Pastors Struggling to Explain Human Suffering

 "It's getting harder to give answers that do in fact satisfy," says Richard Coleman, a United Church of Christ minister from Pembroke, Mass. Events are producing "a whole rash of dying, killing, and suffering that for us just doesn't add up. That makes the old question more intense because we want someone's life, when it ends in death, to have some meaning" and not simply succumb to the inexplicable.

The explanation for suffering has become a thorn in the side of many 21st-century congregations, and pastors acknowledge the challenge. "We chose this topic because this (struggle to explain suffering) is a reason why people are leaving our churches," says the Rev. Llewellyn Smith, one of the colloquy organizers.

One factor, observers say, is a culture that no longer accepts suffering as a means to spiritual growth. Long gone are the Middle Ages, when the faithful typically viewed human trials as a divinely given process of perfection and a holy pathway to the next world.