BSA Ep. 9 - Does a Suffering God Help?
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Our Beyond Simple Answers Q&A episode. Can protest be part of faithful prayer? What is God doing in the midst of death and dying? And what remains an unresolved questions for us at the end this series?
Description
The thumbnail title of this episode is inspired by theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer's claim, only a suffering God can help. In this Q&A episode of Theology Lab's Beyond Simple Answers, Scott Rice, Greg Fung, and Kristin T. Lee explore some of the deepest questions in Christian theology: Can protest be a faithful form of prayer? Why does it matter that Christ suffers with us? And can Christianity truly explain evil and suffering? Drawing from the Bible, the book of Job, the Psalms, liberation theology, process theology, and personal stories of grief and loss, this conversation wrestles honestly with the problem of evil, the goodness of God, and the meaning of suffering. The discussion explores whether lament, anger, and even protest toward God can be authentic expressions of faith. Kristin T. Lee reflects on protest prayer, grief, racial trauma, and the role of lament in Christian spirituality, drawing on authors like Cole Arthur Riley and Tasha Jun. Greg Fung discusses process theology, divine power, and why the presence of God in suffering raises difficult questions about evil and theodicy. Scott Rice explores what it means for Jesus Christ to suffer with humanity and what hope Christians can hold onto in the face of pain, death, injustice, and unanswered questions. This episode also dives into: The problem of evil and suffering Protest theology and liberation theology Faith and doubt Theodicy and God’s goodness Jesus’ suffering and the cross Prayer, lament, and grief Heaven, hell, forgiveness, and judgment Can Christians question God? Why suffering challenges faith If you’ve ever struggled with suffering, questioned God, or wondered whether Christianity has satisfying answers to evil, this conversation is for you.
Resources
📚 Check out Kristin’s book, We Mend With Gold!
Find a local bookseller: https://tinyurl.com/MendwithgoldLocal
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/MendWithGold
Mentions from this episode:
Cole Arthur Riley's book: https://colearthurriley.com/writing/project-one-64g3t T
asha Jun's book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63009311-tell-me-the-dream-again
Generated TranscriptScott Rice (00:00)
Scott Rice (00:00)
Greg and Kristen, here we are.
final Q and A. So are you ready to jump into some questions that we've got from folks who have been watching the first series?
right, so Janine asked this question. She asked, is protesting as a response to evil, is it different from like what's called like petitionary prayer, asking God for something? And she saw, she draw like these parallels you see in the Bible. let me kind of focus this question and ask, can...
Can take the form of protest, right? Can protest look like petitioning or asking God? Can you still do that in a faithful way? So, someone get us started on this question.
Kristin T. Lee (00:40)
I absolutely think that protest can be a faithful form of prayer. And we see that modeled for us in the Bible. We've talked about Job before on this series. You certainly see Job interacting with God in this protesting way. And then also in the imprecatory Psalms where the psalmist is really bringing all his grievances to God about the wickedness and evil in the world. ⁓ And so think where I think
protest ⁓ differentiates from how we traditionally think of prayer, but it doesn't have to be. It's just a different form of prayer is that we are allowing these really big emotions of grief and lament and anger into prayer in a way that ⁓ can feel really freeing for those of us who have those emotions, but maybe haven't been allowed to bring that to God.
So even though it's modeled for us in the Bible, I don't think we necessarily see it that much in, for example, church spaces or in Bible studies, like when you go around and pray for one another in your small group, we don't often see like huge emotions and anger being expressed communally in prayer. ⁓ So I think that it can help those of us who have felt maybe like bad Christians in a way for having these big feelings around
God and evil and suffering in the world, it frees us to interact with God on those dimensions ⁓ and not contain them or hide them from God.
Scott Rice (02:09)
Okay, so could think about like,
trying this out individually, like, right? Like if I've never done this before, I could pray by myself, letting out like more emotions, more grief, the sense of like prayer as protest. I'm wondering if anyone here has like seen this done well or experienced with other people.
Kristin T. Lee (02:29)
Perhaps it's not surprising. I've seen examples in books ⁓ more than necessarily in real life in terms of communal and kind of more like lament, but lament as a way to protest and tell God like this isn't right. So Tasha June writes in her book, Tell Me the Dream Again about how after a lot of the rise in AAPI, ⁓
⁓ like acts of racial violence against Asians ⁓ during the pandemic. ⁓ She got together with a group of other Asian women to just mourn and lament together. And that was really powerful. And they were also also celebrating. It was in May. So they're also celebrating their own heritage while lamenting to God together. So I thought that was a really beautiful portrait. ⁓ And then the other thing that's really released this in me and helped me as a guide has been Cole Arthur Riley's book.
black liturgies because she has liturgies for ⁓ instances in which we are angry or grieving. ⁓ And it's been really helpful just to bring those, have someone write those words for me because I'm not used to it. And so praying through her liturgies has been really helpful for me.
Scott Rice (03:44)
Greg, can I experiment with an idea that I wonder if you and I have actually went through together that may have, and that I never thought of it as like protest and prayer. But remember when we did that,
we did a course together on Asian American history, you know, with our church community. And it started out as just like regular, you know, conversations, exploring basic questions in American history. But like, I think of like the second half of those gatherings, was, some people shared pretty like openly about instances of pain in their past. And ⁓ there was a sense of like communal support there ⁓ as a community of faith.
Greg Fung (03:58)
yeah.
Scott Rice (04:24)
And I don't know, is that like, should I think of that as like, was a prayerful protest happening while we were sharing there?
Greg Fung (04:33)
That ⁓ was a really memorable, helpful time,
I was thinking, Kristen, as you were sharing about like, where have I felt the sense of protest in prayer? thought, well, gosh, you know, you think about
civil rights movement or churches that are still very much connected in that tradition of the sort of the connection between civil rights and, and, and faith.
there's a way in which the, we're talking about it, it feels like it's, it's even beyond that. So when I think about the lament and say the civil rights movement, it's more like.
God, hear our cry for justice, like act on our behalf would be kind of how I might put it. Whereas the protest prayer that we hear in Job is more like, God, you've done me wrong. Like I am right and you are wrong. What has happened to me is wrong and this is kind of your fault. I'm blaming you, God, and I'm demanding a response or an answer, which I think we're saying has a place.
Like that, I don't know if I've seen that firsthand,
And I can see how literature could be a very helpful means of imagining what that, what that looks like to do it, do it in a faithful way, not in a unhelpful scathing sort of way, but in a.
deeply faithful and yet grief filled way that makes sense to me. And it's probably, it'd be helpful to have those models because I don't think we do.
Scott Rice (05:53)
Mm.
Let me go on to our second question here. This one's from David Saff. David asked a question along the lines of this. Like, why do you think it is significant that Christ suffers with us and for creation? So that line right there, that Christ suffers with us and for creation. I wonder if we might be able to speak about that, either like the meaning of that line.
personally or the meaning of that line, uh, theologically kind of issues, topics, questions, does it bring
Greg Fung (06:23)
⁓ Yeah, I'd love to jump on this one. I really love
question that David has posed. I mean, it's significant. It's significant that Christ suffers with us, with God's creation. God is present in our suffering. That's remarkable and unusual. I mean, it's so significant. It's
It's also, I think it also like really raises some of these theodicy questions that we've been wrestling with to the fore.
so I was, as I was thinking about suffering, I was kind of reaching back to, there was a death in our family a number of years ago, it was my closest cousin, we were best friends and it was kind of a premature death. So it really rattled us for many years. And so was kind of.
sitting with that. And I thought part of the challenge with the goodness of God being present, of Jesus being present in our suffering is there is a sense of like, it's great, it's really nice that God is present, but it would have been even nicer if like God had done something different, if the outcome had been different. And it brought me back to think John 11, like Lazarus, Jesus hears that Lazarus is dying, Jesus delays his trip, he shows up and both of his sisters say the same thing to
Jesus, they say, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. It's like, it's great you're here, Jesus. It's lovely, but it would have been better if you had actually done something with all that power you have.
Scott Rice (07:48)
Hmm.
Greg Fung (07:53)
As a process theologian, I think it actually raises the stakes of each of those points.
of
kind of theodicy triangle, if you will. So for example, from a process theology, I think it really raises the stakes on what does it mean for God to be all powerful when God does not exercise that power? Like what does God's power mean? But also on the person making side, does suffering, does something terrible allow us to grow? And if so, what does it mean that God is present in that?
Also on the protest side, I think it really raises the stakes because you can't protest something as we were just talking about to Kristen's question. You can't protest if that person's not there. You can't protest in the desert. If no one is there to hear the protest, is that really a protest if you're alone in the desert? Like, not really. So I think there's a way in which God's eminence, Jesus being present, makes all these other points of the theoticy much more meaningful and much more important. It doesn't answer it, but it makes it real to me.
Scott Rice (08:50)
Holy smokes, okay, I'm gonna say this back to you to make sure we get this,
You're saying we are able to protest evil and sometimes maybe
share like our grievances that like, we're not sure what God's doing in this because God is actually present there with us. And Greg, am I right in saying we're able to protest God at points when it feels like that's an appropriate expression of faith because God is there, like making that possible, enabling that.
Greg Fung (09:21)
Yes, I think that's right. They go hand in hand.
Scott Rice (09:25)
I mean, I can't help but think of like the, I mean, obviously like the great protest is Jesus like saying like, why have you forsaken me? And what's going on in that moment at the end of the gospels like is question like that has so much room to explore.
think that gives us, that certainly I gives us like this kind of theological permission for that to be part of our faith life, even as like here Jesus is obviously entrusting his entire life over to God.
Well, we're far beyond simple answers right now. Kristen, any thoughts here?
Kristin T. Lee (09:59)
I love that. And I think that it highlights for me that ⁓ it is a faithful response to protest because you have to trust that God actually is there, right? Like you can, there's a way in which those of us who really struggle with the suffering and evil in the world could just give up on God and say, clearly God can't exist if there's so much evil. But I think trusting that God is in it with us makes it possible for us to engage in protest.
Scott Rice (10:27)
I would not have thought we would be talking so much about prayer and protest at the end of this, but even when we named the five theodicies, it was like number three, I would say, right? Like, there was like, Greg and process stuff. And then we talked about like liberation theology, but protest was like interesting, but I didn't see it as like continually following us to the end of the series.
As I was hearing David's question, one of the things that it raised for me is that this idea that Christ suffers with us and for creation, made me think of, I actually had the, I thinking about this earlier and I realized I have the book literally on the table next to me. There's this theologian named
Torrance and he's a Scottish theologian, so he's got that going for him. And he has this like story that I remember being told early on in my seminary education that really stuck with me. And he was a chaplain and was maybe one of the world wars and.
And he's with like a dying, someone who's dying on the battlefield who asks him like, is God truly present in Jesus? And he says to him, like in his dying, this person's this person's dying moments and there's no God behind the back of Jesus. And like, why is that significant for me here? ⁓ There's like a, there's a debate in the theological tradition, like when Christ suffers, right? Is that his humanity that's suffering or is that even God being in suffering with us?
And there's a lot to explore there, but I'd like to think like if it is the person of Jesus who suffers, then it is really God present in the midst of our suffering. And I do have had a couple like a couple of family members who have died over the last few years. I've had at least one very close moment with someone right before they passed. And there's something significant about sitting there with someone in their final moments. And you're just, seeing, you're seeing real suffering. You're seeing like we're facing our own kind of finitude.
And knowing, I can't exactly say where, but I know that God is present in this moment. God is present. Not just like, not just ⁓ a vague presence of God, not just somehow the humanity of Jesus, whatever that would look like, but God is present in this moment. So that's the weight it carries for me among other things.
⁓ Let's go to a final question here. This one's not from the audience. I totally slipped this question in myself, but I wanted to show folks like theology is an ongoing thing. We're at the end of the series. I have more clarity on some things for sure, but other questions have come up or either topics that we haven't even touched on. So let me ask this question here.
as we're at end of this series, what's one ongoing question that you have around the topics of faith, God, suffering and evil?
Greg Fung (13:00)
what I was, I was thinking about two things. I was thinking about your comment where protest, the protest theodicy was sort of like number three on the list, but we've talked about it a lot. And I thought, well, why is that? And maybe it's, maybe it's because it is a response. Some of the other theodicies are passive. It's just like, well, it's an idea. But protest is response that we can take.
and make, and we, like, you can do it anytime. We can just do it. the, the liberation theology response is also a response, but the activation energy is higher. Like you have to do things. can, there's a lot of setup, like there's just a lot to it, but you can always protest. So that's kind of interesting. It's, it's very accessible. The other thing I was thinking about on the liberation response is how, how much it is rooted in.
the other elements, like to really take a risk and make sacrifices, you kind of need the other elements to give you the belief and energy to pursue change over a long period of time and against sort of not great odds. So that's kind of what I'm thinking about, but that's more on the response side. It's less on the, you know, open questions on evil faith and suffering, which there are many. So I don't know, we can come back to that.
Scott Rice (14:22)
Greg,
does that mean that you've been somewhat like one towards, like you feel more fondly towards the liberation, the Odyssey approach than the other approaches than you did like in, let's say a couple episodes ago?
Greg Fung (14:34)
It's I have not lost those have not lost any luster for me. It's simply that I still don't think they are theodicies, their responses, but they're not theodicies at all. So I think we should they need to be separated, categorically separated,
Scott Rice (14:44)
Here we go.
If you're a viewer listener, what you should know is we actually did a previous recording of this episode It was just too long. So we're trying to make it a little shorter But Greg brought out all of his his critiques against this the certain view that Kristen and I have elevated and look at this though now you're like now you're speaking to it in this very like like
At least fun way, then of course now we're getting, your reservations as well.
This one's like the change of mind on that is I thought folks should know about that.
Greg Fung (15:15)
It's just properly categorizing
where these pieces fit together.
Kristin T. Lee (15:20)
actually don't
disagree,
in that I can actually jump off because it takes what your response is and goes to my open questions. So I actually agree that protest theodicy and liberation theology, which are the two that I'm most drawn to, ⁓ they are very helpful for us in how to go about our days and live our lives ⁓ and respond. But they don't necessarily satisfy the intellectual question of evil and
God and suffering in the world. And so I guess what I am still left with coming out of this series is I still am not convinced that God had to create the world this way. And ⁓ my open question then is, and maybe this is foreshadowing a topic that we may explore in the future, is if some people's lives in this world are so full of just continuous suffering, like I'm thinking of my patients who have like
intractable depression or chronic pain. ⁓ You know, I sure hope that in the world after this, God has something really good in store for them, whether or not they believe in Jesus as their Christ and Savior. And that's just like my true feelings about the subject. And it doesn't necessarily ⁓ jive with traditional Christian teaching, but that's just the feeling I'm left with as I think about all the suffering and evil in the world.
Scott Rice (16:45)
Yeah, Kristen, one I really appreciate the honesty in that and it does bring up just theologically like this question of what does,
What does judgment entail? I'm saying judgment is like this catch-all term for what Christians might mean for something between like death and what happens next. Like what possibilities, if any, are opened up in that space? And folks don't kind of like know what I'm kind of alluding to, but there's all types of questions here around like salvation and in heaven and hell and is hell populated and how populated is heaven? So there's a whole lot there. So certainly I think things for us to explore.
My final question, there's many, ⁓ Actually, it has to do with forgiveness. We didn't talk about forgiveness a lot, so as I was reflecting on this, I realized like forgiveness is a part of the kind of evil and suffering.
and how human responses to that we did not address very much, if at all. And in this, I had been thinking a lot about kind of what is forgiveness? And it's prompted by another theology lab conversation that's going on that will come out after this episode is released. But just trying to figure out like, does forgiveness simply mean like this willingness not to retaliate against someone who's wronged you? Or does it in itself include a kind of a movement towards
embracing...
someone who has wronged you, your enemies, ⁓ does it really nudge you in that direction in and itself? And these come out of these two folks we've had at Theology Lab with Matthew Ichihashi Potts and Miroslav Volf, ⁓ who have different views on this.
So Greg and Kristen, that brings us actually to the end of our first Beyond Simple Answers series. All our next series will come out either later in the summer, 2026, or in the fall. I'm not totally sure when, but we have an idea of what it is gonna be about. One of the three of us wrote a book recently. Greg, did you write a book recently? I didn't write a book, did you? No, no, no.
Greg Fung (18:39)
I didn't write one. I
Kristin T. Lee (18:40)
You actually
Greg Fung (18:40)
don't know.
Kristin T. Lee (18:41)
did write one, Scott, but.
Scott Rice (18:42)
Yeah, but I wrote it, I wrote my book four years ago and nine people have read it. has written a book that a lot of people are reading and is justifiably getting a whole lot of attention. So what we're gonna be doing in the next Beyond Simple Answers series, we're gonna be looking at Kristen's book and questions that are deeply related to what we're trying to do at Beyond Simple Answers. And so your book is gonna be a springboard for us getting into some really, really interesting topics.
Kristin T. Lee (19:07)
Can't wait.
Greg Fung (19:09)
It'd be great.
Scott Rice (19:11)
No, let's pause there. I was going to stop and say, you know, it'd be really fun for us to like, to like hash out like whether or not protest theology and liberation theology are theories and whether they satisfy the intellect. And it's like, is it like the bonus episode? Not the book.
Greg Fung (19:27)
Ha ha!
Kristin T. Lee (19:29)
I really, I
wanna talk about this.
Scott Rice (19:32)
All right, let's just try it here. Ready? Ready? Here's the deal. I have an idea.
