What is the difference between pain and suffering? The two words often sit side by side in our speech, as though they were synonyms, but in truth they are not the same. Pain is what it is: the sharp cry of nerve endings, the dull throb of a wound, the hollow ache of hunger. Pain belongs to the body and to the mind. Suffering, though, is something more. It is pain plus protest. It is the cry of the soul that says, this should not be.
We all know this instinctively. The hospital waiting room, the graveside, the battlefield, the prison cell – wherever pain is, suffering also lurks near, pressing its calloused hand upon us. Pain tells us what has happened. Suffering tells us it must be meaningful… somehow. To suffer is to live in the dissonance between what is and what ought to be. It is to feel the world tilt sideways and to know, with a certainty deeper than reasoned logic, that things are not as they should be.
Pain and Suffering
Animals know pain. They recoil from fire, they limp when their bones are broken. Yet it is humans who suffer. We suffer because we remember, and we imagine, and we measure the weight of our lives on a scale that reaches beyond our days. A deer struck by an arrow feels agony, but it does not lament injustice. It does not ask “Why?” Only humans do this. Only humans look at their pain and judge it unfit, unworthy, unacceptable. Only humans suffer.
This distinction is telling. For if suffering is nothing more than chemistry in motion, why does it carry the sound of accusation? Why do we weep not only at our pain but at the world’s betrayal?
The Cry of “Should”
Every lament, spoken or silent, hides within it the word should. My friend should not have died so young. My child should not be born into hunger. This war should not rage on. Even those who deny God cannot escape the vocabulary of obligation. They may not agree on what is just, or what is right, but they cannot help but speak as though such things existed. The argument itself—what is good, what is evil- is evidence that both parties assume there is such a thing as good and evil.
And so suffering becomes not a closed door to belief, but an opening. Far from disproving God, it testifies to a deep conviction that the world is broken against a standard we somehow know. To believe that things are not as they should be is, in some measure, already to believe that there is a should.
The Turn of Apologetic
Atheists and believers alike stand at gravesides. Both feel the sting of sorrow. But for the unbeliever, suffering must eventually flatten into meaninglessness. Molecules collide, chance colludes, and pain is what it is. The cry of protest, “this should not be,” has no answer in a universe of indifference. It is only noise in the ether.
Yet we cannot seem to accept this. We keep on crying. We keep on hoping. We demand that life answer us. Why? Because somewhere within, eternity has been set in the human heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We are haunted by a memory of wholeness we never held, and by a future restoration we cannot yet see.
If there were no God, why should our pain feel so wrong? Why should injustice stab our conscience? Why should suffering sound like a lawsuit against reality?
The very existence of lament is an apologetic.
The Witness of Scripture
The Bible never hides this. The Psalms give us not sanitized worship but raw complaint: “How long, O Lord?” “Why do You hide Your face?” These are not faithless words. They are words of faith so fierce that they dare to drag God into the courtroom of human pain. They assume He is there. They assume He cares. They assume things should be otherwise.
Paul writes in Romans 8 that “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” Our groaning is not meaningless noise; it is in harmony with the groan of the earth itself. Creation suffers because creation remembers. Creation suffers because it knows the world is not as it should be.
The book of Ecclesiastes, too, leans into this tension. Qoheleth looks at life and calls it hevel – vapor, futility, absurdity. Yet his very protest is a kind of worship. It is the acknowledgement that God is real and that life, under the sun, feels fractured from its purpose.
Bearing Suffering in the Ruins
To live among the ruins is to suffer. But it is also to testify. When we say, “this is not as it should be,” we are already confessing that somewhere there is a “should.” We cannot yet grasp its fullness. We cannot yet repair the breach. But our protest itself is a kind of faith.
So do not despise your lament. Do not rush to silence it with platitudes. Let your suffering speak, for in its cry lies the witness of eternity. The ache itself is holy ground. The ruins ache because they remember the temple once stood.
We are not asked to enjoy suffering, nor to pretend it does not sting. We are asked to bear it, to let it sharpen our longing for the One who alone can set things right.
Prayer of Lament
O Lord, You hear the cries of Your children.
You see our wounds, and You know our sorrows.
We confess that our pain has become suffering,
for we cannot help but cry, this should not be.
Yet even as we protest, we turn our protest into prayer.
We lift to You our grief, our outrage, our silent ache.
Do not despise these offerings of lament,
for they are the only faith we have to bring today.
Hold them in Your mercy until the day You restore all things.
Amen.
Selah Box
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Scripture: Romans 8:22–23 — “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves…groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
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Reflective Question: When I suffer, what “should” am I longing for? How does that longing point me beyond myself to God?
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Practical Exercise: Write a short lament naming a present suffering in your life. End it not with resolution, but with the words: “This is not as it should be.”
Every hard journey is eased by good companions, and your steps alongside mine are a gift to me.
Should you wish, you may contribute some coin to the Pilgrim’s Purse.
