Justice, Suffering, and the Cross

What should we do with all the evil we see in the world? How do we hold people accountable when mental health, politics, and faith collide? And how do we move forward when we’ve witnessed tragedy and trauma up close—sometimes through videos we were never meant to see?In this episode, I sit down with two of my professors, Dr. Seth Scott and Dr. Ben Mathew, and we lean into questions many of us are asking but don’t always know how to voice. We discuss the pull between silence and speaking up with family and friends who don’t share our beliefs. We ask what it means to process grief, violence, and division alongside our children and the next generation. We wrestle with the role of social media in shaping empathy, outrage, and our sense of responsibility to “say something” publicly.Most importantly, we turn to what faith offers in these moments. As Timothy Keller wrote, “Jesus moves through the ruins with truth, tears, anger, and, finally, grace.” That’s the invitation in this conversation—to sit in the tension, acknowledge the pain, and find hope in the promise that everything broken will one day be made whole.In complete transparency, I am very nervous about releasing this. If you listen to the podcast and disagree with anything I say, I welcome a coffee date or conversation about anything mentioned today.