I finished Tim Keller’s Walking with God through Pain and Suffering several months ago and have struggled to find both the time and the correct words for a critique of this book. To facilitate the task, I’ll provide an overview of the book in this blog and my criticism of it in my April 17 posting.

Keller deserves credit for providing a well-researched and comprehensive analysis of Western civilization’s move toward secularism and its resulting inability to deal effectively with pain and suffering. With its emphasis on materialism, secular Western culture sees no benefit to suffering; it is just the accidental consequence of a callous, purposeless universe.

In making his analysis, Keller draws on the work of both Christian and non-Christian scholars. Among the former is Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who coined the term “immanent frame” to describe a world that is a completely natural order without any supernatural dimension. “It is a completely ‘immanent’ world over against a possible ‘transcendent’ one.” Keller makes a persuasive argument that the rise of the immanent frame perspective paralleled the perception that people usually encountered pain and suffering through accidents.

Another part of Keller’s book argues for the superiority of the Christian belief structure over the belief structures of other religions. “Unlike Buddhists,” he declares, “Christians believe that suffering is real, not an illusion.” Further on, he states, “Unlike believers in karma, Christians believe that suffering is often unjust and disproportionate.” And finally, “Unlike the dualistic (and to some degree, the moralistic) view, Christianity does not see suffering as a means of working off your sinful debts by virtue of the quality of your endurance to pain.”

In contrast, “the Christian understanding of suffering is dominated by the idea of grace.” Moreover, there is always purpose, even benefit, to suffering. Keller often uses the metaphor of walking through fire or through a furnace to clarify the impact of suffering on an individual. On one hand, fire can destroy an object, but fire can also purify. It can refine and strengthen metal ore, causing impurities to be removed. Similarly, suffering can crush a person’s spirit — or drive out its weaknesses and give it a power it never had before.

Before coming to grips with the issue raised by his book’s title, Keller looks at how arguments put forth by Christians and skeptics have changed over time. For awhile, Christian apologists tried to advance theodicies. That is, they tried to explain why a just God allows evil to come into existence and continue. A theodicy says, in effect, if those suffering understood God’s purposes and reasons for their suffering, they would be satisfied that their torment is not in vain. But Keller rightly points out that any theodicy is a difficult thing to uphold. After all, no imperfect, finite human mind can claim to have even a rudimentary understanding of God’s infinite, omniscient mind. Accordingly, Christian apologists have moved toward a defense of their faith, simply seeking to prove that the existence of evil does not mean God can’t or is unlikely to exist. Significantly, while a theodicy puts the burden of proof upon the believer; a defense shifts that burden to the skeptic.

For their part, skeptics have shifted from the more extreme logical argument against God to the more moderate evidential one. The former contends that evil proves God cannot exist; the latter holds that while evil may not technically disprove the existence of God, it makes his existence unlikely.

Much of the remainder of Keller’s book looks at different kinds of suffering and the different responses the Bible offers to each type. One interesting thing the author does is look at the internal effects of suffering on the individual. Beginning with Simone Weil’s definition of malheur, Keller focuses on affliction (the closest word in meaning to malheur). He finds affliction brings (1) Isolation — a feeling of separateness from people who are not afflicted; (2) Implosion — an inability to think about anyone else or anything else; (3) Sense of doom — an awareness of wrongdoing in our lives; (4) Temptation to cooperate with the suffering — to become comfortable with our suffering and fall into self-pity.

In the second half of his book, Keller addresses what one must do to walk with God through painful times. These activities can be summarized as follows: walk through the trial; grieve and weep; trust and pray; think, thank, and love; and hope.

Each step presupposes that the sufferer knows and accepts the fundamental concepts of Christianity. Indeed, the steps collectively and individually are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. Just accepting Christian values or interpreting the Bible symbolically will not do. Keller agrees with theologian Howard Thurman that “to reject the literal truth (of the Bible) is to deny life itself of its dignity and man the right or necessity of dimensional fulfillment.”

So…will Keller’s book help you deal with suffering? It will if you are a fundamental Christian. If you are not such a Christian, you may appreciate and benefit from Keller’s analysis of how concepts of pain and suffering have changed over time and how they differ among the major religions. But you will find little to help you when tragedy and loss knock on your door.