The Atlantic

A Christian Response to Suffering

What Christianity has to offer in response to shattering events isn’t a philosophical or formulaic answer, but a wounded savior.
Source: Katie Martin / The Atlantic; Getty

One of the things I’ve discovered in my middle years is just how many lives are marked by wounds: terribly painful, life-altering, haunting, and impossible to make sense of. Some of them are visible on the surface; many of them are hidden in shadows. Some are carried alone.

In this Easter season, I’ve been deeply moved by Nicholas Wolterstorff’s an expression of his profound grief in the aftermath of his 25-year-old son Eric’s death in is fragmentary, Wolterstorff has , because it reflects the fragmentation of his life at that time. He admits that he couldn’t reassemble the pieces by saying either “God did it” or “There was nothing God could do about it.”

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