People say, “Time heals all wounds.” We talk about “getting over” things or “moving on.”

I think this can be true in some instances. For instance, maybe a dream you had doesn’t materialize. You grieve what never was, only to conclude, after some time passes, that you no longer desire that dream anymore. So you’re “over it.”

But in general, I tend not to like this framing (“getting over it,” “moving on”). I don’t think it’s true in a lot of instances. For example, when a loved one dies, do you ever “move on” and “get over it”, or do you—hopefully, because even this isn’t always the case—just learn to live with it, grow accustom to it, acquire the ability to manage it? In fact, it’s a bit messed up to assume we should just “move on” from a loved one’s passing, as if we come to accept it (death isn’t acceptable, and time doesn’t make it so). The same can be said of other suffering and evil we endure. Time doesn’t somehow undo those things.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds. That’s simply false. And arguably it’s an anti-Christian eschatology that sees time as salvific rather than the return of Christ (see Rev 21:4 where Christ wipes away all tears). Time can create some distance from the immediacy of our wounds, making the pain less sharp, more dull. But I think the pain is often still there. Instead, we (again, hopefully) simply learn to accommodate it.

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds. That’s simply false. And arguably it’s an anti-Christian eschatology that sees time as salvific rather than the return of Christ.”

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This, of course, doesn’t mean we are resigned to wallow in our grief. Hope is a virtue according to the New Testament (alongside faith and love, e.g., 1 Cor 13:13). In other words, hope is something we must exercise. It’s not something we just happen to experience if we’ve lucky enough to experience its conditions, as if hope happens to us. No, we must fight to fixate on our hope. And that hope has a name: Jesus.

Nonetheless, hope anticipates what’s future. So, at present, hope does not undo suffering, pain, and grief. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, Paul says we do not grieve as those who lack hope. Nonetheless, he does say we grieve! Hope does not erase or invalidate grief. Hope sees its reversal as already accomplished, but not yet fulfilled; already won, but not yet enacted. Each side of this coin is important; to neglect one at the expense of the other is to adopt something less-than-Christian.

So we resist the sort of “toxic positivity”—yes, even its Christian variety; especially its Christian variety!—that, whether stated or unstated, expects one always to be happy, never to be sad or hurt. The Christian way is neither stoicism that tells us to simply accept what is (i.e., our problem is trying to resist) nor some Jesus-branded Buddhism that tells us our problem is our longings (i.e., we suffer because of unmet longing; so if simply we rid ourselves of longing, we eliminate suffering). No, Christian hope protests both these options. It forces us to long for something more—not to accept what is—to long for Christ (maranatha).

Lament has a firm place in our faith. In fact, lament is an act of hope, putting the current sorrows, evil, and pain into confrontation with the God of hope. Indeed, a failure to grieve and mourn the pain and evil of this word is not virtue but apathy.