Somewhere along the way, Christians started acting like sadness was a spiritual failure. Maybe it was the overuse of “choose joy” or the well-meaning aunt who quoted Philippians 4:4 every time someone admitted they were struggling. Whatever the cause, many believers have internalized the idea that faith means suppressing negative emotions, putting on a brave face and pretending everything is fine—even when it’s not.
But the Bible never says, “Don’t feel sad.” Not once. In fact, Scripture is filled with stories of faithful people wrestling with sorrow, despair and grief—sometimes for long, painful seasons. Yet, in modern Christianity, emotional honesty often takes a backseat to forced optimism.
For all the passages about joy (which is real and important), the Bible doesn’t shy away from heavy emotions. The Psalms alone read like a journal of raw, unfiltered prayers. David, the “man after God’s own heart,” doesn’t hide his turmoil. “My soul is downcast within me,” he confesses in Psalm 42:6. In another passage, he demands, “Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1). Today, someone might hand him a sermon series about cultivating a “winning mindset.”
Elijah, after calling down fire from heaven, reached the point of despair where he asked God to let him die (1 Kings 19:4). Job, after losing everything, sat in the dust for days, scraping his wounds in silence (Job 2:8). Even Paul, the apostle behind much of the New Testament, admitted, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8). These were not people who simply willed themselves into positivity. They grieved. They questioned. And God met them in it.
Then there’s Jesus—the one believers are actually called to imitate. He was no stranger to sorrow, and He never concealed it. When His friend Lazarus died, Jesus didn’t rush to offer theological reassurance or force a silver lining. He wept. He was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled” (John 11:33-35). Even knowing resurrection was coming, He allowed Himself to mourn.
His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane was even more intense. The weight of what lay ahead pressed down on Him so heavily that He sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44). “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” He told His disciples (Matthew 26:38). If the Son of God Himself could be consumed by grief, why do so many believers assume that sadness is a sign of weak faith?
Somewhere along the way, many churches replaced biblical honesty with toxic positivity—the idea that real faith means keeping a smile on your face and ignoring pain. It sounds spiritual, but it’s actually harmful. Dr. Curt Thompson, a Christian psychiatrist and author of The Soul of Desire, explains that suppressing emotions doesn’t make them disappear. “When we dismiss or minimize our painful emotions, they don’t vanish,” he says. “They often manifest in anxiety, depression or even physical symptoms. God designed us to process our emotions, not suppress them.”
Psychologists have long recognized that emotions—even difficult ones—serve a purpose. Sadness signals loss. Anger alerts us to injustice. Grief reminds us of love. Ignoring these emotions doesn’t make them less real. It only makes us less equipped to handle them in healthy ways. The Bible never tells us to bypass suffering, only that God will be with us in it. Psalm 34:18 reminds us, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
So what does faith look like in the face of sorrow? Instead of treating sadness as something to be avoided, Scripture presents it as something to bring before God. The Psalms model this beautifully—David never filters his prayers. He rants. He cries. He questions. But he brings all of it to God. “Pour out your hearts before him,” Psalm 62:8 encourages. That doesn’t mean cleaning up emotions before presenting them—it means offering them as they are.
Jesus didn’t rush through grief, and neither should we. Ecclesiastes 3:4 reminds us that there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh.” Grief is not something to be conquered; it’s something to be lived through. Paul urges believers to “mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15), which means sadness isn’t something to fix—it’s something to share. The church should be the safest place to process sorrow, not a space where people feel pressured to mask it.
At the heart of Christianity is the belief that suffering doesn’t have the last word. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Faith isn’t about pretending to be okay—it’s about trusting God even when things are not. And the good news? We follow a God who knows exactly what that feels like.
