{"id":16423,"date":"2026-01-14T05:17:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T05:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=16423"},"modified":"2026-01-14T05:17:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T05:17:26","slug":"the-promise-we-mistake-for-the-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=16423","title":{"rendered":"The promise we mistake for the Gospel"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Robin Schumacher<\/span><\/span>, Exclusive Columnist Monday, January 12, 2026<\/span>iStock\/Anastasiia Stiahailo<\/span><\/p>\n

Many years ago, I watched an amazing life lived out by one of the most spectacular Christian women you\u2019d ever meet. Awesome person, fantastic wife, beloved mother, Bible teacher whose reach extended farther than she probably thought it ever would. A modern-day\u00a0Proverbs 31\u00a0woman.<\/p>\n

Then, in a coming-out-of-nowhere style, she was diagnosed with cancer. As you might expect with a woman like this, she practiced a very healthy lifestyle, which made the diagnosis even more bewildering.<\/p>\n

The church surrounded her, prayers were lifted 24×7 for healing, and she openly demonstrated her faith during everything that came her way. No one (including me) thought a bad outcome would result, even though things appeared to go physically downhill for her.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then came the day the doctor told her she didn\u2019t have long to live. She listened to what he said, and, in typical fashion for her, told him that she rejected his prognosis and believed in a God who would deliver her. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Three days later she was dead.<\/p>\n

When I heard about her death, I vividly remember thinking one thing: if\u00a0she\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0not safe in this life, none of us are. And that thought made me very afraid.<\/p>\n

Some of you may scold me for a lack of faith in feeling that way, but I\u2019d bet a month\u2019s pay you\u2019ve experienced the same thing at some point. The rug gets pulled out from under you, and the confidence you had of being a child of an omnipotent God, and thus impervious to harm, suddenly hits rock bottom.<\/p>\n

Our culture\u2019s mindset doesn\u2019t help with this either. We live in an age obsessed with safety. The highest good, we\u2019re told, is minimizing risk \u2014 emotional, financial, physical, social, and psychological. A good life, we\u2019re instructed, is a protected life.<\/p>\n

And yet, for all the work we put into that pursuit, we\u2019re mostly not at peace, are we? Even in the church, anxiety disorders are rising, loneliness is widespread, and depression and despair cut across age groups, ideologies, and economic classes. We\u2019ve worked hard to build more external and internal safeguards than any generation before us, and we still feel profoundly unsafe.<\/p>\n

Tim Keller\u00a0describes\u00a0the feeling that dogs many of us as living with the theme music from Jaws playing 24×7 in our ears while our heads are constantly on a swivel looking for the fin. I know I\u2019ve felt that way too many times.<\/p>\n

Those of us who have spent meaningful time in Scripture know that Christianity offers the uncomfortable explanation for all this as never being promised safety in this life, at least not in the way most of us paint that picture in our heads. We know this intellectually, but emotionally and practically, it can be hard to embrace and rest in.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the promise we mistake for the Gospel is that Christianity exists to make life easier, calmer, and more secure. C\u2019mon, be honest, you think that sometimes, don\u2019t you? I know I do.<\/p>\n

When suffering comes \u2014 as it inevitably does \u2014 our faith gets put on trial and fear mounts. Next comes the guilt we feel when we acknowledge to ourselves,\u00a0if Christianity is true, why am I afraid? <\/em><\/p>\n

So, what do we do? Pray harder? Pursue some massive spiritual breakthrough where a strong and unwavering faith is set to \u201cpermanent hold,\u201d much like a temperature on our home thermostats?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

One thing that\u2019s helped me over the years when fear strikes is a return to a section in Hebrews 11 that talks about the experiences of the great personalities portrayed in Scripture. In\u00a0verses 4-35, we\u2019re told about great wins those folks had \u2014 as the kind we all want, and let\u2019s admit, expect because we\u2019re a child of God.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But then comes an eye-opening set of verses that describe events for the same type of people as in the prior verses:<\/p>\n

\u201cOthers experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised\u201d (vv. 36\u201339).<\/p>\n

The first time these verses lifted me from the fear that comes on every so often was right after my first wife died at a very young age of a rare form of thyroid cancer. She was a lot like the woman described earlier \u2014 loved by everyone and yet experienced what the writer of Hebrews talks about with awful things befalling God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n

I remember sitting in the darkness of our bedroom, alone, and practically realizing for the first time that no safety net exists in this world, and I felt that, maybe, Christianity isn\u2019t true. If it was, I wouldn\u2019t be sitting here a widower, I thought.<\/p>\n

But the writer of Hebrews tells us this isn\u2019t the case, and that was a huge source of comfort delivered to me when I needed it the most.<\/p>\n

I realized that if every major character in Scripture was portrayed as walking through life unscathed and taken up to Heaven in a supernatural chariot like Elijah (2 Kings 2:11), then I\u2019d toss my Bible into the nearest trash can because that narrative certainly wouldn\u2019t reflect the kind of life we experience in the here and now.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what\u2019s seen in Scripture\u2019s pages.<\/p>\n

The Bible shows the exact opposite and doesn\u2019t present God as a cosmic risk manager whose chief concern is our comfort. Instead, it presents Him as a Redeemer who enters a broken world to rescue people\u00a0through<\/em>\u00a0suffering, not around it.<\/p>\n

We never read about Jesus telling His followers they would be safe, but instead He says plainly, \u201cIn this world you will have trouble\u201d (John 16:33). And we see that the central symbol of the Christian faith is not a shield but a cross.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s easy every time to acknowledge that Christian hope isn\u2019t rooted in the absence of pain, but in the presence of God within it. But these truths help us to step back, regroup, and admit that suffering can be\u00a0meaningful <\/em>\u2014 not because pain is good, but because God can redeem it.<\/p>\n

Christianity insists that\u00a0real hope is forged, not protected, and is born in the dark and anchored beyond this life. It does not promise safety \u2014 but it does promise redemption. And that promise has proven strong enough to carry martyrs, mourners, and ordinary believers like you and me through the worst the world can offer.<\/p>\n

In a culture desperate for security, the Gospel offers something better:\u00a0a hope that does not collapse when life does. And that may be exactly what we need most.<\/p>\n

Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master’s in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist Monday, January 12, 2026iStock\/Anastasiia Stiahailo Many years ago, I watched an amazing life lived out by one of the most spectacular Christian women you\u2019d ever meet. Awesome person, fantastic wife, beloved mother, Bible teacher whose reach extended farther than she probably thought it ever would. A modern-day\u00a0Proverbs 31\u00a0woman. Then, in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[234,5110,410],"class_list":["post-16423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-gospel","tag-mistake","tag-promise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}