Suffering and Meaning in Life

I just finished two books, both on suffering. 

Man's Search for Meaning, written by Victor E. Frankl, is a book often recommended by business and successful people.  

Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist who lived in Vienna during the mid-1900s.  He also survived three years in a concentration camp.  His book combines those two aspects of his life.

In The Problem of Suffering: A Father's Hope, author Gregory P. Schulz shares his story and his feelings about the death of two of his children.

Grieving people suffer.  Dr. Schulz writes in such a manner that I, the reader, could almost feel his grief.  


These books deal with two of the hardest subjects on suffering.  Victor Frankl experiences the evils of mankind in the horrors of a concentration camp.  Dr. Schulz knows the pain and the grief of watching two of his children suffer and then die untimely deaths.

And we just don't understand why this happens. 

In his book, Frankl contends that people have the need, not just to survive, but to have significance and meaning in their lives. 

But "significance and meaning in suffering" fly in the face of today's popular culture.  Social media has convinced us that everyone is happy, that we should always be having fun, that we're successful, beautiful, and that there's no sorrow in our lives.

We even hide our suffering and pain.  Frankl suggests that we're ashamed of suffering; suffering makes other people uncomfortable.

But Frankl believes there's a meaning to suffering.  And he wants the suffering person to find that meaning. 

The difficult part in writing about this topic is that my words could come across as intending to diminish the reality of personal suffering.  Even the idea of "meaning in suffering" can be seen as an attempt to ease that suffering.

Nevertheless, I think it's because we suffer that we also have hope.  We hope for something better beyond our suffering and beyond this life.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  Romans 5:5-6

Also, as Christians, when we share our suffering with one another, we're bonded together, and we're strengthened in our faith and love. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.   2 Corinthians 1:3–4

About Jesus, Isaiah says that He was...

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  Isaiah 53:3b

Jesus, our Lord, also knows our sorrows; His Word is our comfort.

And finally, I like what Dr. Schulz says about Jesus, grief, and death.

As very God of very God He could - and did! - do something about His grief.  

The Bible relates several accounts of Jesus coming face-to-face with death, including the death of a friend.  And Jesus, our Lord, our God - He raised people from the dead!  He brought them back to life.

And that's our hope and our promise too.  It's for us, for our children, our families, friends, our church, the world.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.   John 3:16–17