And so the meaning of life is to have the freedom to choose the life that makes you most happy. However, in that view of things, suffering can have no meaningful part. It is a complete interruption of your life story—it cannot be a meaningful part of the story. In this approach to life, suffering should be avoided at almost any cost, or minimized

But Paul does not say that. He says, “I have learned this.”

But Paul says that suffering also prepares a glory for us. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor 4:17). And so we ask, How does suffering benefit us? Before we can answer that question, we must consider what the Bible teaches us about the whole issue of what today is called

And therefore, we must prepare not only the mind for suffering but also the heart, and that means developing a consistent, vibrant, theologically deep yet existentially rich prayer life.

However, the soul-making theodicy suffers from some glaring weaknesses.

It certainly may entail repentance, forgiveness, and fixing our eyes on our hopes. But Job-type suffering requires a process of honest prayer and crying, the hard work of deliberate trust in God, and what St. Augustine called a re-ordering of our loves.

evil is, rather, the condition that results when some good thing that God made is twisted or corrupted from its original design or purpose.

Obviously, an unskillful coach could do us a lot of harm—but we have the perfect coach, the Great Coach.

A moral feeling means I feel some behavior is right and some behavior wrong and even repulsive. Now, if there is no God, where do such strong moral instincts and feelings come from?