Making Sense of Pain: A Faith-Based Perspective
By Jerry McCorkle
In an interview on 60 Minutes, former senator of Nebraska Ben Sasse reflected on what his cancer diagnosis has done to him personally.
His answer was striking:
“Suffering has a way of stripping away your illusions… it forces you to be honest with yourself about yourself.”
That’s not how most of us think about pain. We think of suffering as something to avoid, numb, or escape.
But Sasse names something deeper: suffering tells the truth.
It exposes how fragile our control really is. The plans we cling to, the image we curate, the quiet belief that we are in charge of our lives—all of it begins to crack.
David Brooks writes in The Second Mountain that suffering teaches us gratitude because it reveals how much we’ve taken for granted—especially love and friendship.
Suffering shatters the illusion of self-sufficiency. We discover we are not nearly as independent as we imagined.
Suffering, in other words, shrinks our ego down to size.
But there’s an important tension here: suffering may make us honest, but it doesn’t automatically make sense.
That’s where story comes in.
Someone once said, “You can endure almost anything if it’s part of a story.” The Christian story does not deny suffering—it explains it.
It tells us the world is beautiful, but broken. We are not alone in our pain; we are part of a humanity fractured by sin. That means suffering is not unique to me or you—we are all, in a sense, on “team suffering.”
But the story doesn’t end there.
It tells us we have a Savior who did not remain distant from our pain but entered into it. One who suffered, and therefore understands. One who walks with us—even “through the valley of the shadow of death.”
It tells us that suffering reshapes us—pulling us out of the illusion of control and into dependence on God and others. The very independence we prize is often what leads us astray; suffering gently, and sometimes painfully, brings us back.
And finally, it tells us that suffering will not have the last word.
What we experience now is, as Scripture says, “a light and momentary affliction” compared to what is coming—a day when everything sad will become untrue.
So yes, suffering strips away illusions. It forces honesty. It reveals what matters.
But more than that, it invites us into a story where pain is not pointless, where we are not alone, and where the ending is already secure.
