How the Bible Helps Us Make Sense of Suffering

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“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”

— Dr. Viktor Frankl

Christmas is, on its surface, a story about joy — candles, chorales, and the warmth of reunion. But underneath that celebration lies a harder, older truth: hope entered the world through pain.

The child was born in a stable, not a sanctuary. The King came wrapped in rags, not robes. From its very beginning, Christianity has insisted upon the same paradox Frankl uncovered centuries later in a concentration camp — that if life has meaning, then suffering itself must also have meaning.

That claim is scandalous to our modern ears. We prefer a faith that anesthetizes rather than awakens, that promises comfort rather than transformation. But the moment you strip suffering of meaning, you strip hope of power. For what good is hope that disappears when pain arrives?

The real task, then, is not to escape suffering, but to discover its usefulness.

I. "Take Up Your Cross"

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.’” — Matthew 16:24

No other sentence compresses so much truth into so few words.

In modern conversation, “bearing your cross” has been reduced to cliché, a platitude printed on greeting cards. Yet when first spoken, these words were incendiary — a call not to comfortable devotion, but to existential courage.

To take up your cross is to take responsibility for your own suffering. It is to carry the weight that is uniquely yours to bear — without resentment, without self-pity, and without passing it to another. The cross is not optional; it’s autobiographical. It’s the shape of your particular struggle, carved to fit your shoulders alone.

1. The Discipline of Meaningful Suffering

There’s a distinction between pain and suffering, and it matters. Pain is unavoidable; suffering, at least in part, is optional. Pain occurs when something hurts. Suffering deepens when we wrap that hurt in bitterness, blame, and despair.

The difference often comes down to attention. Pain asks, “What happened?” Suffering asks, “Why me?” The first opens a question, the second closes it.

Christ doesn’t instruct His followers to seek crosses, only to carry the ones that appear. His command is existential, not masochistic. Life will wound you — inevitably — but your response to the wound determines whether it festers or heals.

When He says, “Take up your cross,” He’s saying: Accept the burden that’s already yours, and bear it with integrity. Don’t curse the weight. Don’t envy another’s. And do not lie down in resentment beneath it.

2. The Shadow of Resentment

Every human soul faces the same temptation: to let injustice become identity. To take one’s cross and, instead of carrying it, become it.

Resentment is the slow corrosion of meaning. It whispers that the world is rigged, that you’ve been cheated, that no one — not even God — is watching. But resentment’s true goal is not justice; it’s vengeance. It offers the false luxury of victimhood: the illusion of power through perpetual hurt.

Yet, as Frankl observed, even in the concentration camp the human spirit retained one inviolable freedom — the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.

The cross you carry is heavy. But bitterness adds stones.

II. “Follow Me”

The second half of that verse is as profound as the first. Christ doesn’t command only that we bear suffering. He commands that we follow.

That word, “follow,” transforms the cross from punishment into pilgrimage. It gives direction to endurance. It turns pain into purpose.

To follow means: you orient your life around a guiding ideal. For Christians, that ideal is embodied in Christ Himself — the one who bore infinite suffering without hatred, who endured betrayal without rage. But even outside a religious framework, to live meaningfully requires some form of ideal higher than the self.

Without such direction, suffering becomes chaos.

III. Following the Star

“...and the star that they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.” — Matthew 2:9

The star of Bethlehem is not an ornament of the Christmas story — it is its map. It represents the absolute necessity of orientation. Without a star, the wise men have only darkness.

Life is no different. You cannot navigate it without a reference point beyond yourself.

1. The Need for a Guiding Ideal

“Why can’t I be my own guide?” someone once asked me.

“Because,” I answered, “you didn’t invent yourself.”

Life is too vast, too complex, too shot through with contradiction to be mastered by solitary will. Left alone, we spiral inward. What guides us must stand outside us — something that draws the gaze upward and forward at once.

In Christian thought, that “something” is Christ, the Logos, the animating order beneath chaos. In psychological terms, it is the highest possible ideal: the moral North Star that orders the wilderness of being.

Without it, the smallest hardship becomes intolerable. With it, even unbearable pain becomes bearable.

2. The Star That Shines in Darkness

There’s another paradox: you can only see a star at night.

When your life collapses — when careers fail, health dwindles, or those you love are taken — something strange occurs. The ordinary lights of the world go out. And in that darkness, for the first time, the deeper light becomes visible.

The Magi saw their star in the night sky, not in daylight. The people of Israel were led by a flame through the wilderness, not through gardens. What guides us most often appears only when we have lost every other source of guidance.

This is not cruelty. It is clarity.

3. The Moving Light

The star that the Magi followed kept moving. The Israelites’ pillar of fire kept moving. Meaning, likewise, is never static.

Your guiding star doesn’t ask you to arrive — it asks you to proceed. The moment you think you’ve reached final understanding, grace retreats ahead of you, calling, “Not yet.”

That’s the maddening beauty of it. Meaning grows as you grow. The more willing you are to move, the clearer your purpose becomes — but the more it demands of you.

As Jung wrote, “That which you most need to find will be found where you least want to look.”

Following the star means walking into those shadowed places instead of pretending they aren’t there. It is the humility to journey where your comfort zone ends.

IV. The Wilderness Between

The cross and the star are not opposites; they are partners in the same story. The cross keeps you grounded in reality; the star keeps you moving toward redemption. Together, they form the vertical and horizontal axes of a meaningful life.

But between them lies the wilderness — the long stretch of uncertainty where neither promise nor pain feels quite enough.

Everyone must cross that desert. You will be tempted, at times, to stop moving entirely. Stasis feels safer than suffering. But life punishes stagnation. The soul that refuses forward motion begins to corrode, like an unused muscle.

There is no standing still in spiritual life — only ascent or descent.

When you stop following your star, every step backward feels heavier. The horizon starts to fade, and the cross grows unbearable. But when you keep walking, no matter how haltingly, the same burden begins to feel lighter. Not because the weight has changed, but because you have.

V. The Refining Fire

Every movement toward your guiding ideal requires loss.

Scripture often uses the imagery of refinement — silver in fire, gold in the furnace. The flame symbolizes suffering, but not destruction. It’s not meant to annihilate you; it’s meant to burn away what’s unworthy of you.

Isaiah 48:10 says: “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.”

When we accept suffering as part of our formation, we make peace with the fire instead of fearing it. We begin to see hardship not as evidence of God’s absence, but of His craftsmanship.

VI. The Practice of Transformation

If you want to make sense of your own suffering, begin here:

Stop running from it.

A cross uncarried grows heavier with time. Face what hurts.

Refuse to identify with the pain. You have suffering; you are not suffering.

Choose an ideal higher than yourself. Without aspiration, pain is purposeless.

Continue forward movement. Meaning is found in motion, not stasis.

Revisit love. Once bitterness burns away, love is what remains — the residue of meaning itself.

These steps aren’t solutions. They are directions on the map — constellations to be followed one night at a time.

VII. The Final Paradox

The Christmas story begins with agony. A young woman’s scandalous pregnancy. A man’s wounded pride. Long travel, no shelter, foreign land. But it ends with glory. Angels singing over a trough. Light spilling into shadow.

Perhaps the pattern was planted there on purpose — to show that meaning is not found after suffering, but through it.

Just as the cross became the symbol of redemption, and the star the symbol of direction, you too are invited to weave these two into the shape of your own life. Carry your pain honestly. Aim your gaze heavenward. Keep walking.

Because in the end, suffering is not God’s rejection — it’s His refinement.

The cross weights your shoulders so you learn endurance. The star lights your path so you learn direction. Together they whisper the same truth: there is meaning, even here.

And it is through the very struggle you long to escape that the light of hope shines the brightest.