How Can I Overcome Grief?

Sometimes religious people have this idea that religion allows you to shortcut the normal human processes of agony, misery, decay, and death.&nbsp; I mean, if God is with you, why shouldn’t he enable you to be happy?&nbsp; But that’s not how it works.&nbsp; In fact, with respect to grief, St. Paul himself warned that we Christians do grieve, just not as others grieve—without hope.&nbsp; So, in every other way, Christians are as crushed by grief as anyone else.&nbsp; We differ only in the confidence that we will one day see our loved ones again, a confidence that does little to overcome the loss, loneliness, and crushing emptiness that we experience now.&nbsp; “Filling your life with God” won’t help you here, because God himself became a man, and he too was “acquainted with grief” as “a man of sorrows.”&nbsp; When God makes the saint, he does not unmake the man.&nbsp; There is no way to shortcut normal human processes through some secret powers built into religion.&nbsp; That’s not what religion is for. <a rel="payment" href="https://www.patreon.com/user?u=40503836&fan_landing=true">Support this podcast</a>