When Suffering Becomes a Badge of Faith

For a long time, I believed that the holier a person was, the more they suffered.

I saw it everywhere - in sermons about endurance, in testimonies that celebrated pain as proof of obedience, in women praised for their quiet resilience rather than their joy. Somewhere along the way, I learned that holiness and hardship were intertwined. To be faithful was to endure without complaint. To ache was to be anointed.

It’s a subtle message, but it seeps deep: that your exhaustion honors God. That your cries prove loyalty. That your silence under pressure is sanctified.

What I didn’t recognize then is how this kind of theology leaves little room for compassion - especially for ourselves. When we glorify endurance, we lose tenderness. When we equate faithfulness with pain, we stop making space for healing.

And maybe that’s the point where faith starts to twist: when we stop asking for compassion and start using suffering as a credential.

But what if faithfulness was never meant to be proven by pain?
What if the truest form of devotion looks less like endurance and more like empathy - the kind we extend inward first?

Next, in this week’s subscriber reflection, I’ll be exploring what happens when faith turns suffering into an idol - and how we can unlearn the idea that pain makes us holy.

Because holiness might not be about how much we can endure, but how deeply we can love. See you in the living room Thursday.