Does Pain Always Have a Purpose?
It’s common to hear in the modern spiritual space that all pain has a purpose - that everything is happening for you, not to you. That every hardship is here to help you grow, and suffering is always for your evolution.
There is truth in this. You can grow - sometimes at an accelerated pace - through painful life experiences. And it’s true that living in an ego space that blames everything outside of you for your suffering will only keep you stuck. That mindset perpetuates pain by keeping you consciously - or unconsciously - powerless.
But there’s also privilege, and even harm, in treating “all pain has purpose” as a sweeping truth.
This overgeneralization often comes when we long for simple spiritual soundbites that help us make sense of what doesn’t make sense.
Yet the reality is that not all suffering is transformative. Some pain is cruel, senseless, dehumanizing, and devastating. The mother who lost a child to rape and murder, the sweatshop worker exploited for cheap clothing, the Black man killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the village swept away in a flood, the child trafficked for sex - these are not abstract examples. They are the lived realities of millions.
To sit in comfort and insist that all of this “happens for a reason” is a form of bypassing.
It’s easy to armchair-philosophize about pain having purpose when you’re not the one enduring the unbearable. And it’s not just about extreme suffering. We can also bypass one another’s pain in subtle ways, like comparing it to our own. “I’ve been through worse,” or, “I went through that too - what’s the big deal?” may feel like perspective, but they only minimize another person’s reality. Pain isn’t a competition. Your suffering doesn’t become less real just because someone else has also suffered—or even suffered more. To dismiss or rank pain is to miss the point entirely…
Empathy doesn’t measure, it meets.
Spiritual Bypassing vs. Empathy
This is where the distinction between bypassing and empathy becomes crucial.
Spiritual bypassing uses lofty truths to avoid the raw, messy realities of life. It says: “Don’t worry, your pain has purpose” instead of sitting with the fact that sometimes suffering feels meaningless and cruel. It offers the illusion of control - we can always make lemonade out of lemons, right? - but at the cost of real presence.
Empathy, on the other hand, doesn’t demand that pain must have meaning.
It sits beside the one who is suffering and says, “I see you. I’m with you.” Empathy acknowledges that sometimes life is unjust, chaotic, and senseless. It doesn’t minimize pain, and it doesn’t try to fix it - it simply refuses to abandon the person in it.
The Temptation of Certainty
The deeper art here isn’t in proving whether pain inherently has purpose - it’s in asking why we need it to.
Do we cling to the belief that suffering has meaning because we can’t bear the possibility that life can be random, unjust, or cruel? Does the story soothe us by giving us the illusion of certainty? If so, then the question isn’t about pain at all - it’s about our relationship to uncertainty.
True sovereignty isn’t found in clinging to certainty; it’s found in the courage to meet uncertainty without shutting down.
When we allow ourselves to sit with what is unresolved, we expand our capacity for wisdom, compassion, and resilience.
The principle of uncertainty asks us to trust the unfolding of life not because it feels neat or safe, but because it’s real.
Spiritual traditions across time have pointed to detachment: the courage to release our grip on certainty. Detachment doesn’t mean coldness or indifference. It means loosening the need for the universe to promise us a reason for everything. It means holding the paradox that maybe suffering has a purpose, maybe it doesn’t, and maybe we’ll never know. Real freedom is being able to live and love without demanding an answer.
Sovereignty: The Real Lesson
This distinction matters because of sovereignty.
If we don’t see our own susceptibility to teachings that make us feel safe, we can’t discern whether a teacher is pointing us toward our own center - or toward dependence on them to reinforce the certainty. Sovereignty asks: is this teaching empowering me to stand in my truth, or is it seducing me into a false sense of safety so I’ll keep following?
Sovereignty means I can receive comfort without outsourcing my power. I can let a teaching reassure me without mistaking reassurance for Truth. When I need a teaching to be True in order to feel safe, I’ve already given my freeedom away. Sovereignty brings me back, again and again, to my own center - even in the face of not knowing.
So, does pain always have a purpose? Maybe. Maybe not. But perhaps that’s the wrong question.
What always has purpose is the way we choose to respond: with honesty, presence, and compassion. Empathy doesn’t erase suffering, but it makes the burden lighter. And sovereignty keeps us grounded in our own self-ownership and self-trust, even in a world that offers no guarantees.
That, to me, is the deeper spiritual path. Not the easy one – but the honest one. It asks us to stay with discomfort - not explain it away. To face pain and suffering without always needing – or getting – an answer. To stand with fear, doubt, and uncertainty… and to remember that your life matters simply because you are here.
From that place, we see that the power we carry is not in fixing someone else’s pain, or offering tidy reasons for their suffering. Our power is in being a witness, a steady container, and – when it’s truly ours to do – taking action that helps alleviate suffering while staying in our lane. It’s the same on the big world stage – we cannot heal every injustice or make sense of tragedy. But we CAN show up in the ways that are ours to hold.
Sovereignty keeps us in our lane, empathy keeps us connected… together …. they keep us human.
With love during these difficult times,
Reh