“A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor.” This has always rung true to me. Thank you, Bethel.
Thanks for this piece. Your mention of Hart reminded me of something I observe whenever the question of God and evil and suffering is raised again by the newest tragedy - that is, that ones expressing the deepest indignation are rarely if ever the ones actually going through it. Outside observers like Hart project their imaginings of the horror of suffering onto an experience they have not personally known, and from there draw their conclusions. From Atheist objectors, this is usually to the effect that the horror of suffering makes God's goodness and/or existence impossible, while for Hart, that it makes any kind of reasoned theodicy impossible and insulting. The link between both these takes is that they present the typical response of faith to suffering as vacuous, while only they, the perceptive few, can see clearly.
Yet even the severest suffering as in the Haiti earthquake or the Texas flood has never, as far as I can tell, resulted in mass loss of faith on the part of victims. Nor has it provoked mass rage at attempts to provide explanations for suffering as a whole - that is just a Hart problem. Why not just listen to the sufferers themselves? I suspect that part of the issue is that, as terrible as suffering is, it becomes even more terrible in the unbounded imagination. As soon as the suffering is experienced in the embodied world, it becomes bounded. I think there is also a lack of appreciation for human resilience in the face of suffering. Despair, not suffering itself, is what kills the spirit. And faith is the antidote to despair.
For those of us that believe, we have the promise that nothing of what we suffer will be in vain. God will redeem all of it, in a way we cannot yet comprehend. This is a kind of theodicy, and Hart may even consider it insulting, but untold millions hold on to it quietly, and so when suffering comes, they hold hands and pray around the cross and are strengthened.
Yeah, and I don't know what Hart has experienced so I won't comment here or there on whether he can personally relate to people suffering--maybe in his own circumstances he can. But you're right, there is a danger of projecting and assuming that things which might shake our faith will do the same for others.
Of course the Ivan Karamazov response is "If the point is that we need to wait and see how God redeems all this, that only makes it worse, and I'm returning my ticket now, because I've already decided nothing is worth all this suffering." But there's a difference between "God allows the world to devolve into such a state that suffering exists, and then as it happens He works through it," and "God has lined up so many suffering events in the queue," so to speak.
Such a beautiful piece! These thoughts remind me of a comment you recently made in a conversation (I can’t remember which one - maybe the John Anderson talk?) in which you referenced the famous moment from John’s Gospel when Jesus wept over Lazarus’ death and the love Mary and Martha had for him. In that moment, it is as if God is reminding us that He hates sin and death and weeps with us over all of the terrible pain we endure.
Yes! And he's sort of dealing differently with them and their different personalities. Martha wants to argue with him, so he (gently) argues back, but Mary is just distraught, and that's when he weeps.
I have been reading about great women if God in the past and present. I am continually impressed by the fact that they walked with God through difficulties not expecting g to escape the testing of their faith.
We have never been promised that bad things won’t happen. The promise is that Jesus walks through them with us. Sin and death are real and terrible. Watching a son drink himself to death when he had everything to live for was such a slow burn and intense pain. And now the aftermath of chaos and damaged children are consequences we live with as a family. We and my daughter in law and the children live the consequences. Heaven is where we are headed and that is the promise. No more death or sorrow.
These little ones who died in these floods are with Jesus.
"But I see a ditch on the other side as well, in which we fail properly to honor their own faith—this faith of blood and sweat and lungs starved for air."
This line... the power in those words is hard to express. It's lines like this that really make me love reading this substack.
The mystery of suffering and glory, so hard to put into words. No solution, of course. Thanks for highlighting the truths that we must somehow hold in tension.
What a great piece. I just upgraded because of it. The river rises, and with it, the old, unanswerable question: Why? The cross stands amid the wreckage, not as an answer but as a wound. The first responders clasp hands in prayer, not because they understand, but because they do not. And somewhere in the drowned debris of a child’s stuffed animal, in the sodden snapshots of girls who will never grow old, God is present… not as the balancer of accounts, not as the cosmic accountant tallying sins against suffering, but as the one who weeps.
Hart is right to scorn the arithmetic of theodicy, the vulgar calculus that trades infant deaths for "spiritual fruit." To speak of divine purpose in the face of a drowned child is not theology, it is blasphemy. And yet, the sisters clutching their rosaries in the dark water knew something deeper than explanation. They knew the cross not as justification, but as companionship. My God, my God, why? is not a heresy, it is the only prayer left when the flood comes.
Eliot’s dying nurse does not comfort, she wounds. Our only health is the disease. The promise "God will take care of you" is not a contract of safety but a vow of presence, a presence that does not spare us the flood but drowns with us in it. The atheist scoffs, the pious rationalize, but the grieving father wading through wreckage knows the terrible truth: faith is not a shield against suffering. It is the fragile raft that keeps us from drowning in despair.
Wolterstorff’s sorrow-as-splendor is the only theodicy that does not insult the dead. The radiance he speaks of, the courage, the love that flares in the darkest night, is not a transaction. It is the stubborn refusal of meaninglessness, the defiant whisper that death and suffering are enemies, not instruments. The cross does not sanctify agony, it condemns it. And yet, in that condemnation, it offers the only comfort left: “You are not alone.”
The shadow of the tree falls across the bodies of the drowned. It is the shadow of the cross, of the God who does not explain, but enters. Who does not justify, but joins. And in that shadow, there is no answer, only the faint, unbearable light of a love that will not let us go.
Thank you for this clear and honest reflection. The silence you describe stays with me.
That said, I would question the hesitation about Hart. You suggest his metaphysical vision stands too far above the pain of loss. But Hart’s point, especially in The Doors of the Sea, is that grief itself points to something true. He doesn’t explain it away or fit it into a system. He calls the horror of death what it is—wrong. And he takes seriously our refusal to accept that love ends.
What he offers isn’t distance, but a claim: that the protest of the heart is not just emotional, but a sign of what is most real. That may not resolve anything. But it gives the weight of loss a kind of ground. Not as comfort, but as truth.
I share these thoughts for clarification. You may well agree with them.
Thanks for responding. - In the spirit of Hart and running through all his writing, empathy is not a divine feeling, but the eternal love of God—a love no personal experience, tragic or beautiful, can match.
Consider the analogy:
Before surgery, would you rather have a surgeon with a warm bedside manner, or one whose skill you trust completely, even if you feel anxious? The latter brings true confidence.
In this light, divine "impassibility"--and Hart's or, ideally, yours and mine--is not indifference, or being distant and "above it all," but the assurance of God’s perfect, unchanging love and power to save. Like trusting a surgeon’s competence, Christians are called to rest in and share God’s steadfast love—a love neither diminished by emotion nor by our disposition, nor altered by our praises or petitions, greater than the threat of tragedy (the Crucifixion), and the sure foundation for faith and hope.
"Before surgery, would you rather have a surgeon with a warm bedside manner, or one whose skill you trust completely, even if you feel anxious? The latter brings true confidence."
That's a good observation. The former really doesn't matter before the surgery and the latter actually puts one at ease for substantive reasons rather than creating a faux assurance.
“A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor.” This has always rung true to me. Thank you, Bethel.
You’re welcome, dear sister.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DL9n62OyQig/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
for a picture of what this looks like IRL.
Wow.
New to me, but I'll have it please.
The whole book is so good.
Thanks for this piece. Your mention of Hart reminded me of something I observe whenever the question of God and evil and suffering is raised again by the newest tragedy - that is, that ones expressing the deepest indignation are rarely if ever the ones actually going through it. Outside observers like Hart project their imaginings of the horror of suffering onto an experience they have not personally known, and from there draw their conclusions. From Atheist objectors, this is usually to the effect that the horror of suffering makes God's goodness and/or existence impossible, while for Hart, that it makes any kind of reasoned theodicy impossible and insulting. The link between both these takes is that they present the typical response of faith to suffering as vacuous, while only they, the perceptive few, can see clearly.
Yet even the severest suffering as in the Haiti earthquake or the Texas flood has never, as far as I can tell, resulted in mass loss of faith on the part of victims. Nor has it provoked mass rage at attempts to provide explanations for suffering as a whole - that is just a Hart problem. Why not just listen to the sufferers themselves? I suspect that part of the issue is that, as terrible as suffering is, it becomes even more terrible in the unbounded imagination. As soon as the suffering is experienced in the embodied world, it becomes bounded. I think there is also a lack of appreciation for human resilience in the face of suffering. Despair, not suffering itself, is what kills the spirit. And faith is the antidote to despair.
For those of us that believe, we have the promise that nothing of what we suffer will be in vain. God will redeem all of it, in a way we cannot yet comprehend. This is a kind of theodicy, and Hart may even consider it insulting, but untold millions hold on to it quietly, and so when suffering comes, they hold hands and pray around the cross and are strengthened.
Yeah, and I don't know what Hart has experienced so I won't comment here or there on whether he can personally relate to people suffering--maybe in his own circumstances he can. But you're right, there is a danger of projecting and assuming that things which might shake our faith will do the same for others.
Of course the Ivan Karamazov response is "If the point is that we need to wait and see how God redeems all this, that only makes it worse, and I'm returning my ticket now, because I've already decided nothing is worth all this suffering." But there's a difference between "God allows the world to devolve into such a state that suffering exists, and then as it happens He works through it," and "God has lined up so many suffering events in the queue," so to speak.
Such a beautiful piece! These thoughts remind me of a comment you recently made in a conversation (I can’t remember which one - maybe the John Anderson talk?) in which you referenced the famous moment from John’s Gospel when Jesus wept over Lazarus’ death and the love Mary and Martha had for him. In that moment, it is as if God is reminding us that He hates sin and death and weeps with us over all of the terrible pain we endure.
Yes! And he's sort of dealing differently with them and their different personalities. Martha wants to argue with him, so he (gently) argues back, but Mary is just distraught, and that's when he weeps.
I have been reading about great women if God in the past and present. I am continually impressed by the fact that they walked with God through difficulties not expecting g to escape the testing of their faith.
Joni Earecksen - Tada is particularly helpful.
She's so good.
We have never been promised that bad things won’t happen. The promise is that Jesus walks through them with us. Sin and death are real and terrible. Watching a son drink himself to death when he had everything to live for was such a slow burn and intense pain. And now the aftermath of chaos and damaged children are consequences we live with as a family. We and my daughter in law and the children live the consequences. Heaven is where we are headed and that is the promise. No more death or sorrow.
These little ones who died in these floods are with Jesus.
Amen.
"But I see a ditch on the other side as well, in which we fail properly to honor their own faith—this faith of blood and sweat and lungs starved for air."
This line... the power in those words is hard to express. It's lines like this that really make me love reading this substack.
Thanks brother.
The mystery of suffering and glory, so hard to put into words. No solution, of course. Thanks for highlighting the truths that we must somehow hold in tension.
Amen.
What a great piece. I just upgraded because of it. The river rises, and with it, the old, unanswerable question: Why? The cross stands amid the wreckage, not as an answer but as a wound. The first responders clasp hands in prayer, not because they understand, but because they do not. And somewhere in the drowned debris of a child’s stuffed animal, in the sodden snapshots of girls who will never grow old, God is present… not as the balancer of accounts, not as the cosmic accountant tallying sins against suffering, but as the one who weeps.
I recently wrote a reflection on my Stack about this: https://steveherrmann.substack.com/p/the-word-in-the-water
Hart is right to scorn the arithmetic of theodicy, the vulgar calculus that trades infant deaths for "spiritual fruit." To speak of divine purpose in the face of a drowned child is not theology, it is blasphemy. And yet, the sisters clutching their rosaries in the dark water knew something deeper than explanation. They knew the cross not as justification, but as companionship. My God, my God, why? is not a heresy, it is the only prayer left when the flood comes.
Eliot’s dying nurse does not comfort, she wounds. Our only health is the disease. The promise "God will take care of you" is not a contract of safety but a vow of presence, a presence that does not spare us the flood but drowns with us in it. The atheist scoffs, the pious rationalize, but the grieving father wading through wreckage knows the terrible truth: faith is not a shield against suffering. It is the fragile raft that keeps us from drowning in despair.
Wolterstorff’s sorrow-as-splendor is the only theodicy that does not insult the dead. The radiance he speaks of, the courage, the love that flares in the darkest night, is not a transaction. It is the stubborn refusal of meaninglessness, the defiant whisper that death and suffering are enemies, not instruments. The cross does not sanctify agony, it condemns it. And yet, in that condemnation, it offers the only comfort left: “You are not alone.”
The shadow of the tree falls across the bodies of the drowned. It is the shadow of the cross, of the God who does not explain, but enters. Who does not justify, but joins. And in that shadow, there is no answer, only the faint, unbearable light of a love that will not let us go.
"Perhaps His sorrow is splendor."
And the river rolls on, silent.
Thank you so much for reading!
Thank you for this clear and honest reflection. The silence you describe stays with me.
That said, I would question the hesitation about Hart. You suggest his metaphysical vision stands too far above the pain of loss. But Hart’s point, especially in The Doors of the Sea, is that grief itself points to something true. He doesn’t explain it away or fit it into a system. He calls the horror of death what it is—wrong. And he takes seriously our refusal to accept that love ends.
What he offers isn’t distance, but a claim: that the protest of the heart is not just emotional, but a sign of what is most real. That may not resolve anything. But it gives the weight of loss a kind of ground. Not as comfort, but as truth.
I share these thoughts for clarification. You may well agree with them.
I'll probably have a look at the book. Although I've seen some claiming he regretted it later? Haven't checked out if that's reliable or not.
Thanks for responding. - In the spirit of Hart and running through all his writing, empathy is not a divine feeling, but the eternal love of God—a love no personal experience, tragic or beautiful, can match.
Consider the analogy:
Before surgery, would you rather have a surgeon with a warm bedside manner, or one whose skill you trust completely, even if you feel anxious? The latter brings true confidence.
In this light, divine "impassibility"--and Hart's or, ideally, yours and mine--is not indifference, or being distant and "above it all," but the assurance of God’s perfect, unchanging love and power to save. Like trusting a surgeon’s competence, Christians are called to rest in and share God’s steadfast love—a love neither diminished by emotion nor by our disposition, nor altered by our praises or petitions, greater than the threat of tragedy (the Crucifixion), and the sure foundation for faith and hope.
"Before surgery, would you rather have a surgeon with a warm bedside manner, or one whose skill you trust completely, even if you feel anxious? The latter brings true confidence."
That's a good observation. The former really doesn't matter before the surgery and the latter actually puts one at ease for substantive reasons rather than creating a faux assurance.