The Purpose of Suffering: Why Life’s Hardest Tests May Be Your Greatest Growth

Trials and suffering may elevate the righteous, but for most people, they lead to collapse, confusion, or spiritual decline. What is the value of suffering and tests? There are several answers to this question:

1. A verse in the Book of Hosea (14:10) teaches: “The ways of G-d are straight; the righteous walk in them, but sinners stumble upon them.”

G-d’s ways are just and upright and they serve to elevate and refine the righteous. Why would G-d hold back opportunities for spiritual ascent, simply because some people stumble? That would be like a teacher who refuses to challenge advanced students just because others in the class are weaker. On the contrary, a good teacher gives difficult assignments to those who can handle them. In the same way, G-d continues to present challenges and growth opportunities to those who are capable, even if others fall along the way.

2. G-d tailors every test to each individual.

Although He may present difficult trials, He does not expect the same results from everyone. A righteous person may be expected to pass with 100%, but others are only measured according to their strength. Even someone who is not “righteous” in the conventional sense, but who does their best, is considered successful in G-d’s eyes. We can’t possibly grasp the spiritual “equation” of merit and struggle across the nation of Israel, but we can trust that even the most difficult trials bring growth and benefit, even if we don't see it clearly.

3. The intensity of modern-day trials makes repentance easier.

As the Steipler Rebbe wrote, today’s struggles are so overwhelming that one no longer needs to fast or undergo spiritual self-punishment to reach full repentance. Simply stopping the sin with sincere intention is enough. The Talmud says (Yoma 86b) that the definition of a true penitent is someone who is in the exact same situation where they once sinned, and chooses not to repeat it.
Nowadays, just walking away from sin qualifies as that level of transformation. It’s a powerful, immediate way to return to your truest self.

4. There is a hidden spiritual principle:

Some souls can only fulfill their mission by descending into darkness, and rising from there. We find examples like Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya and Yosef Meshita, who descended into the depths of sin and impurity, and only from there found their way back, their repentance burning with clarity and truth. In previous incarnations, they sinned deliberately with free will, and therefore their spiritual rectification must happen by confronting that same darkness, but choosing the light from within it.

This is the hidden path of many modern-day returnees to faith and purpose. Their mission is to lift themselves up from exactly where they once fell, and in doing so, elevate the entire world with them.

Some people are born into secular or spiritually distant environments because their soul’s mission is to rise from that place, to return from the depths where they once chose to fall, and to transform it into light.