and Redemption THE CHALLENGE OF CHRISTIAN PSYCHOTHERAPY

Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.-Matthew 26:38 Few questions have so animated the discourse of the philoso-pher and the priest, the physician and the poet, as why it is we suffer and what our suffering might possibly mean. Of course, the ques-tion has never been solely the province of the scholar or the profes-sional, as can be attested by any parent who has had to look on helplessly as a young child wastes away in a hospital bed. The impli-cations of how this most pressing question of life is answered are profound. As Truman Madsen (1966) has noted, for some "the most staggering objection to belief in a personal God is the ugly, tragic, overwhelming fact of human inequality and suffering " (p. 53). Paradoxically, others have found in suffering not only the most divine assurances of God's enduring love but also the overpowering call to brotherhood and full humanity. Mother Teresa, for example