It’s the stuff of cross-stitch samplers and sunny sermons: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”
It’s meant to console, to inspire confidence, to help us “claim victory” over illness or heartache or the wiles of the devil. For all the earnestness with which it is exhorted and embraced, it is also patently 
untrue.
Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle.
They are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery (more on that in a minute). Others don’t.
Some people, it is clear, have more than they can handle.
Yet it’s important to note that Christian theology does not hold that it is God who sends the more-than-we-can-handle difficulties our way. God is not the invisible personal trainer, sadistically adding more weight to the bench to see how much we can press before we collapse–our own “no pain, no gain” life coach.
And neither does God visit suffering upon us as punishment. Jesus addresses this in Sunday’s appointed gospel lesson (Luke 13:1-9). Two ripped-from-the-headlines events are used to make his point. The first is the massacre of a group of Galileans in Jerusalem. On Pilate’s orders, these Jews had been murdered for offering sacrifices in the temple, and their own blood had been mingled with the priestly oblation.
Jesus insists that such a tragedy is not punishment from God: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you . . . “
His second example–again from the front page of the newspaper–was a construction accident in which eighteen people had been killed when a tower fell. Jesus repeats the question: “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you . . . “
The truth, though, is that most of us prefer a punishing God to one who seems absent or unpredictable. Even if we’re the ones being punished.
The rain falls, as Jesus teaches elsewhere, on the just and the unjust. This goes against our sense of basic fairness but, as this week’s reading from Isaiah reminds us, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are God’s ways our ways (55:8).
We can’t know God’s thoughts but we can know something better. As Frederick Buechner puts it: “God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself. He doesn’t show us why things are as they are. He shows his face.”
During Lent we follow this One who reveals the face of God, who calls us to repentance–the dominant theme, perhaps, of the passage from Luke. Repentance–metanoia–is not about feeling a little bit bad and hoping to do a little bit better tomorrow. Repentance is a radical reorientation of the self; literally a “turning around” of the intellect or will–a change of heart, a change in direction.
But to what end? For what purpose?
Immediately after the call to repentance, Jesus tells the parable of the lone fig tree planted among the grapes. For three years the tree had produced no fruit and the vineyard owner instructed the gardener to “cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?”
But the gardener in the story displays the hope of all who have ever tried to keep a house plant alive or salvage a backyard vegetable patch. He says to the vineyard owner: “give it one more year.”
We’re the barren fig tree in Jesus’ parable and Jesus is the patient gardener. “Give it one more year,” he pleads on our behalf. Jesus tells this story as he’s on his way to Jerusalem to die. He knows where all of this is leading. “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.”
The cure that Jesus the patient gardener offers is radical horticulture: he will give his own life, his crucified body, as the fertilizer, the compost that will bring new life and growth. Repentance–a turning away from death toward life and wholeness–is part of this process.
The tragedies or accidents that befall us are not God’s judgment on us–we already have Jesus’ word on that. And sometimes we have more than we can handle of our share of suffering. Pious sloganeering to the contrary can feel like a kick in the stomach to those barely hanging on.
The good news is that Jesus tends the soil of broken, barren lives and brings forth life. When we gather as his body, when we bless, break, take, and eat his body, we become for a broken, barren, suffering world the Jesus who says, through the words of Isaiah this week, “incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live” (55:3).
Intersections: Thoughts on Religion, Culture, and Politics 
March 3, 2010 at 7:33 am
Good stuff. The saying “God never gives us more than we can handle” is almost as harmful as another thoughtless truism we hear constantly: “Everything happens for a reason.” NO! It does not!
Thank you for this.
March 3, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Thank you for this. I’ve heard this phrase used and misused more often than I care to recall. Your words are a wise and gracious corrective indeed.
March 4, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Thank you for this post. Too often the pain that people suffer is interpreted as being evidence of their being under judgement (I guess nothing has changed since Jesus’ time!)
Christians are especially bad at doing this, somehow it seems offensive to some of us that pain / suffering should not have a reason to it.
March 5, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Thank you for your wise words and this reminder. “God never gives us more than we can handle” is one of the phrases, along with “Everything happens for a reason” and “He/She’s in a better place now” that should be dropped from church language forever.
Let’s come up with some new, more true, more loving phrases to replace them!
March 6, 2010 at 9:47 am
It is a difficult thing to drop Scripture from church language forever. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. ” (NRSV)
He subsequently says, in verse 15, “I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.” (NRSV)
Are we, therefore, as sensible people, to judge that Paul was wrong in this point? Or is there a deeper mystery involved in this process? One that goes beyond the surface of a pithy cross-stitch pattern to the core of discipleship: Do we trust God? Do we believe God is in control, even when evidence seems contrary? If so, how does that change how we live our lives and how we perceive trials that come our way? Did the Father give the Son more than he could handle?
March 6, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Thanks, Keith–you raise some good questions. Couple thoughts in response: Paul’s words are said (written) in the larger context of communal behavior and the unity of the body of Christ. But they are used in our time to communicate a very individualist idea: “just buck up; things will be fine eventually.” I think you’re right to make the connection to discipleship–which is what Paul is doing. But we almost never make that connection ourselves. We use that phrase (“God never gives us more than we can handle”) to refer to personal trials, not to the struggles the Church will inevitably face as it seeks to be faithful to Christ and his cross. (And it always comes back to the cross for Paul, doesn’t it?).
March 6, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Good stuff! Thanks.
March 8, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Not being fluent in N.T. Greek, doesn’t the word translated at test peirasmo have more to do with temptation than with the overwhelming burden of difficulties?
CP
March 8, 2010 at 2:24 pm
It would also help if I proofed my own comments before sending, but you get the point of the question.
cP
March 8, 2010 at 10:23 pm
That’s a great point, Steven. It’s interesting that the RSV translates πειρασμὸς as “temptation” (1 Cor. 10:13), while the NRSV goes with “test.”
March 9, 2010 at 6:08 am
Thank you for this post.
My question now is, what should we “say” to a person who is experiencing pain and suffering? How can we be a faithful vessel of Christ’s love?
March 9, 2010 at 8:03 am
Floyd,
It is not necessary to “say” anything, but if we must, then what we say is “I will be with you as long as it takes.”
March 10, 2010 at 6:38 am
Maintaining hope and personal inner strength to deal with pain or loss are fundamental to dealing with life events that are inevitable and impossible to explain as to why they happen. I would suggest “God never gives us more than we can handle” because he is with us for as long as it takes, and faith in his example and words gives her comfort. I would suggest “Everything happens for a reason” is true. It is expected all will question why; but it is not our place to understand God’s plan ….and “He/She’s in a better place now..” is a simple, concise statement of the reward promised us by Jesus. Would you deny anyone who passes this life and through grace, however you chose to apply the definition, gains acceptance, is not now in a better place? By the end of this year, I will have lost the person who has shared my life…..made my life complete…. to pancreatic cancer. I have and will witness how her hope and strength has been maintained because she believes…. whatever God’s plan, He will not give her or those in her family more than anyone can handle. And one day, her personal suffering and fear will be gone in an instant. My emotional pain will continue in her absence. But….she will be in a better place. It’s a fact. Her faith and trust in God… in one way summed up with simplistic words, not overly poetic or an analogy and hinting at some deeply hidden obtuse meaning…is getting her and us through this. I would suggest…. don’t be so quick to dismiss them until you’ve been there.
March 10, 2010 at 11:14 am
Dear Writer,
I read your article with great interest. If God is not responsible for our suffering they who is? I know we make bad decisions and the devil gives us a fit and we live in a cursed world. But I believe God is sovereign and nothing happens except by His premissive or determinative will. The test or trial of Abraham in Genesis 22 was fantastically difficult but there was a purpose and God was with Abraham and Isaac in every detail. Indeed God puts things on us that sometimes even ends our life but it will still work out for God’s glory or the training or edification in some or many lives. There is a great mass of people described in Heb. 11 that suffered greatly for no other given reason that to obtain a better resurrection. In my own case I have studied for the ministry and yet have a great many physical and financial hardships that I wish God would take away. But He leaves them with me and I accept that somehow it will all work out for good. (Rom. 8:28) The devil is not a free agent in the world. The Book of Job teaches us the devil is little more than a puppet pulled by strings from the 3rd Heaven. God tells the devil that in regard to Job you may do this, but not that. You are allowed to do that but not this. You can take his possessions but you cannot touch him. you can kill his children but bot him. You take take his health and his wealh but you cannot kill him. So I ask again, if God is not responsible for our trials, our suffering, and even our death, you is? Death is the cure for everything we think to be disease. Death is our doorway into the presence of our Saviour. Trials and suffering is designed to conform us to the image of Christ. It can be a good thing. We never enjoy trials or testings but they are need to gauge our progress in our Christian walk. God loves us enough to give us what is best for us in the light of eternity even when we don’t like it.
Sincerely yours,
Brown M. Sims
March 12, 2010 at 8:37 am
From a suffering and trial standpoint – and very much in line with this topic – I found this resource very succinct and well stated in light of the Gospel:
Source: http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/2285_answering_radio_interviewers_on_why_suffering/
Why do little children suffer and die? We ask it with the awareness that it is happening this very moment by the hundreds, and we ask it through tears of personal experience and empathy. Here is one biblical answer: “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—” (Romans 5:12).
Death came into the world through sin.
That is the fundamental biblical answer for where all suffering and death came from. Or to use the words of Romans 8:20, “The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope.”
In other words, because of sin, God subjected the entire creation to the futility of mortality with all its suffering and death. The whole creation groans under the judgment.
If the interviewer says, “That seems a bit harsh, to bring the whole creation under the judgment of suffering and death, including little children, because of one man’s sin?” we answer,
“That is how outrageous sin against an infinitely wise and good and holy God is. We don’t measure the outrage of our suffering by how insignificant we think sin is; we measure the outrage of sin by the scope of suffering.
The really amazing thing is that you and I, as sinners, are sitting here talking, when we deserve to be in hell. God is remarkably patient. And he gave his Son to die in our place so that everyone who believes may escape from this judgment and have eternal life.”
March 12, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I am touched by the believing sufferer (Bob Reaves) who knows the comfort of the truth.
I am troubled by the concealment of the truth by Debra Murphy. It is fine to say “I don’t believe in a God who visits pain upon people. I don’t believe in a God of wrath.” However, to take Jesus’ words in Luke 13 and to say that He agrees with you, when He clearly does not, is something much darker. Why does she not give all of Jesus’ answer, instead of the clipped “No, I tell you…” ? The reason is that His words contradict hers. Over both of those horrific events, He says, “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” His point is not that “such a tragedy is not punishment from God.” His point is that without repentance such tragedy is everyone’s destiny. It’s not a hard read. You don’t need to know Greek. I suggest everyone check it out for themselves in Luke 13:1-5.
March 13, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Thanks to those who have responded to the post with personal stories of grief and loss. I recently wrote a post about my sister’s sudden death many years ago; that experience has helped to shape my thoughts and writings about “why” such things happen, about God “not giving us more than we can handle,” etc. Did God “make” my sister die in a freak accident? No. Why did it happen? Because in a world of free will, gravity, and high speed automobiles, sometimes people die in car crashes.
I can appreciate the passion of Mr. DeCook’s response (whom I don’t know), but I’m a little bothered by the lack of charity. I don’t think I’ve “concealed” any truth; I think that Jesus is clear in the Luke 13 passage (and elsewhere) that misfortune is not a punishment from God. Mr. DeCook notes that repentance is a significant theme of that passage–I made that clear, too.
Jesus embodied God’s shalom, God’s desire that all of creation be mended and made whole. God, through Israel, Jesus, and the church, is about the work of reconciliation. Even in the midst of grief, that is a truth that consoles.