In a March 25, 2017, op-ed in the New York Times, Peter Wehner – a Christian politico – addresses the difficulty of reconciling human suffering with belief in God's sovereignty and love (similar to the ancient philosophical 'problem of evil' known as theodicy).

He begins by acknowledging the suffering which afflicts so many (pain arising from death, betrayal, illness, addiction, poverty, failure, etc.), and he notes the dangers of tone-deaf religious responses that seem uncaring in the face of this pain.  Then Wehner asks, what does Christianity offer in the face of suffering?  His answer is "consolation" – consolation arising from the fellowship of Christian community, from the promise of eternal reward, and from confidence of God's sovereignty.  

Wehner is right, as far as it goes.  The love of your fellow Christians, confidence in eternal reward, and faith in God's plan, are all elements of our response to suffering.  But are any of these distinctively Christian responses?  Wehner notes that supportive friends are available to sufferers in all walks of life, religious or otherwise.  And the second two consolations (eternal reward and God's sovereignty) can arise from a wide variety of religious (or even just amorphously spiritual) beliefs.  None of these consolations is distinctively Christian, per se.  Wehner concludes his piece with a brief allusion to a Christian distinctive, the Crucifixion:

For those of the Christian faith, God is a God of wounds, where the road to redemption passes directly through suffering.  There is some solace in knowing that while at times life is not easy for us, it was also hard for the God of the New Testament.  And from suffering, compassion can emerge, meaning to suffer with another — that disposition, in turn, often leads to acts of mercy. 

This is called 'burying the lede,' because the Crucifixion is Christianity's response to suffering – and look closely at what a response it is.  Our personal experience teaches us that what truly ameliorates suffering is not explanation (no matter how reasonable or how sincerely offered), but an arm around the shoulders – the feeling that you have been joined in your suffering, and that you are supported and loved without discussion or question.  The Crucifixion is a divine arm-around-the-shoulders, because Christ has entered into every kind of suffering with us: personal rejection, spiritual desolation, physical pain, existential angst... everything that we might suffer.

It begins in the Incarnation itself, when God demonstrated his unbelievable love for us by abandoning the rights and prerogatives of divinity – the infinite beauty of knowing every corner of the universe, the supreme confidence of omnipotence – in order to walk the earth as a human.  He reduced himself to the dusty, dirty, unpleasant life of a wandering first-century peasant, who was rejected by his neighbors, persecuted by the authorities, and ultimately ignored or reviled by everyone whose opinion mattered.

And all along what did he have to look forward to?  ...rejection by the very people he was trying to help, arrest for a crime he did not commit, torture for the amusement of sadists, conviction on political pretexts, and finally being nailed to a cross, left to suffer while life slipped away minute by minute, in unbearable pain.

He did all of this as a sacrificial offering, to bridge the gap that existed (and would otherwise always exist) between himself and us.  Christ made this supreme sacrifice in commitment to us, despite our perpetual failure to commit to him.  It is truly mind blowing – what Kierkegaard called the "absolute paradox" – that the creator of the universe should suffer for little ol' me, loving me in this profound way despite my rejection of him.  

Wehner gently criticizes C.S. Lewis' 1940 work, The Problem of Pain, for offering a flippant response to pain:

Lewis’s answer to why an all-good and all-powerful God would allow his creatures to suffer pain was a bit too neat and tidy. Among other things, he wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Wehner then commends Lewis' 1961 work, A Grief Observed, because the later work was informed by Lewis' own suffering at the loss of his wife the year before.   But Lewis' theology did not change – only his own suffering did.  In the later work, he shares the perspective of the sufferer, so his answer is provided with an arm-around-the-shoulder authenticity that could not be offered before he himself suffered greatly.

Therein lies the secret of the Crucifixion.  Suffering and pain are universal phenomena, and no religion or philosophy or human endeavor of any kind can eliminate them.  Christ's response is unlike any other, because in the Crucifixion, he offers the ultimate salve to our wounds – namely, his own.  He suffered and can now join us in our suffering.  Theologically there's much more to be said about the Crucifixion that lies beyond the scope of Wehner's essay.  But on the topic he addressed — the problem of pain — the Crucifixion is the truest and best response that can be imagined.

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