Questions Jews Ask

Renewal Question 08: How Do Believers in Jesus Understand Suffering, Redemption, and Divine Hiddenness?

Abstract

For many Jews, especially those shaped by exile, persecution, the Shoah, family grief, illness, and unanswered prayer, talk about redemption can sound premature. If God is present, why is he hidden? If Jesus is Messiah, why does suffering continue? If Christians speak of victory, do they understand lament? A Renewal or mystically oriented Jewish question may press not only doctrine but lived experience: where is God in darkness, and how can any claim about redemption avoid becoming denial?

This answer argues that Christian faith understands suffering through lament, Israel's Scriptures, the cross, resurrection, and future hope. Christians do not claim that suffering is unreal or that divine hiddenness is easy to explain. They claim that in Jesus, Yeshua, God has entered suffering, borne sin and death, and begun redemption through resurrection, while final redemption remains awaited. The cross prevents triumphalism; the resurrection prevents despair. Christian hope is therefore neither denial nor simple explanation. It is trust that the hidden God has acted in the suffering and risen Messiah and will bring justice, healing, and resurrection in the end.

The Seriousness of the Question

Jewish questions about suffering are never merely theoretical. They arise from Scripture and history: slavery in Egypt, wilderness testing, exile, destruction, persecution, pogroms, the Shoah, terrorism, family grief, and the ongoing vulnerability of Jewish communities. Any Christian answer that moves too quickly to explanation will sound morally shallow.

The Hebrew Bible gives Christians no permission to minimize suffering. Job protests. The Psalms lament. Jeremiah weeps. Ecclesiastes wrestles. The prophets cry out against injustice. Israel's prayers include complaint, bewilderment, silence, and hope. A Christian answer must stand inside that biblical realism.

Therefore, when Christians say Jesus brings redemption, they should not mean that believers are spared pain or that history has already become whole. The New Testament itself says believers groan, creation groans, and hope is still awaited.

Divine Hiddenness

Divine hiddenness names the experience that God seems absent, silent, or concealed. A person may pray and feel nothing. A community may suffer and see no rescue. The world may look morally chaotic. For Jewish readers, this question can be intensified by Christian claims that Messiah has come. If Messiah has come, why is God still hidden?

Christians answer that Jesus reveals God precisely through hiddenness as well as glory. The cross is not an obvious display of triumph. It is public shame, weakness, rejection, and death. Yet Christians believe that God was at work there in the most hidden way: reconciling, forgiving, judging evil, and entering the depths of human suffering.

This does not solve every emotional problem. It does change the shape of the question. Christianity does not say God is distant from suffering. It says God in Messiah has gone into suffering and death.

The Cross and Jewish Lament

The cross should not be presented to Jews as an abstract mechanism detached from Israel's story. Jesus dies as a Jew under Roman power, rejected, mocked, and executed. His cry of abandonment echoes the Psalms. Christians should hear in the cross both atonement and lament.

This matters because some Christian speech about suffering becomes cruel. It tells people that every tragedy has an obvious purpose, that pain should be accepted without protest, or that grief shows weak faith. That is not biblical. Jesus himself weeps. He cries out. He teaches trust, but not numbness.

The cross allows Christians to say: God does not save by avoiding suffering from a distance. God saves by entering it, bearing it, exposing its evil, and overcoming it through resurrection. This is not a full explanation of every wound. It is a revelation of God's self-giving presence in the place where God seems absent.

Resurrection and Unfinished Redemption

The resurrection is the Christian answer to despair. 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 presents the resurrection as witnessed testimony. Luke 24 joins suffering, resurrection, Scripture, and mission. John 20 shows grief turned into recognition and fear turned into sending.

For Christians, resurrection means suffering and death are not ultimate. It does not mean suffering has disappeared. It means God's future has broken into history ahead of time. Jesus is raised as the beginning of new creation, while the fullness of redemption is still future.

This is why Christians speak of "already" and "not yet." Redemption has begun in Jesus' death and resurrection. Forgiveness, Spirit, new community, and hope are real now. But war, injustice, exile, illness, and death still remain. Final redemption is awaited.

Jewish readers may object that this seems to postpone the messianic test. That objection is serious. Maimonides' influential messianic criteria focus on visible historical completion, including restored rule, Torah faithfulness, and peace; see Mishneh Torah, Melachim uMilchamot, Chapter 11. Christians answer that Messiah's work comes in two movements: suffering and resurrection first, final restoration later. The disagreement remains, but the Christian view is not that suffering no longer matters.

Suffering Is Not Automatically Holy

Christianity has sometimes spoken carelessly about suffering, as though suffering itself were good. That is wrong. Suffering can purify, teach compassion, and deepen dependence on God, but suffering is also an enemy. Death is an enemy. Oppression is evil. Abuse is evil. Antisemitism is evil. The cross does not make evil good; it shows God overcoming evil by self-giving love.

This distinction matters pastorally. A person who is suffering should not be told to romanticize pain. A victim should not be told to endure injustice because Jesus suffered. The suffering Messiah stands with the afflicted and judges oppressors.

Christian hope should therefore produce compassion and resistance to evil. If believers in Jesus speak of redemption while ignoring Jewish suffering or present injustice, they are contradicting the Messiah.

Hiddenness and Spiritual Experience

Renewal and mystical spirituality often emphasizes divine nearness, joy, healing, song, and presence. Those are real gifts. But mature spirituality also makes room for dryness, silence, and darkness. A person may love God and still feel abandoned. A community may be faithful and still suffer.

Christian faith should not force every season into the language of felt intimacy. Sometimes the faithful prayer is lament. Sometimes trust is quiet endurance. Sometimes hope means saying that God is God even when the heart feels nothing.

Jesus' own path gives Christians a way to hold these tensions. He knows joy and communion with the Father. He also knows agony, betrayal, and the cry of abandonment. The risen Jesus still bears the marks of suffering. Christian mysticism should therefore be cruciform: shaped by the cross, not only by ecstasy.

Redemption and Jewish History

Christian claims about redemption must be spoken with repentance in relation to Jewish history. Too often Christians have contributed to Jewish suffering and then offered theological explanations for it. That is intolerable. Jewish suffering caused by Christians should be confessed as sin, not interpreted as a lesson for Jews.

Nostra Aetate is important because it rejects the idea that Jews should be presented as rejected or accursed by God and condemns antisemitism. The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism helps name patterns Christians must oppose.

If Christians believe Jesus is redeemer, they must show it by opposing antisemitism, caring for the wounded, and refusing triumphalist speech about Jewish pain.

A Direct Christian Answer

How do believers in Jesus understand suffering, redemption, and divine hiddenness? They understand suffering through lament and the cross, redemption through resurrection and future hope, and hiddenness through the God who is present even when he seems absent.

Christians do not claim that all suffering is explained. They claim that God has entered suffering in Yeshua, borne sin and death, raised him from the dead, and promised final restoration. The cross prevents cheap victory language. The resurrection prevents hopelessness. Until final redemption, believers live by lament, mercy, resistance to evil, and hope.

For Jewish listeners, the Christian claim should be stated humbly: if God raised Jesus, then redemption has begun in the hidden form of the suffering Messiah and will be completed openly. If Jesus was not raised, then Christian claims about redemption are empty. Everything turns on that act of God.

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