Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 179:715 (Jul 2022)
Article: A Trinitarian Theology Of Suffering
Author: M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

BSac 179:715 (July-September 2022) p. 259

A Trinitarian Theology Of Suffering

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall is Professor of Psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, La Mirada, California.

* This is the third article in the four-part series “Suffering and the Christian Life: The Hard Road to Glory,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2–5, 2021.

When I tell people I study meaning-making in suffering, people sometimes suggest that what Christians do might more accurately be called “meaning-finding.” It is a good point. We inhabit a world that is infused with meaning by virtue of being made intentionally by a God who also has loving purposes for this world and for our lives. It is a wonderful gift to be able to step into the meaningful story of God’s redemptive purposes and to not be burdened by the need to create meaning for ourselves. On the other hand, meaning-finding may also not accurately capture what Christians actually do when they are faced with suffering.

In the course of my research, my collaborators and I have conducted almost a hundred interviews with Christians on their experiences of facing cancer diagnoses. We have heard an astonishing variety of ways they make meaning of their suffering. Some of those ways are almost certainly theologically problematic. One middle-aged man with advanced prostate cancer was convinced that he was being unfairly punished by God, that he had been given a death sentence even though he saw himself as “not a bad guy, not some criminal.” Though his Christian friends tried to reassure him that this was not the case, he persisted in this belief. Another older man conceptualized his prostate cancer as a test of faith, in which he had to prove his faith by claiming God’s healing. God is, of course, the great healer, and James 1:2–3 suggests that the trials one experiences can be a kind of test to reveal one’s inner character. But this man’s approach involved reading through and claiming a list of healing verses every day. This claiming functioned as a sort of magic ritual and, unfortunately, also represented a rather rigid and brittle form of coping, effective only as long as

BSac 179:715 (July-September 2022) p. 260

the cancer did not return. We also heard a range of cancer narratives that were more orthodox in their approach, which I will review later. But even these more orthodox accounts, with few exceptions, largely struck me as falling short of the depth of meaning found in biblical passages on suffering. What accounts for this situation? Put simply, our contemporary churches do not offer people the cultural r...