The Problem of Suffering

Part 3 of the Series, Lord, Teach us to Pray

The earthquake struck without warning. Buildings collapsed, homes were swallowed in rubble, and whole neighborhoods were reduced to dust and silence. Families searched desperately for loved ones. Aid workers pulled bodies from the debris. Survivors, covered in ash, clung to one another and wept.

Almost immediately, calls for prayer rose around the world — and so did the criticisms. Some dismissed prayer as a hollow gesture. Others clung to it as their only thread of hope.

The question surfaced again with raw urgency: If God is both good and powerful, why does He allow such suffering at all?

For people of faith, this is not just abstract philosophy. It is lived experience. We pray for healing, and sometimes it comes. Other times the cancer spreads, the waters rise, the tragedy unfolds. What does prayer mean in the face of suffering God does not prevent?

That question became the next step in this investigation.

The Oldest Question

The problem of suffering is as old as faith itself.

The psalmist cried, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1). Job demanded answers from the whirlwind, insisting his pain was undeserved.

Like floodwaters breaking through a levee, suffering has always overwhelmed human certainty and forced believers to wrestle with God’s hiddenness.

C. S. Lewis: From Reason to Grief

Few modern voices capture this tension more vividly than C. S. Lewis.

In The Problem of Pain, written before the death of his wife, Lewis offered a rational defense. His arguments were clear:

• Freedom means risk. If humans are to love freely, they must also be free to choose evil, and that choice inevitably produces suffering.

• A stable world requires natural law. Gravity holds the planets in orbit but can also cause a fall. Water sustains life but can also drown.

• Pain can have purpose. As Lewis famously wrote: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

But years later, after losing his wife, Lewis’s tone changed. In A Grief Observed, he confessed the anguish of unanswered prayer:

“When you are happy… you will be welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate… and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside.”

The rational framework remained, but it could not soothe the ache. Lewis himself became the case study of a man moving from analysis to lived grief.

Case Study: Maria and the Fire

Maria was a widow living north of Denver. One night, a wildfire swept through her neighborhood. She escaped with her life but lost her home. For months afterward, she prayed daily: “Lord, why me? Why now?”

She told me later: “At first, I wanted answers. Then I realized there weren’t any that would satisfy me. Instead, prayer became the only place where I could bring my pain. I didn’t hear a voice. I didn’t get explanations. But I began to sense God’s presence in ways I never had before.”

Maria’s story echoes Lewis’s own: prayer did not erase the loss, but it transformed her way of enduring it.

The Mystical Critique

Where Lewis wrestled with explanation, the mystics chose immersion. They did not try to solve suffering but to enter it.

John of the Cross spoke of the Dark Night of the Soul, where God seems absent not because He has abandoned us, but because He is drawing the soul into a deeper communion. Teresa of Ávila said that tears in prayer are not wasted but are a form of intimacy with God.

Lewis (Rational):

“Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

John of the Cross (Mystic):

“In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.”

Instead of viewing suffering as primarily instructional — God “teaching us a lesson” — mystics saw it as participatory. The soul is invited into Christ’s own suffering, where prayer becomes not protest alone but companionship with the crucified God.

Case Study: James in the Hospital

James was a retired teacher diagnosed with ALS. As his body weakened, he asked friends to pray for healing. When no healing came, he grew bitter. Then a chaplain introduced him to prayer not as asking but as abiding.

“I stopped praying for a cure,” James told me. “Instead, I prayed, ‘Be with me, Lord.’ And He was. Not by removing the disease, but by giving me peace I can’t explain.”

James’s shift mirrors the mystical turn: prayer as presence rather than petition, communion rather than control.

The Silence of God

Still, the silence of God is often the sharpest wound.

One mother told me about praying night after night for her son’s addiction to be healed. “I kept asking, and nothing happened. The silence was almost worse than the pain.”

Lewis admitted the same in Letters to Malcolm:

“The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God is listening with His closest attention.”

The mystics affirm this too: silence is not absence but another mode of presence. God’s seeming withdrawal is often the place where faith is purified, moving from seeking gifts to seeking the Giver.

Prayer as Protest

The Bible is filled with prayers of lament and protest. Job cried out. Jeremiah wept. The psalms echo with “Why?” and “How long?”

One pastor told me, “The fact that lament is in the Bible means God expects us to argue with Him. He would rather have our honest protest than our polite withdrawal.”

Julian of Norwich (Mystic):

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Naomi, whose teenage daughter was killed by a drunk driver, discovered this herself. “When people told me to pray, I was furious,” she said. “What good did prayer do when God didn’t protect her?” Months later, she began journaling her prayers — angry, raw, accusatory. “At first it felt blasphemous. But strangely, I felt closer to God when I stopped pretending. I realized He could handle my anger.”

Naomi’s lament eventually bent toward trust, though it took time. Her protest became her prayer.

Living the Question

In the end, suffering is not a riddle to be solved but a paradox to be lived.

Lewis helps us see suffering as purposeful — the severe mercy of a God who speaks through pain. The mystics remind us suffering can also be sacramental — the place of hidden union with Christ.

Together, they suggest that prayer doesn’t solve suffering. It doesn’t erase it. But it refuses to let suffering have the last word.

Every lament in Scripture bends toward trust: “But I trust in your unfailing love” (Psalm 13:5). Every cry of forsakenness points toward resurrection. Even the silence of God can become presence.

Invitation

This week, if you are suffering, let your prayer be honest. Protest if you must. Sit in silence if you can do no more. If you are accompanying someone else in suffering, let your prayer be presence.

Because prayer in suffering is not about finding the perfect explanation. It is about finding God, even in the dark.

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🔹 In the next installment, we will contrast the silence of prayer with the silence of existentialism. When the world feels absurd and mute, what makes prayer different from simply shouting into the void?

Poem

From Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke

I love you, gentlest of Ways,

who ripened us as we wrestled with you.

You, the great homesickness we could never shake off,

you, the forest that always surrounded us,

you, the song we sang in every silence.

And still you are not answered.

And still you are not explained.

And yet, you are here—

moving through the broken branches,

weaving light through the cracks of our pain.