No Ceiling: Reflections on Trials and God's Redemption

There is a common story that I see repeated a lot in the church: A dedicated church member goes through--or witnesses someone else go through--something really hard. The Bad Thing is something very brutal, something unfair, something undeserved. The church member becomes disillusioned. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. They did all the right things, how could God let Bad Thing happen?

Of course, we know the “faithful” response to this: Trials aren’t (inversely) correlated with righteousness. Trials are a part of the human condition. Not only that, they are key to God’s plan for us; they are necessary to help us grow and become like God. And through God, we can overcome anything that we go through in this life.

But this dedicated church member has surely heard this before. Why is it that they feel disillusioned, if they believe this? Or if they don't believe it, why does the sense of betrayal surface only now?

My theory: We talk about “trials” and “overcoming trials,” but we all subconsciously put some mental limit on what the trial looks like. Sure, we’ll go through some discomfort. We’ll experience things we didn’t want to. Maybe we’ll lose our job and be financially unstable for a little while, before we find another situation. Maybe we’ll get into a car accident and get some serious injuries--we’ll be hospitalized and out of commission for a solid…few months or so. But we’ll recover, with God’s help. Perhaps, if we are feeling particularly intrepid, we’ll even allow for the possibility of a loved one’s death. But not someone too close. And not while we’re too young. Maybe a grandparent or a cousin or something. When we’re in our thirties and can emotionally handle it…

What's more, we grow up hearing "faith promoting" experiences wherein someone experiences something difficult, and is either rescued from it, or finds that it ultimately made their life better. Often, the story is told as though the trial fit neatly into a developmental arc--coming at exactly the right time to teach some lesson or correct some character flaw. There is nothing wrong with these stories; sometimes life happens that way, and it can be uplifting to hear about those times. But if that is the only type of story we hear, then we tend to develop a mental image of trials as a set of carefully curated experiences, calibrated to our personal difficulty level, meant to teach a specific lesson or unlock a particular blessing.

Such a mental framework doesn’t take into account war. Or lifelong poverty, or abuse. Or the sort of horrific lived experiences that make your stomach twist to hear them: The child abducted and cruelly abused for years. The refugee who witnessed their loved ones be tortured and killed. The abandoned baby.

We hear these stories and tend to gloss over them. They are heartbreaking. Filed under “terrible tragedies.” Mentioned occasionally in our discussions on trials--but ultimately held in our minds as abstract hypotheticals that definitely won't happen to us. Until the day that it does happen to us, or someone we know, or we simply give more hard thought to the lived experience of those to whom it did happen. To the feeling of not just being hurt, but shredded by our experiences into something unrecognizable and unsalvageable. And suddenly, all of the “faithful” explanations of trials feel weak. Inadequate. We can deal with a God who lets us experience broken arms, or failed dreams, or moderate financial struggles. But what sick being would allow us to go through this?

The uncomfortable truth is that there really isn’t a ceiling on the type of trials we experience. Anything that has the potential to happen, does happen, and it can happen to you. There is no such thing as a trial that is “supposed to” or “not supposed to” happen--there is only the trial that happens.

Sometimes, the trials that we don’t imagine are not those that are too extreme, but those that are too mundane. Unrelenting loneliness after the death of a spouse. The muted joylessness of life with chronic depression. The quiet ache of prolonged singlehood through years of effort and repeated disappointment. Chronic pain that is manageable but never gone. The gradual erosion of a parent’s identity through years of diaper changes and child-centered calendars. Suffering that is bearable but ever-present, too ordinary to grant even the dignity of feeling heroic.

But there is good news: The principles we teach about trials are true, and far more expansive than we sometimes imagine. They hold in the face of the most traumatic, destructive experiences imaginable; they hold equally for the quiet, everyday suffering. 

Trials are part of the human condition. They are not a reflection of your worthiness or relationship to God. Through them, we can become the kind of person capable of bearing such trials, and lifting others through theirs. And there is nothing that God cannot heal and ultimately redeem for our good. No trial too horrific. No discomfort too mundane.

We are not as delicate as we think. God knows that our souls are made of stronger stuff than we realize, which is why He allows us to live in conditions where these things happen. To a child, a scraped knee, a failing grade on a test, or an ended friendship can feel like the end of the world. This pain is real. But as adults, do we respond by confining them to a padded room, insulating them from any possibility of hurt? Of course not; such an approach would stunt their physical, social, and emotional development. We feel their pain. But we also recognize that the child will survive it. And in time, they will outgrow that scale of suffering.

The same thing is true for us. The terrible things are no less terrible. But they are a part of life, and once we have lived long enough, we will see that we were strong enough to bear it. And not only bear it, but to learn from it, to be strengthened by it. To endure pits of unimaginable blackness, and yet emerge glistening and triumphal. To wander longer than we thought possible through interminable fogs, and yet eventually get our bearings.

This triumph, this resurgence, is not always in this lifetime--another reason our trials can appear unacceptably brutal. If this life were all there was, what meaning could there be to living a miserable life and dying an agonizing death, as some do? But we do not believe that this life is all there is. There is an eternity ahead. What appears to us to be a tragic ending is simply the middle of the first chapter of our eternal journeys.

As a parent, there is a particular agony in hearing your baby cry, knowing that from their perspective, something unspeakably terrible is happening. They are alone. They are hungry. Their need has gone on as long as they can remember, and for all they know, will continue forever. And you, who are near, who are actively working to address their need, who knows that this moment will pass--you feel almost tortured by the gap between what they perceive and what you know. 

I believe this experience is shared by God. When the crowd mourned for Lazarus, Jesus, knowing that He would soon raise him from the dead, still wept. 

God feels our pains, perhaps more acutely than we do. Yet He knows these moments will pass. That we are strong enough to bear them. That He must not insulate us from them. For if God were to shield us from these experiences, He would be shielding us from learning about how life works, and how to navigate it. He would be shielding us from our divine potentials. Instead, He allows us to experience trials, even as He works through them and beyond them--to comfort, to heal, to redeem us.

There is no ceiling on what can happen to us in mortality.

But there is also no ceiling on God’s love, His healing, His power to redeem.