Suffering
Photo by Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash
"We also boast in our sufferings…”
That’s what Paul writes in Romans 5. He doesn’t hesitate. He lays out a spiritual equation like it’s a settled truth: suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope, he assures us, does not disappoint.
It sounds neat, predictable, and almost motivational. You could put it on a church banner, a Christian T-shirt, or hang it over the free weights at the gym.
I’m writing from the 7th floor of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Wake Forest University/Baptist Medical Center. Come with me for a walk.
Sit with the woman whose lungs are filling with fluid and whose children are trying to be brave. Sit with the man who has just been told his scans have lit up again. Walk through the children’s cancer center where parents whisper in the hallways and pray with clenched fists. Ask them what suffering produces.
They’ll say it produces exhaustion, numbness, rage, and silence. There is no boasting.
Not character. Not hope.
This is where Paul gets it completely wrong.
Not because he meant harm. Not because he didn’t suffer. But because he drew too straight a line between pain and redemption, as if suffering were a system with guaranteed results. It is as if grief could be trusted to make us wiser, or loss could be expected to make us better.
Suffering doesn’t work like that.
Whether we realize it or not, most suffering breaks us. It doesn’t refine; it dismantles. It doesn’t build endurance; it strips it away. Hope disappoints many people, especially those who suffer long and in silence. It does not arrive on schedule. Sometimes, hope does not arrive at all.
The real danger arises when we use Paul’s words to glorify suffering. Quoting this passage to those in pain can inadvertently imply that if their suffering hasn’t made them stronger, they are somehow failing. When the Church echoes this message, it crosses a line from offering comfort to committing spiritual abuse.
But here’s where Paul also says something I do believe:
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Not earned. Not summoned. Not released by suffering like a reward at the end of a trial.
Love is given, waiting for you on the front porch, like an unexpected Amazon Prime box.
That’s the part I trust. Not the progression from suffering to hope, but the love that arrives uninvited. I believe in the Spirit who pours into broken people, not because they have suffered well, but simply because they suffer.
Love does not need your pain to have a purpose. Love does not use grief to get you somewhere better. Love does not wait for you to grow stronger before it shows up.
It simply shows up.
Yes, I believe Paul was wrong about suffering. I think he was right about love, and that’s the only thing that matters in a cancer center hallway.
RLBryant 20225
Richard Bryant
The Rev. Richard Bryant is an ordained elder in the North Carolina Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished with permission from his Substack blog, Elevate the Discourse.