Our religious parts revere God. They place his Word on a lofty pedestal. They carry an unshakeable devotion to keep us from trading God in for anything else. Loyal to teachings we learned in childhood, when they get a whiff of anything remotely disparaging to God, religious parts are quick to defend him.
It makes sense for our most religious parts to fight for God. But why would they fight us on grieving? Because they loathe displeasing God or dishonoring the Bible. This explains why Christians with strong religious parts often say we don’t grieve like those “who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) when they deem a fellow believer’s grief to be excessive or otherwise inappropriate.
I once watched a renowned evangelist speak soon after the unexpected death of a minister friend he had known for decades. Their rich friendship explained the man’s visible grief. Yet he was also quick to assert how Christians were not to respond with sadness when a loved one died. He cited the King James translation of Isaiah 53:4 as proof: “Surely [Jesus] has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.”
Because Jesus has, indeed, carried our griefs and sorrows on the cross, religious parts like to argue that we have zero biblical basis to be grief-stricken.
Biblical Responses to Religious Parts
The Bible does not ban grieving. On the contrary, God’s own Son pronounced a blessing on those who mourn (Matthew 5:4). God will wipe away every tear from our eyes; but this blessed reality is reserved for a new heaven and earth, where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
We are not there yet—and God knows it. His response to our earthbound existence, with its “many trials and sorrows” (John 16:33 NLT), is to collect our tears in his bottle (Psalm 56:8 NLT). Maybe this is why the apostle Paul did not instruct us to scold mourners, but rather to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15 NLT).
But what about Nehemiah 8:10? This verse plainly states, “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Reading verse 10 in isolation makes it seem we are forbidden to grieve at all times. But when we consider the context, another explanation emerges. The book of Nehemiah centers on the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Its walls needed restoring because the Israelites had strayed far from God. After his numerous attempts to correct them fell on deaf ears, the Almighty gave them over to their enemy, who ended up ransacking the Jewish people’s sacred temple, destroying Jerusalem, and exiling them to Babylon.
Nehemiah 8 starts off with the leaders reading the law of Moses out loud, something we can safely assume never happened while they were living as exiles. The crowd started weeping after the Levites explained what they had just read. It could have been nostalgia; it could have been guilt for breaking the commandments. Regardless, Nehemiah instructed them to stop grieving that day: “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep” (Nehemiah 8:9). The Levites repeated the same instruction, almost verbatim, a couple of verses later: “Be still, for this is a holy day. Do not grieve” (Nehemiah 8:11).
Do you see the sandwich created by Nehemiah 8:9-11? Both verses 9 and 11 stress how the ban on grieving, verse 10, was only valid for that particular day.
God never demands for us to forgo grieving in general. Rather, he told his people to stop grieving for one singular day, because the day was sanctified.
Now, let’s look at Isaiah 53:4, “Surely [Jesus] has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.” The KJV translates the verse as Jesus bearing our griefs (Hebrew choli) and sorrows. However, choli is better translated as sickness (“choli,” Strong’s Concordance, accessed October 25, 2024, https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2483.htm). Sorrows—makob in Hebrew—means pain, both physical and mental (“makob,” Strong’s Concordance, accessed October 25, 2024, https://biblehub.com/hebrew/4341.htm).
Other translations express the same verse as “surely [Jesus] took up our pain and bore our suffering” (NIV); “it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore, and our pains that He carried” (NASB). The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, translated the verse as “He bears our sins, and is pained for us.” Matthew 8:17, quoting from Isaiah 53:4, also expresses the idea of Jesus shouldering our infirmities and diseases.
In short, like these other translations show, we are not to understand Isaiah 53:4 as a divine edict against grieving.
Paul’s Religious Part
Paul, one of the Bible’s most renowned Pharisees, descended from forefathers who were also Pharisees (Acts 23:6). He hunted Christians down, hauled them to prison, and voted to have them killed (Acts 8:3; 26:10-11). Paul had so much vitriol back then that the Bible says he “breathed out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9:1).
But he could only continue such conduct until Jesus seized his attention supernaturally (Acts 9:3-19).
It is impossible to encounter the living God and emerge unchanged. The Bible records scores of people whose lives were radically transformed after meeting the Lord. Just ask Paul. The man who used to chase Jesus’ followers with a vengeance ended up promoting their cause with as much passion. Now Paul preached for Jesus, with signs, wonders, and miracles (2 Corinthians 12:12), despite the intense persecution he faced (2 Corinthians 11:25). But please notice how Paul explained his past: “I thought to myself that I had to act in strong opposition to the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 26:9 NASB).
Meeting Jesus, however, convicted the part of its error.
What happened to Paul’s part is not a fluke. Hearing from God has the potential of changing not just us, but also our parts—including the most religious ones.
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Adapted from Grieving Wholeheartedly by Audrey Davidheiser. ©2025 Audrey Davidheiser. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
Bio: Dr. Audrey Davidheiser (PhD, Fuller) is a licensed psychologist in California, certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, and IFSI-approved clinical consultant. She is the author of Grieving Wholeheartedly. After founding a counseling center for the Los Angeles Dream Center, she now provides IFS therapy for trauma survivors, including those with religious trauma, and assists in IFS trainings.
Link to Grieving Wholeheartedly: https://www.ivpress.com/grieving-wholeheartedly
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Adaptation from Grieving Wholeheartedly by Audrey Davidheiser
Adapted from Chapter 6, “Your Most Religious Part”
