To be deep disciples, we must grieve the pain of grief and loss. Pete Scazzero begins his discussion of grief and loss by pointing out that Americans are naturally uncomfortable with the idea that the Christian life involves both. We live in a culture that idolizes success, happiness, and pleasure. The thought that grief and loss are part of human life is foreign to that way of thinking. Of course, our American mindset is entirely unrealistic. No matter how hard we try, we will experience grief and loss. Ultimately, we will lose our lives. Everyone dies. And before that, there are countless small deaths—failures, sicknesses, betrayals, losses, and the inevitable pains of human existence. From this perspective, our American way of life is less realistic than the Christian way. Christian disciples must accept grief and loss.

Leaders, Grief, and Loss

Leaders, in particular, must be willing to accept the reality of grief and loss. Scazzero puts it this way:

Leadership has losses all its own, and often a disproportionate number of them – people in whom we invest leave, dreams die, leaders and staff move on or don’t work out, betrayals happen, marriages in the church end, relationships shatter, and external crises such as natural disasters and economic downturns take a toll on the community. You can’t be a leader in the church and expect to escape loss.[1]

When I first read this, I realized I had gone through all the examples mentioned. Specifically, I remember a situation where a couple in our church invested much time and support, moved a little further away, and almost immediately decided to join a larger, wealthier church. I was deeply hurt. One of the spouses was an elder, and the other was active in one of our ministries. It felt as if I had been pierced in the heart. An older, wiser pastor smiled and said, “Chris, these things happen all the time.” He then reminded me that we help people not because of what they might do for the church, but because they are children of God. The same principle applies to all relationships in a disciple’s life. We help people because we want them to feel the love of God in one way or another. We don’t necessarily expect anything in return.

Avoiding Grief and Loss

One of the ways  American Christians often fail to be the people God calls them to be is in the vain and fruitless attempt to avoid experiencing grief and loss. And, when grief comes, most of us do all that we can to make our recovery as short as possible! In a culture that believes in success, grief and loss are not life experiences to be embraced, but interruptions to be overcome.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve quoted —and others have quoted to me— Paul’s teaching that “all things work together for the good for those who love God and are called according to his purposes.” (Romans 8:28). Most of the time, we subconsciously interpret this as meaning that these quotes fit into our lives seamlessly. People think God will make everything turn out fine. I believe this is a misreading of the text. When Paul tells us that all things work together for the good, he’s admitting that bad things happen in a broken world. He’s acknowledging that sometimes we must endure failure, loss, and pain for a while. I’m not sure he is saying “get over it,” but rather, “God will be with you through it.” And there aren’t any promises as to how long “getting through it” will take.

Three Phases of a Disciple’s Grief and Loss

One of the sections of Scazzero’s treatment of grief and law that meant the most to me concerned the different ways of processing grief and laws. He begins by noting that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross famously outlined the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Later, she added new stages, with the final one being the incorporation of loss into our lives. I often include shock as well, making the total seven. While Scazzero urges us to incorporate Kubler-Ross’s insights, he also presents his own Christian response. It goes like this:

1. Pay attention to the Pain,
2. Wait in the Confusing Inbetween Time, and
3. Allow the Old to give birth to the New.

Instead of avoiding pain, we need to experience it. To do this, we must understand that grief, loss, and all other emotions are neither good nor bad. They simply exist. If I get angry at a child without reason, the truth is, I am furious. It’s not the anger itself that is wrong; it’s my tendency to blame my children for things that aren’t their fault.

Regarding grief and loss, there’s no such thing as “bad” grief or loss. We must allow ourselves to feel that pain and accept it. We need to embrace our humanity and the humanity of those around us. Only by feeling pain and loss can we fully realize our humanity. Helping people understand this is one of the responsibilities of Christian leaders.

The second thing we must do is endure the confusing times of grief and loss. As part of this course, I’ve had to retrace a challenging period in my life. I lost something precious to me. That loss has not been recovered to this very day. On the other hand, I have experienced the truth of Romans 828, because God has worked this difficult situation for good in my life and our family’s life. But the wait was long. Years. And in those years, what I mostly did was ignore the pain. Occasionally, I would get angry, but mostly I just silently blocked the entire experience from my mind, thinking that was the right thing to do. It wasn’t. That coping mechanism of mine simply made the recovery more difficult and time-consuming.

Growing in Grief and Loss

Finally, we must allow the old to go away in the new to come. Surprisingly enough, although this is easy in some circumstances, it’s not easy in every circumstance. Sometimes, we are so accustomed to the pain and loss of our past that we actually fear becoming healthy! As I mentioned about a past loss of my own, it may be that we never receive what it is we lost again in this life. However, you may receive some things that are much more valuable:

• A new revelation of God and his love for us,
• A softer and more compassionate heart, and
• A clear understanding of ourselves and our true selves in Christ.

One thing God may reveal through our experiences with failure is a clearer understanding of who we are and our limitations. A downside of being a high achiever is constantly ignoring human limitations. I often overworked throughout my professional career as a lawyer and pastor. Physically, I was capable of doing it, and I did. But it was not the right choice for our family or for me. It would have been better to understand my healing limitations.

Additionally, understanding ourselves may involve recognizing specific strengths we have, but for years, we either covered them up or didn’t recognize them as strengths. Someone who is always trying to overcome feelings of weakness may overlook that they are also in touch with their emotions and the pain and suffering of others. Finally, during times of grief, loss, and patient waiting, we come to see that God has been working in love in our lives all along. It’s an opportunity to notice the unquenchable love of God, who loves us not only in our successes, health, and achievements but also in our weaknesses, failures, and stumbles. A key to effective leadership is recognizing that you don’t always have to be right, successful, or victorious. It’s OK to be human.

Examining the Iceberg

One image Emotionally Healthy Discipleship uses is that of an iceberg. Most of an iceberg lies hidden under the ocean. Ships can sink after colliding with a completely submerged and invisible iceberg. The Titanic did not sink because it hit the iceberg’s visible part. It sank because a hidden portion caused a gash that went the length of several water-tight compartments—an event the designer thought impossible.

The same thing is true of our own lives. We often fail not because of our known weaknesses and brokenness, but because of those that lie submerged beneath the carefully managed exterior we have created. Sometimes, this exterior (sometimes called a “false self”) was created when we were quite young.

Last week, toward the end of our teaching session, Pete Scazzero made two points related to the subconscious iceberg that we need to examine if we are to become the people God calls us to be:

• Time does not heal all wounds; it hides them.
• Pain unhealed is inevitably transferred to someone else.

In other words, if we do not put in the effort to identify, uncover, and heal old wounds, they remain hidden in our subconscious, where they can hurt us and those we care about without us even realizing they are there. Worse, if we do not take the effort required to become the people God calls us to be, we will transfer our brokenness to others around us, generally unaware of what we are doing and what motivates our actions. I am reminded of the advice that Screwtape gives Wormwood about allowing the demonic to be seen by the human race: “Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves.”[2] We are often our own worst enemy, allowing our brokenness to lie concealed beneath the surface of our lives where it can cause failure, pain, emotional weakness, and the like, without any fear of discovery or resistance.

Two Exercises for Emotional Healing

Significant Events. We can do two exercises (though it’s better in a group) to help us achieve healing and wholeness. First, we can list the most significant events that have shaped our lives, including painful ones. When I did this, I used a spreadsheet with three columns: The date, the event, and the consequences. Just to give an example from my own past, when I was five years old, my parents went to dinner with another couple in San Francisco, across the bay from where we lived.

On the way home, a drunk driver hit them, killing both of my parents’ friends, throwing my father through the windshield into a nearby field, and crushing my mother from head to toe. It was months before my parents came home—and in that time, much had happened. The driver was uninsured. Our family was committed to paying astronomical medical bills. We had to move from our comfortable home to a distant place where I had no family or friends. My mother was a completely different person, having spent months in surgery and recovery from her multiple injuries.

I was five years old. I had no way of understanding the situation. Like most children, I just continued with my life. Years later, I noticed that I was often angry when people left for whatever reason. Eventually, a counselor pointed out that I might have subconscious fears of abandonment. My healing began the moment those words were said to me. I immediately knew they were true. Since then, I have learned to manage this deep psychic wound so that it cannot injure my relationships with family and friends. Without the hard work of coming to understand my family and its past, it would have been impossible to change and become the person, family member, or pastor I wanted to be.

Genogram. The second exercise we can do is create a “genogram,” or a chart of our family across generations, highlighting significant issues that have affected us. Many online resources are available for charting, including some that allow you to create and download your chart, usually for a small fee. In Emotionally Healthy Relationships, Pete Scazzero describes and even includes such a chart in the materials. Tracing back at least three generations is essential, but you can go further with relevant information.

Here’s another example from my experience: a family member was harsh toward children. One of my parents was impacted by this, and indirectly, I was too. By the time I realized what had happened, our children had been affected as well. The healing process began once this issue was identified (unfortunately, not that many years ago).

Conclusion

It is helpful to remember the core of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: most of us do not become the disciples of Christ we are capable of because of emotional brokenness—often from childhood—that we have not addressed, which affects our ability to model Christ. Another piece of advice from Pete Scazzero is that the goal is not to blame our ancestors for our flaws. Their ancestors influenced them, and most tried their best. We aim to gain self-knowledge and become the people God calls us to be. Throughout the journey to wholeness in Christ, we must pray for self-knowledge and the ability to show grace to all people.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] [1] Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021), 112.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins 1996, 31 (Letter VII).