Faith, Grief, and the Psychological Truth We Cannot Ignore
I stumbled upon the Asian film Valley of the Shadow of Death (不赦之罪) on a long flight home from a mission trip in Asia.
The timing felt almost uncanny.
One of the last conversations I had right before leaving was about mental health in the Christian world—particularly how easily depression, anxiety, grief, or emotional struggle can sometimes be interpreted as evidence that someone does not have enough faith, has not prayed enough, or simply needs to trust God more.
I have seen how damaging that message can become.
And then I watched this movie within 12 hours.
When Doing the “Godly Thing” Isn’t the Whole Story
At the center of the film is a pastor carrying an almost unimaginable loss.
His young daughter had been raped. After discovering she was pregnant, she wanted an abortion. Her father disapproved. She later died by suicide.
Then, unexpectedly, the pastor encounters the very young man who raped her.
And he does something astonishing.
He welcomes him into the church.
The young man is struggling, and the pastor takes him to lunch. He introduces him to faith. He spends time with him. Eventually, he even disciples him.
As I watched, I kept wondering, holding my breath: How is this possible?
His daughter’s death was still so present. He and his wife could barely talk about what had happened. Their home seemed almost frozen in grief. Her room remained untouched, and every scene inside the house felt cold and suspended in time.
Yet the pastor seemed determined to do the right thing.
To forgive.
To extend grace.
To be the kind of Christian he believed he was supposed to be.
Then came the young man’s baptism.
Everyone was dressed up. People were singing worship songs and praising God. The pastor himself was going to perform the baptism.
He asked the usual questions about faith in Jesus.
Then he suddenly asked:
“What sin did you commit?”
Caught off guard, the young man answered:
“Rape.”
The pastor wasn’t satisfied.
“Louder.”
Again.
“Louder.”
Then came the immersion.
There was the expected splash as the young man went beneath the water. but that’s it… no splashing from him coming out.
The pastor was holding him under.
His wife—the same woman who had called him crazy for bringing this young man into their lives—realized what was happening and rushed into the baptismal pool. She stopped her husband from nearly killing him.
And then the pastor collapsed, sobbing in his wife’s arms in front of everyone.
Strangely, I felt a sense of relief.
Ah. This makes sense : he was holding it all inside.
Faith Does Not Make Us Less Human
The pastor wasn’t simply extraordinarily holy or unusually close to God.
He was grieving.
He was furious.
He was devastated.
And he had been trying desperately to move past emotions that had never actually been processed.
His desire to do what he believed was right and commendable. Forgiveness, mercy, and grace are central to Christian faith.
But something important had been missed:
Spiritual truth does not cancel psychological truth.
We can sincerely believe in forgiveness while still carrying tremendous anger.
We can trust God while experiencing depression, think about Charles. H. Spurgeon.
We can pray faithfully and still have anxiety.
We can believe deeply in resurrection and still grieve intensely when someone dies.
Faith does not require us to stop being human.
And when we use spiritual ideals to bypass painful psychological realities, those realities do not necessarily disappear. Sometimes they simply go underground.
That is what makes repression so dangerous.
Emotions we refuse to acknowledge can still influence our bodies, relationships, decisions, and behavior. We may tell ourselves we are “fine,” while our nervous system tells a very different story.
In the film, what appeared to be extraordinary forgiveness was sitting on top of extraordinary unresolved grief.
Eventually, the grief demanded to be seen.
His Wife Chose a Different Path
The pastor’s wife responded very differently.
She was angry.
She thought her husband’s decision to welcome the young man into their church was crazy.
She didn’t pretend she was ready to forgive.
In some ways, she appeared less “spiritual.”
Yet when the critical moment came, she was the one who saved the young man’s life.
Later, when she encountered him again, she did not offer cheap forgiveness. She essentially told him:
I cannot say that I forgive you. I don’t know when I will be able to. But I can bless you as you begin a new chapter of your life.
There is something deeply honest about that.
She did not deny what had happened.
She did not pretend the wound was healed.
She did not manufacture an emotion because she thought it was the Christian thing to feel.
And yet she was still able to choose something other than revenge.
Perhaps there is an important distinction here:
Forgiveness does not have to begin with pretending that we are no longer hurt.
Sometimes healing begins much earlier—with telling the truth.
I am angry.
I am grieving.
What happened was wrong.
I want to forgive, but I am not there yet.
God, help me with where I’m actually feeling—not what I think I am supposed to feel.
When Faith Becomes a Way to Avoid Pain
There is a term sometimes used for this: spiritual bypassing.
It describes using spiritual beliefs or practices to avoid dealing with painful emotions, wounds, conflicts, or psychological realities.
For Christians, it can sound surprisingly familiar:
“Just forgive.”
“Give it to God.”
“Don’t be anxious.”
“You need to pray more.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
These statements may contain elements of spiritual truth. But when offered too quickly, they can communicate something very different:
You shouldn’t feel what you’re feeling.
That is where spiritual encouragement can unintentionally become harmful.
Scripture itself gives us a much richer picture of emotional life.
The Psalms contain fear, rage, despair, confusion, loneliness, hope, gratitude, and praise—sometimes within the same prayer.
Jesus wept.
He experienced anguish.
In Gethsemane, He did not pretend suffering wasn’t suffering.
Biblical faith has never required emotional dishonesty.
Perhaps mature faith is not the absence of painful emotion, but the willingness to bring our whole emotional reality into the presence of God.
Forgiveness Is Not the Same as Reconciliation
This distinction matters especially when someone has experienced trauma or serious relational harm.
Forgiveness does not automatically mean:
- trusting someone again;
- restoring a relationship;
- removing appropriate boundaries;
- excusing what happened;
- denying anger or grief;
- avoiding justice or accountability;
- or immediately feeling compassion toward the person who caused the harm.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are related, but they are not identical.
And healing does not always move according to the timetable we think it should.
Sometimes people need to grieve before they can even begin thinking about forgiveness.
Sometimes anger is part of recognizing that something genuinely wrong happened.
Sometimes boundaries are necessary precisely because healing matters.
And sometimes a person may honestly say, “I am not ready to forgive yet.”
That honesty may be psychologically—and spiritually—healthier than forcing words of forgiveness while resentment, grief, and trauma continue unattended underneath.
Faith and Mental Health Should Not Be Enemies
For me, that may be the most important message I take away from this film.
I don’t believe the answer is less faith.
I believe we need a fuller understanding of faith.
Faith and mental health do not have to compete with one another.
Prayer and therapy are not opposites.
Trusting God and understanding the nervous system are not opposites.
Forgiveness and grief are not opposites.
Spiritual formation and psychological healing can work alongside one another.
As a Christian counselor, I don’t want to take faith away from people when they enter the therapy room. For many people, faith is one of their deepest sources of meaning, resilience, strength, identity, and hope.
But I also don’t want faith to become another demand placed upon someone who is already hurting.
Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is stop pretending.
To acknowledge the depression.
To name the anxiety.
To feel the anger.
To grieve what was lost.
To establish the boundary.
To admit that forgiveness is difficult.
And then, from that honest place, allow God to meet us where we actually are.
Because healing rarely happens by forcing ourselves to feel what we think we should feel.
It begins when we have enough courage—and enough grace—to tell the truth about what is already there.
True forgiveness may take time, work, grief, and deep healing. Forced forgiveness can instead become another form of hiding. And what remains hidden does not necessarily remain harmless.
Perhaps the goal isn’t to become spiritual enough that we no longer experience difficult emotions.
Perhaps it is to become whole enough that we no longer have to be afraid of acknowledging them.
