Suffering you did not choose tends to push you toward one of two exits. You can hit back, or you can check out. Martin Luther King Jr. found a third response in Gethsemane, and Mika Edmondson, who wrote his dissertation on King’s theology of suffering, explains what that response is and what it is not. Over the next week you will read the garden scene closely, test King’s idea against its strongest critic, and try one small, deliberate act of the third way in your own life.
You can work through it alone in two or three sittings, or with a group over one long session. If you are in a group, nobody has to name their suffering out loud. Every exercise works just as well kept private.
Before you read anything: notice your reflex
Start with yourself, not with King. Think of one hard thing in your life right now that you did not ask for. It might be a person, a loss, a diagnosis, an injustice at work, or a situation you cannot leave.
On paper, finish these two sentences as honestly as you can. You do not have to show them to anyone.
- When this thing presses on me, the first thing I want to do is…
- When I am tired of fighting it, what I actually do is…
Keep that page. You will come back to it at the end of the week.
Read the garden slowly
Edmondson roots King’s thinking in one scene: the arrest of Jesus. His point is simple and sharp: “there are different ways to engage suffering.” Before you hear his reading, do your own. Read Matthew 26:36-56 and John 18:1-11 in one sitting. Then go back and mark three responses to the same moment of danger.
First, Peter. “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear” (John 18:10). Edmondson describes it plainly: “he met violence with violence.”
Second, the rest of the disciples. “Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled” (Matthew 26:56). Edmondson’s summary of their choice is four words: “They refused to engage.”
Third, Jesus. Notice what he does before the soldiers arrive. “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). Then, when the sword comes out, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52).
Take a few minutes with these observation prompts before moving on:
- What do you make of Jesus asking to be spared before he goes forward?
- Peter’s action looks brave. The disciples’ flight looks practical. What does each one protect?
- Jesus neither strikes nor runs. Look again at Matthew 26:52-56. What is he doing instead?
One caution belongs here. These Gospel passages are narrative. They describe how Jesus met his own arrest; they do not hand down a rule for every situation a Christian will face. Reading the scene as a pattern for responding to suffering is application, and that is exactly the move King made. It is a reasonable move, and Christians can test how far it reaches. What the text itself settles is narrower and still striking: at the moment force seemed most justified, Jesus told his friend to put the sword away.
What King saw: the third way
Here is where Edmondson’s contribution changes what you just read. “Jesus actually shows another way. He shows a third way,” he says. In his description, it is neither violent retaliation nor passive acquiescence. It is nonviolent direct action. The point is to engage suffering “to do it directly, to do it lovingly,” and, he adds, “but to do it nonviolently,” with courage and conviction, seeking the good even of the people causing harm.
Notice what that changes. Jesus goes toward the arrest, and Peter stands his ground too. What separates them is the manner of their engagement: one reaches for the sword, the other tells him to put it away. The third way has no halfway point between fighting and fleeing. It is a different kind of engagement altogether.
Edmondson also corrects the misreading that makes this idea dangerous. People hear the phrase “redemptive suffering,” he says, and “they think that what King is saying is that suffering itself is a good.” King was not saying that. Edmondson puts the claim this way: “engagement with the suffering that already exists can be a good” when it is done faithfully.
Read that distinction twice. It is the hinge of this whole guide. The claim leaves your pain exactly what it is, real and unwanted. What it adds is that the way you meet pain already here is not wasted in God’s hands. That is a modest promise, and an honest one. It offers no schedule for the suffering to end, and it asks no one to call it good.
Where your situation differs from King’s
King faced organized, deliberate injustice with identifiable opponents. Edmondson reports that King also reasoned practically: armed revolt would only bring more violence, and the oppressors had more weapons. Not every suffering has a mob. Grief, illness and loss may have no opponent at all.
So before you apply the third way, sort your situation. On your page from the start, write which of these describes it best:
- Someone is doing this to me or to others.
- This happened, and no one person is responsible.
- It is some of both.
If there is no opponent, the third way still asks something of you, but it looks different. Retaliation might look like bitterness turned on the people nearest you, or on God. Flight might look like numbing out, refusing help, or never speaking the loss aloud. Engaging directly might mean finally naming it.
Test it against the hardest objection
A practice is only worth building if it can survive a serious challenge. Edmondson engages the strongest one, from the black humanist scholar Anthony Pinn, whose book Why, Lord? chronicles this tradition and argues against it. Edmondson summarizes Pinn’s core objection like this: “If we are waiting on God to do something for us, then we will not do anything for ourselves.” In other words, faith in God’s redemption might make people passive.
That objection deserves respect, because religion has been used to keep suffering people quiet. Edmondson took it seriously enough that he submitted his manuscript to Pinn, who edited the book series it appeared in, so that Pinn could recognize his own views in it.
Exercise: restate before you respond. Before reading Edmondson’s answer, write Pinn’s argument in two or three sentences, as strongly as you can, in a way Pinn himself might sign. If you are in a group, have one person read their version aloud and let others improve it. Only then go on.
Edmondson answers in two ways. Historically, he argues that the church-rooted civil rights movement shows the opposite pattern. The belief did not send people home; it sustained “young people who put themselves in harm’s way for our freedoms.” This is his historical judgment about the movement’s record, and it is worth weighing as an argument rather than receiving as a statistic.
His second answer goes deeper. If, as Pinn holds, the meaning is in the struggle itself, then, Edmondson warns, “we don’t have meaning beyond oppression.” Christians need a hope that reaches past this world. And that hope, he argues, does not stop people from acting. His image is the pilgrim: “the thing about being a pilgrim is that your actions today are taken in light of your destination tomorrow.” The destination, he says, “keeps you engaging.”
Hebrews describes Jesus in the same terms: “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus walked forward in the garden with an end in view.
Now return to your restatement of Pinn. Does Edmondson’s reply answer the argument you wrote, or a weaker version of it? What would Pinn still say? There is no expected answer here.
The practice: one third-way step this week
Treat this as a small experiment. It has four parts. Do them on separate days if you can.
- Name the two exits. For the situation you identified at the start, write one concrete example of what striking back would look like for you, and one of what running would look like. Be specific: the text you would send, the silence you would keep, the habit you would reach for.
- Pray the garden prayer first. Before deciding anything, pray honestly for the cup to pass. Jesus did. Then, if you can, add the second half of his prayer in your own words. If you cannot yet, leave it unsaid and come back tomorrow. The spirituals Edmondson urges readers to study as theology pray the same way. He voices the complaint of the singer who remembers Daniel’s deliverance: “I’m in this situation right now, and I’m struggling.” That singer brought the struggle to God and kept singing, and your prayer can hold the complaint and the trust together in the same way.
- Choose one direct, nonviolent step. It should move toward the situation and harm no one. Examples: having the honest conversation you have avoided, asking for help you have refused, speaking up once about something unjust, telling a trusted friend what you are actually carrying, or doing one good thing for someone connected to your pain. Paul’s instruction gives the shape: “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
- Record what happened. Afterward, write what the step cost you and what, if anything, changed. Some steps change nothing visible. Note that too.
One boundary matters. The third way rejects passive acquiescence just as firmly as it rejects retaliation, and it never means staying under harm to prove your faith. If someone is abusing or threatening you, the direct, loving step may be getting safe, telling someone, or calling for help. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. Seeking safety and seeking qualified care are ways of engaging suffering.
Questions to work through together or alone
- Which of the three garden responses comes most naturally to you, and where do you think you learned it?
- Edmondson separates the claim that suffering itself is good from the claim that faithfully engaging suffering can be good. Where have you heard Christians blur those two, and what did it do to the person who was hurting?
- Is Pinn right that some forms of faith make people passive? Can you think of an example from your own experience on either side?
- How does hope beyond this life change what you are willing to do today? Be honest if your answer is that it does not, yet.
- For suffering with no one to blame, what does the third way look like? Does the garden pattern stretch that far, or does it reach its limit?
If you are leading a group, go slowly on the first two questions and let people answer in general terms if they prefer. Resist the urge to fix anyone’s situation with a quick verse. When someone shares something heavy, the most useful reply is often to thank them and keep listening. If a person’s suffering seems to be moving toward despair, follow up privately after the session and help them connect with a pastor or counselor.
At the end of the week
Reread your two opening sentences beside what you recorded after your third-way step. Look for any gap, however small, between your reflex and your choice.
The question to carry into next week is a narrow one: having taken one step, what is the next direct, loving, nonviolent thing you could do?