I remember the dissonance I felt when I was invited to join a prayer meeting organized by Wheaton’s Politics and International Relations Department soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Masked and socially distanced, we gathered in a calm setting to pray for the people of Ukraine—huddled in basements and subways as Russia stunned the world with its brutal offensive. The peaceful normalcy of that prayer meeting, even with heartfelt concern for the Ukrainian people, collided with the new realities of my homeland. The contrast was unsettling: the measures we could take to ensure our own safety felt almost extravagant compared to the chaos and panic unfolding in Ukraine.
The expatriate guilt—a pervasive awareness of my security against the collective suffering of the Ukrainian people—has been disorienting. It has left me questioning my place and role in a world so starkly divided by contrasts. This tension resurfaces repeatedly, stemming from a vacillation between two kinds of safety: the psychological safety emphasized in higher education and the rudimentary physical safety that many around the world, most personally in Ukraine, are still fighting to secure. How do I remain faithfully present to the immediate realities of my context (Romans 12:15) while holding space for the suffering that feels, in my heart, more urgent and pressing?
Suffering itself imposes a sorting, a separation, which reminds me of something my mom once shared when she was confronted with a serious illness. She said she suddenly felt as if the world became divided—one for the healthy and one for the sick, a place the healthy could not truly enter, even if they were full of compassion. Suffering, she helped me realize, simultaneously connects and alienates. It binds us to others through shared humanity and limited empathy, yet it also isolates us when our pain feels incomprehensible to those around us. C.S. Lewis, reflecting on the loss of his mother as a nine-year-old boy, described the experience as “alien and menacing,” capturing the profound disconnection suffering can create.1
Earlier in the war, my friend, who lives in the beautiful port city of Odessa—continuously targeted by Russian shelling and airstrikes—sent me a picture of her two daughters, then ages 5 and 3, nestled for bedtime in the trunk of her car. Every night, she took her girls to the underground parking garage. In the picture, the older daughter, tucked in a blanket with a classic Mickey Mouse pattern, smiles trustingly, her gaze fixed on her mother, who took the photo—and, in that way, looking straight at me. Later that week, a student emailed me requesting an absence from a class focused on mental health issues among college students, explaining that the topic felt too heavy for her. I excused her absence and offered to meet in my office, but that little girl’s smile, that gaze, that Mickey Mouse blanket stayed with me—as it still does, almost three years later—like a veil, making it hard to fully engage in frequent conversations about safety for our students and colleagues.
These conversations are often filled with language that evokes suffering—trauma, trigger, harm, violence, abuse, grief, and others—which leaves me wondering: what words remain to capture the raw impact of war, of death itself? As I wrestle with whether this seeming inflation of language risks trivializing the very suffering it seeks to address—and occasionally voice my struggle—I risk coming across as unsympathetic and even dismissive.
The complexity of this internal conflict finds a counterpoint in the clarity of my experience as a mother. In motherhood, presence takes precedence over perspective. When my children cried over scraped elbows and knees—less so now at 16, 14, and 9—it was not an explanation they sought but the comfort of being cared for. In those moments, it was not about weighing the (in)significance of their pain against the world’s suffering (they have their dad for that) but simply being there, holding them, and soothing their ache. In Isaiah 66:13, I am touched by God’s choosing to emulate mothers in the expression of comfort for His people.
The word “soothe” carries layers of meaning. Its roots lie in the Old English sōthian, meaning “to verify or confirm,” closely related to sōth, meaning “truth.”2 In its earlier usage, soothing was less about offering comfort and more about testifying to the truth—something far more enduring than fleeting relief. The transition to its modern association with comfort reveals a cultural shift: soothing now primarily affirms the truth of one’s pain, but has it lost its original meaning—where soothing was not only about presence but also about perspective, a testifying to a deeper, ultimate reality.
Recently, Henrique Alvim, who teaches at Geneva College, and I presented at a higher education conference on the role of suffering in holistic human development. We knew it was important to begin with several disclaimers about what we were not saying about suffering. We were not suggesting that suffering is inherently good or desirable—not all suffering leads to growth; some suffering stunts it. We were not excusing injustice or romanticizing hardship and telling students to “just toughen up.” Resilience is not self-sufficiency.
Yet we observed that the predominant institutional approach to suffering is often one of avoidance—from institutional marketing that equates flourishing with the absence of suffering to personal postures that treat suffering as an unwelcome and harmful interruption in one’s development. Institutions can lessen burdens but not eliminate suffering. No mentor, policy, program, or system can insulate students from grief, disappointment, or hardship. A culture increasingly focused on removing discomfort does not necessarily make people stronger; it often leaves them more anxious and unprepared for suffering when it inevitably comes.
In the talk, we briefly walked through some of humanity’s shifting visions of the good life and, within them, the evolving relationship with suffering—each still shaping the way we think about it today. For Aristotle, for example, suffering was a challenge to be endured on the path to virtue. The Stoics treated it as an illusion to be transcended through rational control. With their exuberant faith in reason and progress, the Enlightenment thinkers saw suffering as a problem to be solved. Existentialists, by contrast, viewed suffering as an unavoidable reality that compels individuals to create meaning in its midst. More recently, social justice movements identified suffering as a structural issue caused by oppression, requiring activism to correct injustice. Therapeutic culture led to treating suffering as a threat to one’s self-actualization. The digital age and social media have turned suffering into a branding opportunity or a crisis to be optimized.
While each of these perspectives captures something true, none can bear the full weight of suffering. Here, the Christian vision of suffering stoops low to lift our burdens (1 Peter 5:7). The cross does not dismiss suffering, nor does it merely repurpose it for self-improvement. Instead, it transforms suffering by situating it within a redemptive story that neither denies pain nor lets it be the central character. The cross is not the measuring stick by which all suffering must be compared, but the place where all suffering is gathered, borne, and ultimately redeemed. Here, Christ offers us true safety at the cost of His life as He plunges into the obscurity of death on our behalf. In His forsakenness, we are remembered. “With his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
This is why Christian higher education can and should help students learn how to suffer rightly, unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23)—not by avoidance, reframing, resistance, or control, but in the light of the promise: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Christian psychiatrist Curt Thompson reflects on suffering as the soil where hope takes root—a soil ultimately transformed by the very hope it bears.3 He emphasizes that within a Christ-anchored community, hope does not merely withstand suffering but reshapes it, drawing us into deeper formation. Through Christ’s promise, we encourage one another—not with fleeting assurances or unquestioning validation, but with the eschatological hope that suffering is not the final word (Romans 8:18). Whether in the quiet anguish in a college counseling office or the raw desperation of a basement shelter in Ukraine, no suffering falls outside His redemption. What starts as the groan of our sorrows will find its continuation of the triumphant, never-ending song. (Romans 8:22; Revelation 5:13-14).
In the end, perhaps all suffering is a cosmic heartache—a fracture in the beauty of Creation that cuts straight through the heart of God Himself. After all, in the eternal Holy City, humanity’s tears are never scorned but tenderly wiped away by His pierced hand (Revelation 21:4). And yet, faithful presence is, above all, a hopeful presence—the certainty that in the light of reclaimed eternal life, when we see the Savior face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12), even the deepest wounds will close, and even the most unbearable pain will heal—like the scraped knees of our childhood.
Footnotes
- C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955), 18.
- Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/word/soothe.
- Curt Thompson, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023), 38.
What a great article about a Christian understanding of suffering in Ukraine, and in general. This is especially relevant in light of the false accusation that Ukraine began the war, not Putin.