The Illusion of Comfort: What the Cross Names

The Illusion of Comfort: What the Cross Names

Faith, suffering, and the modern misunderstanding of what Jesus actually promised.

By:  a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

I was listening to a reflection by Father Dave Pivonka in which he discussed the illusion we all seem to believe: that life is somehow supposed to be comfortable.

My life has never been comfortable. Not even a little bit.

The perception that comfort is a blessing from God is deeply painful to those who have no option for comfort, and it makes the world feel unjust. I have always been frustrated by the “prosperity gospel” and the belief that if you just pray hard enough, God will fix whatever is wrong. I think this belief is cruel to offer to people whose lives clearly follow a more challenging path. Lately, it has really gotten my goat, and I’ve been trying to figure out where this nonsense came from.

Life has never been either comfortable or easy. In hunter-gatherer days, we feared lions, tigers, and bears. In early agricultural societies, we feared famine, plague, and stronger neighboring cities. Now, we fear our bosses, our debt, and type-2 diabetes. In every era, physical strain and discomfort were the norm, at least until the last few generations, when we discovered that physical inactivity causes its own set of sufferings, and that the more comfortable we become, the more depressed, individualistic, and oddly warlike we seem to be.

I have both central air and heat, and food in a refrigerator. My discomforts are not the same. In fact, my very life is the result of technological grace. I would have died a hundred times in any other era. Most of us in American society have, quite literally, received our daily bread and more. So what, exactly, are we praying for?

I’ve noticed a peculiar belief in American religious culture, one that treats health, wealth, and physical beauty as signs of God’s blessing and favor. Some version of this belief traveled here early, shaped by communities that prized discipline and order and interpreted failure or illness as moral or spiritual shortcomings. As America grew wealthier, that seed matured into the full prosperity gospel. Figures like E. W. Kenyon, Oral Roberts, and Kenneth Copeland began convincing people that faith could be leveraged for riches, and suddenly, many of us became quietly convinced that God doesn’t love us because we didn’t get a pony.

I object. God’s love should not be a competition, and poverty is far too prevalent in the world for wealth to be a measure of blessing.

So why do we believe that we should be rich and healthy? And what is our life actually supposed to look like anyway?

Let’s look at Jesus, not only at what he said or did, but at how he lived. God entered human history at a time of bare comforts, minimal amenities, and austere living. Jesus was cold, tired, and hungry. The last years of his life were spent sleeping outdoors or relying on the hospitality of others. He walked everywhere. He attended synagogue regularly. He withdrew into the desert. Even after the resurrection, he returned not as a triumphant ruler but as a familiar rabbi who ate bread and fish, by campfire, with friends.

The Lord could have entered human history at any moment—or not at all—and he chose a time defined by physical strain and limited comfort.

While I have no plans to pitch my bed and sleep on the carpet, it may be worth considering that nothing about the relative ease or difficulty of my life is a reliable indicator of God’s love, one way or another, based upon how Jesus lived his life on earth. When Jesus told his followers to take up their cross and follow him, he said it before the means and manner of his death were fully understood. Perhaps the cross he was naming was not only the instrument of his passion, but the daily weight of ordinary life, the uncomfortable grind that wears you down over time.

Perhaps what we should be praying for is not the removal of every discomfort, but the grace to find the Holy Spirit in the midst of them.

We often imagine following Jesus as a dramatic, cinematic adventure; hair shirts, bare feet, heroic sacrifice, maybe even martyrdom. But that is probably not what most of us are called to. It might look more like giving up your lunch for the exhausted new father who hasn’t slept and can’t afford fast food, especially when you’re already carrying extra weight and managing a condition that would benefit from restraint anyway. Faithfulness, in my experience, is rarely glamorous.

Perhaps the most significant distortion of modern faith is the belief that God proves his love through comfort. Jesus’ life suggests the opposite: that love shows up in endurance, presence, and fidelity when life remains hard. The cross is not a punishment for insufficient belief, nor a badge of spiritual superiority. It is simply what life looks like when we stop pretending it was ever meant to be easy.

Perhaps we should stop reading our misfortunes as evidence of God’s displeasure and our comforts as proof of divine favor. Life in a body, in time, among other people, has always carried a cost. The cross Jesus asked us to bear may not be dramatic or visible, but it is real and daily.

Maybe faith is not about being spared the weight of living, but about learning how to carry it without turning bitter, fearful, or numb. And perhaps that, quiet, ordinary, and unremarkable, is where grace finally becomes visible.

xoxo a.d. elliott

PS: Marilynne Robinson's book "The Death of Adam" is a great companion - read the review here.

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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