For many people, cancer raises profound questions about faith. If you believe in a God who is good, why would this happen? What does this illness mean in the larger story of your spiritual life? Has something in the universe failed you, or is this failure of understanding on your part?
These are not small questions, and they do not have easy answers. But they are worth sitting with.
Some people find that cancer deepens their faith. In the face of something so frightening and uncontrollable, leaning into belief — into a larger framework of meaning, a sense of being held by something greater than themselves — provides real comfort. Prayer, community, ritual, scripture: these can all be genuine anchors during treatment. If your faith sustains you, lean into it without apology.
Others find that cancer shakes their faith to its foundations. If you believed in a God who protects the faithful, a cancer diagnosis can feel like a betrayal. Where is the protection now? The anger at God, or the universe, or fate, is legitimate. Spiritual anger is not the end of faith — it is often a sign of how real the relationship is. You do not argue passionately with something you do not care about.
And some people find themselves questioning for the first time things they thought were settled. These questions are not a crisis to be solved quickly. They are an invitation to go deeper into your own understanding of meaning, mortality, and what you actually believe when the comfortable answers fall away.
Spiritual care is a legitimate part of cancer care. Many cancer centers have chaplains who are trained to sit with patients across all spiritual backgrounds and none — not to impose belief, but to hold space for whatever you are wrestling with. If you are struggling spiritually, asking for a pastoral care consultation is a perfectly appropriate and available option.
Whatever your relationship to faith, you are not alone in asking these questions. Millions of people before you have sat with the same bewilderment, the same anger, the same desperate need to understand why. Some found answers. Some found peace with the questions. And some found that the searching itself was its own form of grace.