text: There's a crucial difference between recognizing God's redemptive transformation of our pain versus asserting that pain is needed and thus pain is God's purpose. The biblical testimony is that "an enemy has done this." To claim otherwise makes God the author of suffering and death. Pain isn't always constructive and can't be assumed on this side of eternity to be so in proportion to suffering. Christ died of a broken heart. The toll of suffering takes our lives, too, in the end.