When people are having a tough time, on any level, they really need to hear and believe two things, in my experience. 90% of all counseling can be summed up in two statements: 1) "Everything you are feeling is okay. You deserve to be (angry, sad, depressed, upset, indignant, etc), I feel it with you and so does God. You are not alone in this. What you lost, you really lost, and it sucks and it is going to suck for a while. The suck is real, it is something you feel, it is yours and it is okay to feel it. I'll feel it with you as much as I can and I think God feels it with you too." 2) "The world has not ended. There is light at the end of the tunnel. EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT in the long run. The world is still an ordered place of meaning and hope. Let's try to pull whatever good we can out of this."
It seems to me that classic Christian has a tough time speaking to the first message. Atheism has a tough time speaking to the second. Most Christians make the huge mistake of somehow trying to goad people out of brokenness. They either try to somehow justify the suffering a person feels by insisting a greater good will come of it, or they try to encourage the person by insisting that God will give them all the strength they need to not be broken by this. The worst thing I have ever heard is the message that God doesn't send us more than we can handle.
Well, if this is true, God is a bad judge of character. I've seen people broken, broken by life, broken by circumstances I couldn't even imagine. The insistence that their brokenness is somehow out of place is ridiculously stupid. It is the judgment of the one who has not suffered up on the one who has. How do you know the person isn't being sent more than they can handle? Are you them? Being broken is not a sin. "A despairing man should have the love of his friends, even if he forsake the fear of God" (Job 6:10). Jesus Himself was broken by life. His words ring through the ages: "my God, my God why have you forsaken me?" God has allowed Himself to be broken by life so we don't HAVE to feel guilty about our own brokenness. To sit there and seek justification for the unjustifiable is to compound grief and suffering with guilt. It is exactly the opposite of what God is asking us to do in Job, and Ecclesiastes, and the gospels.
Of course, classical Christianity, with it's insistence on God's absolute control over all that happens, makes these kinds of judgments natural and inevitable. It robs God of His power to heal by sharing in our brokenness. Worse, it makes God an enemy by putting His standards above the hurt of the one He loves. Ridiculous!
The atheist, on the other hand, can offer no real light at the end of the tunnel. The true sufferer, the truly hurt, the truly anxious, cannot find a way out by being convinced that they themselves have the inner resources to handle this situation. The natural taken as only what our eyes can see and our ears can hear, offers no comfort. Every living thing must reach beyond itself if it is to find strength and hope in the midst of brokenness. The only other way out is the cowardly path of limiting one's vulnerability by limiting one's openness in love. But love remains the only path of freedom. What a person needs in these moments is a narrative, and one that is authentic. I cannot lie to someone in these moments, and offer any part of myself that is genuine, any part of myself that might also be healing. What's more, if I offer anything of myself, then I must also have a source beyond the limits of the physical of else I'll find my own resources will run dry. There are so many that need help. I cannot say to a person 'EVERYTHING will be alright' if I don't believe that in some sense.
So in the end, I see people who need help. I see the way to help them. I will walk that path because in the end, what else do we have? I can pretend to be the perfect one or the invulnerable one, but that would just be a lie. The first and most important truth one must face is the truth about oneself.
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