Christian Functional Views of Suffering: A Review and Theoretical Overview

We argue that advancing our understanding of religious meaning-making in the face of trauma and suffering requires greater attention to the specific meanings of suffering that religions offer, and offer an overview of eight functional Christian views of suffering. The beliefs people hold about the traumas they experience lead to differing forms of engagement with their suffering. We first situate religious meanings of suffering in the psychological literature on meaning-making. We next review existing research on religious views of suffering. We then differentiate between causal and functional views of suffering and show why increased attention to functional views promises to strengthen religious meaning-making processes for coping with trauma. Finally, we present an overview of functional views of suffering present in the Christian tradition. In the concluding section, we suggest next steps and implications for research and therapy.