“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” I’ve heard that many times.
It’s venomous. It’s a sugar-coated and harmful lie.
Some who suffer even believe it, cling to it, and therein lies the tragedy.
This is where spiritually shrugs, spewing out a Hallmark card with sharp edges, that cuts through you.
It might be kinder to look at someone who has broken down and say, “Well, if you’re crushed beneath the rubble, clearly you weren’t tough enough.”
This cliché takes the horror of existence, the suicide attempts, the chemo, the miscarriages, people choking to death on their last breath, and repackages that dread as encouragement.
This cliché doesn’t comfort. It blames people. It points a finger at the broken and says: “Sorry dude, you weren’t built strong enough in the first place.”
The cliché twists God into a sadistic gym instructor, slapping weights onto the bar until your spine cracks or your arms collapse under the weight, then patting you on the head and saying, “I knew you could do it. Nicely done!”
What’s the worst part? It kills faith’s actual strength.
Faith at its core is not about being handed a divine obstacle course and proving your biceps are holy enough to finish.
Faith is about not having enough, about crying out, about breaking apart and finding meaning in the wreckage.
Faith is a hand extended to the drowning, not a coach screaming from the shore, timing how long you can tread water before you sink.
Life absolutely does give you more than you can handle. Every day, someone buckles under it.
If you need a replacement line, here it is: “Sometimes the weight is too much. You weren’t weak for collapsing or failing. You were human.”
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When life gives you more than you can handle, that’s called “trauma.” When people say, “God never gives us more than we can handle,” I refer to that as Veggie Tales/Hummel Figurine theology: insulting to those of us with functioning brain cells. Such people should never be taken seriously and they can be corrected on-the-spot. I have told people, “Don’t ever say that to anyone else ever again. It is cruel.” Trauma is real and we all need real empathy, not BS simplistic aphorisms.
I’ve heard that many times too. It’s bullshit. I gave birth to a stillborn little girl. I dont believe God did this because I was able to handle the death of my child…