“You are not alone.”

Just hearing those words when we’re in pain can cause a subtle shift within us, moving us toward hope where we had seen only despair. Suffering can be one of the loneliest experiences, separating us from people we love and, at times, from a sense of God’s nearness. We long for presence — both the presence of God, who draws near in our pain, and the presence of others who can minister his grace. Yet sometimes it’s hard to find or experience either.

Sunday After He Left

Though I’d been part of the local church for decades, I didn’t want to go to church the Sunday after my husband left. I was convinced it would be painful and awkward. Most people didn’t know what had happened, and I wasn’t sure what I would say. Afraid that I’d break down in tears, I wanted to pull the covers over my head and not face anyone. Nothing felt safe. But after wrestling in bed, I finally got up and drove to church with my daughters, praying that God would meet us there.

Some friends were waiting for us in the back. They had saved seats for us. I was relieved we wouldn’t be sitting alone. As we stood for the first hymn and began to hear our voices harmonize with those around us, I felt a strange swell of emotion. We were part of a community, and even though our world had collapsed, there were people around us who would hold us up. I still remember leaving encouraged that day, thankful that I had been worshiping in God’s house, hearing God’s word, surrounded by God’s people.

I couldn’t have known when I walked through the doors that Sunday how much I would rely on those people in the coming years.

With Me in the Fire

It was in the church where I felt nurtured and known. Hearing God’s word preached every Sunday grounded me, reminding me of the truths I needed as anchors. I remember a particular sermon on the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3. My pastor pointed out, vividly and memorably, that God is with us in the fire. He emphasized our witness in trials and how people can see our faithfulness and God’s sufficiency in our weaknesses. I needed to hear, again and again throughout Scripture, that God will never leave or forsake us.

In those long, hard days, I also heard truth from friends and people in my small group who individually encouraged me, prayed with me, and wept with me as they pointed me to Jesus. It was through their faithfulness that I experienced firsthand the church as the body of Christ, redeemed people who love, serve, and sacrifice for each other. Their love came in many forms — providing for our practical needs, sharing testimonies of how God had met them in their own grief, and reminding me of truth when I was tempted to doubt.

“When I wondered how I could go on, the church carried me, reassuring me that I was not alone.”

The response from our church was overwhelming — people fixed our computers, brought our family meals, and even changed light bulbs in our house. Families invited us to dinner, reminding us that we were part of a larger community that was going to support us. Several times, a small group gathered in my home to pray, lamenting with me through a psalm and crying out for God to fill our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

When I wondered how I could go on, the church carried me, reassuring me that I was not alone.

What If the Church Hurt Us?

Though I was nurtured and loved by my local church, I do know others who have been hurt by fellow Christians in the wake of suffering, feeling unknown and uncared for in their pain. For some, members of the church showed up right away, but then the support quickly evaporated and they were left to grieve on their own. Others have felt judged or minimized as people have sought to fix them rather than mourn with them. They have left the church disillusioned, discouraged, and disappointed. Their experience in church has seemed to only intensify their loneliness, rather than lessen it.

So how do suffering people move forward when we have been let down by the church? While everyone’s situation is unique, and there is no universal answer, God has chosen the church as the place where his children heal, serve, and grow. In his manifold wisdom, God makes himself known through the church (Ephesians 3:10). The church is the body of Christ, his hands and feet in the world. When one member suffers, all suffer together (1 Corinthians 12:26).

“The church is one of God’s greatest means of grace in our lives, and all the more so in suffering.”

When we already feel weak and wounded, it takes courage to tell others, especially in the church, how they have hurt us. As we bravely move forward, we can pray that God would direct us, help us overlook or forgive when appropriate, and give us wisdom on what actions to take next. In some circumstances, we may deem it wise to leave our local church and look for another, but God will never call us to leave the church altogether. It is one of his greatest means of grace in our lives, and all the more so in suffering.

Do We Really Need Church?

The inevitable questions arise: Why do we need the local church in suffering? Why is it worth finding one where we can belong and trust? Why can’t we just do this on our own?

We need the local church in our suffering because, without it, we might become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). When our suffering lingers, and our prayers seemingly go unanswered, we may begin to wonder if God cares — if he can really be trusted. Our fears may feel greater than our faith. When that happens, we can lean into the faith of the saints around us and let them carry us (Hebrews 10:24–25). We can entrust them to pray for us when we have no words ourselves. And we can rest knowing that even if we stumble and fall, someone will be there to pick us up and help us find our strength in God.

In his book Embodied Hope, Kelly Kapic reminds us, “The saints speak to God for us when we struggle to believe and speak alone. Further, the saints are called to speak to us for God when we seem unable to hear him on our own. Their prayers sustain our faith; their proclamation reignites our hope.”

When We Hide Our Pain

As we share our suffering with those in the church, we not only allow them to minister hope to us, but we also minister to them through our pain.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3–4)

When we hide our wounds and weaknesses, we not only distance ourselves from others, but we also subtly reinforce the lie that the Christian life promises continuous victory, pain-free bodies, and material prosperity. Letting our brothers and sisters in Christ into that sacred space of our suffering, sharing our failures and weakness, our pain and our despair, brings a rare closeness that reminds us all that we are not alone.

Suffering can be one of the loneliest experiences, making us feel estranged and isolated from our friends, from our community, and from God. Yet paradoxically, as we let the church minister to us in our pain, leaning into God and into our friends, letting them carry us when we are weak, we often will find a deeper intimacy than we have ever known. God himself whispers to us, through Scripture and through fellow believers, that we are beloved, seen, and known, even in the valley.

You never imagined that it could come to this.

You have been married for years to your dear wife. You have been your beloved’s, and your beloved has been yours. Three sons and a daughter she bore you, four children that now watch you with a look you can’t describe. What an answer to prayer she has been. Your tears hold memories of life before the whispers came. Why is this happening?

You found out from your daughter. In disbelief you went to her with questions. The voice sounded the same, her hair framed her beauty as it always had, the dimple in her cheek and the birthmark on her neck remained where you left them. Yet someone else speaks as her mouth moves, telling foreign words of strange beliefs. The wife of your youth, your lovely doe, has become sick. An illness preys upon her soul. How did this happen? You resolve to reason with her quietly, surely she will snap out of it.

Time heats gentle persuasion into desperate pleading. She no longer follows Yahweh. She implores you and the kids to join her. There are gods elsewhere.

Days pass while leaving you in a nightmare from which you cannot wake. Her idolatry deepens. You would have preferred a grizzly death than see this day. You would have bid the stars crush you or the sea to swallow you before you witnessed her bowing to another than Yahweh. She is you, you are her, one flesh. Your rib has pursued death. And what is worse — you’re tempted to think — you know the Scriptures. You could turn a blind eye, but not a blind mind.

If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you. . . you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. (Deuteronomy 13:6–8)

You shall not yield to her, listen to her, pity her, spare her . . . or conceal her. What then was the hardest thing you have ever done, you did: You brought your daughter and both told the elders her secret. The elders inquired and searched and asked diligently to be certain (Deuteronomy 13:14); she did not hide, did not yield. And again, you know the next lines,

But you shall kill [her]. Your hand shall be first against [her] to put [her] to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. You shall stone [her] to death with stones, because [she] sought to draw you away from the Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you.

Never have you faced such a temptation to cast off Yahweh’s rule. You would give yourself to spare her. How can you sit by and watch her die, let alone be involved in her death, and even throw the first stone? Never has disobedience felt more right. Abraham brought Isaac up the mountain, and came down with him. This day would not end like that.

The community stands watching, waiting. “Your hand shall be first against her to put her to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.”

Cruelty, this is cruelty, the thought hisses into your mind. Before you can think it, she shouts, “The gods of the nations wouldn’t require you to stone your own wife!” Your eye, seeing through a flood, beholds the blurry shape of your dearest embrace, the mother of your children. And through the stillness your ear hears the word of your God, “Your eye shall not pity her, nor shall you spare her.” Your eye or your ear? Your wife or your God?

Could You Cast the Stone?

The scene is horrible even to imagine. It takes an emotional toll to consider. The rock in your hand, a mother, a daughter, a father, a husband, a best friend before you, the community surrounding you, and your God above. Moses knew this while writing,

If your brother, the son of your mother,or your son or your daughteror the wife you embrace (literally, “wife of your bosom”)or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you. . . .

Natural affection screams against the proceedings. This is not a faceless idolater but your beloved. The scene cuts the soul of all who see it; all who hear of it. It tests: to see whether we truly love Yahweh supremely or not (Deuteronomy 13:3). And it teaches. Teaches the fear of God and the proper appraisal of turning from the true God to other loves.

Have you, standing beside the solemn community, learned its lesson?

But God Isn’t Like That — Right?

The New Covenant is different from the Old. We do not execute false teachers or their apostates, do not “purge the evil from [our] midst” (Deuteronomy 13:5) by throwing stones. The closest thing we do — something just as serious — is church discipline and excommunication. When Paul tells the church at Corinth to “Purge the evil person from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:13), he means, “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler — not even to eat with such a one” (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Yet, the difference between covenants is not the kind that some people want to make. Some imagine that the God of the Old Testament — the God who here would have idolaters and false prophets stoned — is somehow a bloodthirsty and brutal deity, while his divine Son, on the other hand, comes as the more moral, civil, and compassionate of the Godhead. They mention this Old Testament God with red face and ready-made apology. Reading this, they wonder, Why even reflect on such a text? This is not helping the gospel go forth.

“God values perfectly what we value imperfectly. He loves undyingly what we sputter to love and fail.”

Such reluctancies — in them and in ourselves — remind us of great news: God is not like you, not like me. He is more just, more holy, and more compassionate than we imagine, all at once. He is more appropriately tuned to reality than we. He values perfectly what we value imperfectly. He loves undyingly what we sputter to love and fail. He holds allegiances in perfect grasp, knows the weight of the crown upon his head, and legislates with mathematical perfection, despite our faltering algebra. That situation is horrible because sin is horrible, not God.

More Loving than God

Such texts help me (as I hope they help you) recalibrate my thinking and my feeling. They act as smelling salts to my sensibilities, confronting the weaknesses of my personality, community, and age. When I am tempted to imagine myself with a stone in hand, I feel my heart grow faint and shake its head. And when this occurs, when I let the text work on me, I begin to pray, “I believe, help my unbelief.” And I ask, Where are my loves crooked?

With my family, perhaps. I am not to lessen my love for family, but rather love God supremely, with my whole being. Christ reiterates that he will suffer no rivals (should we stand at the crossroad),

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:37)

Or, perhaps, with my God’s glory. In my imagining, I am more devastated by the consequence of sin than the affront of sin; more offended by the wages of sin than by the sin itself. I need to overhear how God teaches angels to feel about exchanging him for anything else:

Be appalled, O heavens, at this;be shocked, be utterly desolate,declares the Lord,for my people have committed two evils:they have forsaken me,the fountain of living waters,and hewed out cisterns for themselves,broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:12–13)

Or, perhaps, with my community. God shows mercy to the community through this hard lesson: “And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you.” Others’ family members would fall if I lacked nerve to obey.

My “compassion” would value the creature over the Creator, high-handed rebellion over God’s glory, my wife’s unbelieving life over the faithful she would infect with her whispers of unbelief.

Let Goods and Kindred Go

Today, we are a people quick to trust our feelings, our judgments, our sense of things, with God somewhere comfortably in the background. Difficult texts like this remind us of the towering worth of God and the high allegiance of our calling. And such texts can test us, “to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 13:3).

“We must decide now, as best we can and with God helping us, to never choose kin over King.”

One of Satan’s most successful snares is to infect faith through our closest relationships. Where God means for them to give life, he means death. We feel for those caught in the crossfire of a beloved’s war with God. But neither can we ignore the rotten fruit: pastors who change their minds on homosexuality because a son comes out; a Christian mother who capitulates on abortion because her daughter secretly procured one; a wife who concedes to universalism because her husband left the faith. Satan has robbed many through this backdoor.

A text like Deuteronomy 13 bids us decide now, as best we can and with God helping us, to never choose kin over King, should that dark day ever come. Though my heart be wrung watching him or her run after other gods, I will not. Although their sin twists my soul in knots I can’t untie, though the loss of that relationship pierces to the deepest part of me, and all the while the world’s gods taunt me that Christ is too narrow, too particular, that it’s not worth it — Lord, keep me yours.

Jesus is worthy to be our great love, and no less — a love we bend or break for none. Let God be true, though every loved one is false. Resolve now to sing to the end with Psalm 73:25–26,

Whom have I in heaven but you?And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.My flesh and my heart may fail,but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I’m a pastor, and I sometimes deal with doubt.

I have doubted the efficacy of prayer. I have wrestled with the problem of evil, especially in light of natural disasters, terminal childhood illnesses, and a hundred other horrors. I have struggled with the fate of those who never hear the gospel. None of these questions is comfortable or easy for me.

If a Christian told me he had never dealt with doubt, I wouldn’t believe him. Or at least I would respectfully conclude he was in denial, or lacked self-awareness, or wasn’t a serious-thinking person.

A unique feature of life in the modern West, observes philosopher Charles Taylor, is the experience of a “cross-pressured” existence. The plausibility of faith has become contested — implicitly and constantly. This is a new development in human history. In premodern times, it was “impossible not to believe.” The Enlightenment then made it “possible not to believe.” Now it is increasingly “impossible to believe” — or at least to believe in a faith-nurturing world.

Bewildered and Terrified

As sophisticated modern people, we can sometimes flatter ourselves and think, I have a college education; I live in a scientific age; I don’t believe in resurrections — as if first-century men and women were dim-witted people looking for miracles everywhere. It’s true that if you could transport yourself back to the first century, you would have a hard time finding atheists. Virtually everyone you’d encounter would be a supernaturalist — believing in some kind of God or gods. But that doesn’t mean ancient folks were gullible.

“Even the strongest believer wouldn’t have imagined that one man could be raised before the end of time.”

When Jesus performed miracles, people were often more bewildered than impressed — the response was less “Do it again!” and more “Who are you?” Or take the virgin conception. Such a notion was just as laughable then as it is today. First-century people knew how babies were conceived. As I once heard someone quip, when Joseph learns Mary is pregnant, he doesn’t break into a rendition of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” No, he assumes what any of us would — and sets out to divorce her.

The same applies to the empty tomb. Despite Jesus’s repeated predictions, not a single eyewitness exclaims, “Ah, day three — of course!” They respond the same way we would: with confusion and downright terror (Matthew 28:8; Mark 16:8; Luke 24:9–11, 36–41; John 20:11–13). They assume his body has been stolen; they assume he’s a ghost; they assume anything except, “He’s back.” Thomas can’t even bring himself to believe after all his most trusted friends have looked him in the eye and told him!

Even the Great Commission is given to doubters: “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matthew 28:16–17 NIV). We import a triumphant mood into the scene; in reality, some of these guys are still reeling, still grappling, still coming to terms with their whole world being capsized.

No Category for a Single Resurrection

It’s also worth noting that first-century Jews, although culturally disposed to believe in God, were anti-disposed to believe that someone could be resurrected in the middle of history. This is why, when Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again, all she can do is sigh: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). Like most Jews, she believes in a general resurrection at the end of history (see Daniel 12:2). But she has no category for a single resurrection in the middle of history. Nobody did. Even the strongest believer wouldn’t have imagined that one man could be raised before the end of time.

And the disciples were no different. But something occurred after Jesus’s death that utterly changed them. Something occurred that pulled them out of the hiding places where they’d fled in hopeless fear (Mark 14:50). Something moved them to start publicly insisting, at the risk of their lives, that the Carpenter was — wonder of wonders — alive. And when the blows came, something propelled them to keep preaching all the more boldly, even rejoicing that they’d been counted worthy to suffer disgrace for his name (Acts 5:41).

No Category for a God-Man

Remember, too, that while first-century Jews were (unlike many modern people) disposed to believe in God, it was unthinkable to worship a man as God. This is why the Pharisees repeatedly accused Jesus of blasphemy — he was claiming for himself the prerogatives of God alone. Even near the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, the Pharisees “held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (Mark 3:6).

So, were some ancient people just inclined to believe in a god under every rock? Sure — if they were polytheists. But not Jews. They were radically different from their Roman neighbors. To put it bluntly: a modern secular Manhattanite is far more likely to start believing in a God than a first-century Jew was to believe in a God-man.

No Category for a Dead Messiah

In sum, arguments about the “plausibility” of faith cut both ways.

On the one hand, faith in a transcendent deity is more contested, more embattled, more difficult than ever before. It’s not that ancient believers never battled serious doubt (see the Psalms); it’s that doubt takes on a certain shape and texture when, for the first time in history, life feels explainable without God. This is the cultural wallpaper — largely unnoticed but everywhere present — of our WEIRDER (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, Romanticist) world. So, we shouldn’t be surprised if our doubts carry a certain buoyancy — if overcoming them can feel like trying to keep a beach ball underwater.

On the other hand, it is naive, if not a touch haughty, to assume that prescientific people woke up looking for outlandish things to believe. Sure, faith in God was more intuitive then, but no one found it easy to imagine a virgin getting pregnant or a corpse getting up. Especially a messianic corpse — that would’ve been an oxymoron, and an offensive one. No Jew believed God’s Messiah could possibly die. (How could he? The Messiah sits on David’s throne forever.) So, the sight of “mighty” Jesus pinned to a Roman cross, suffocating to death like some weak and pathetic slave, was conclusive proof that the gig was up: just another imposter, not Immanuel.

“If the disciples had no category for a dead Messiah, they certainly had no category for a resurrected one.”

And if the disciples had no category for a dead Messiah, they certainly had no category for a resurrected one! Again, theologically speaking, no Jew could imagine an individual resurrection in the middle of history. And above all, no right-minded Jew would ever be disposed to look at a Galilean day laborer from an obscure backwater in the Roman empire and worship him as Yahweh, the Lord of heaven and earth.

But that’s precisely what happened.

Unthinkably Plausible

We may think of a miracle as the least probable explanation for an event. And it is — for ordinary events.

But the events of Easter Sunday were not ordinary, not in the least. Again, see the disciples’ reaction! They didn’t wish each other a happy Easter. They were dumbstruck, terrified. They lacked a natural category for the resurrection, and so do we. And yet, I’ve never heard a more plausible explanation for the disciples’ overnight transformation and the birth of the Jesus revolution.

All of which (among other things) leads me to take a deep breath: I believe the unthinkable happened after all.