for all people.
Do not mistake your pain for weakness of faith. Do not attempt, or feel expected to side-step your pain. Do not turn to substances, escapism, or denial to avoid feeling your pain. Give yourself an 18 month grace period after your trauma or your loss where you focus primarily on taking care of both your body and your mind. Then, you must allow yourself to be exposed to the memories, places, and thoughts that scare you the most. If you have memories that make you cry, write them out in a journal at the highest level of detail you can manage. Remember, you must voluntarily pick up your cross and be crucified by having the faith that there will be a resurrection for you on the other side. This will be very, very hard and you will feel as if God has abandoned you. But fear not, because even Jesus felt this – he knows what you are going through. Once you get strong enough, the pain will not hurt so much anymore. You will feel guilty like you are betraying your lost loved one. This is a deception, do not fall victim to these feelings of guilt. Finally, never use your pain as an excuse to give up or to take revenge on God. Never succumb to the temptation that changes healthy suffering into toxic hatred, resentment, and bitterness.
God is always with you and it is by His power that you will transcend the tragedy of this world. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” That’s the biblical perspective on suffering and grief.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
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