All of human life is accompanied by pain and difficulty. Christians are frequently caught off guard by the suffering they experience. They are unprepared either due to bad assumptions about the gospel’s promises or by poor discipleship. Since everyone will face hardship in some form, it’s important that believers understand what the Bible has to say about suffering in the Christian life. My guest on today’s show is Dr. Mark Talbot and he has written an excellent book called When the Stars Disappear to help with this task.
Mark Talbot grew up in the Seattle area. When he was seventeen, he fell off a Tarzan-like rope swing and suffered a paralyzing accident that left him partially paraplegic. After graduating from Seattle Pacific College with a B. A. in English Literature, he completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his teaching career as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in 1987 and then moved to Wheaton College in 1992, where he teaches courses on suffering, philosophical theology, philosophical psychology, David Hume, and Jonathan Edwards. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he served as the Vice-Chair of the Council for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals as well as the Executive Editor of Modern Reformation magazine. More recently, he has published When the Stars Disappear: Help and Hope from Stories of Suffering in Scripture, which is the first of four volumes on Suffering and the Christian Life. The second volume, Give Me Understanding that I May Live: Situating Our Suffering within God’s Redemptive Plan will be available in July of 2022. He has received the Leland Ryken Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities and is currently a Scholar for the Christian Scholars’ Fund. He and his wife, Cindy, have one grown daughter. They reside in Wheaton.
Show Highlights
Dr. Talbot teaches us about the structure and importance of stories. He shares how the competing stories in our culture can impact our ability to make sense of and endure suffering.
We discuss the experience of biblical lament and what that means in the Christian worldview.
Dr. Talbot shares how important the central story of Christianity—the resurrection—is to the subject of suffering.
Show Resources
Purchase a copy of Mark Talbot’s book When the Stars Disappear: Help and Hope from Stories of Suffering in Scripture.
Learn about the work of the Christian Scholars’ Fund.
Connect with Dr. Talbot by emailing him at mark.talbot@wheaton.edu.
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