Being a Christian

Reading your essays had made me do a lot of thinking about happiness, which I hope to be able to write something about. However, in the meantime it has posed a question I in turn want to pose to you. 

The question is: can you be a Christian if you do not understand the depths of human suffering?  

Now by Christian I mean specifically someone who clings to the teachings of Christ, not merely someone who reads and "follows" the Bible (for the latter can do many "Christian" things that contradict the teachings of Christ). 

My question is not if understanding the depths of human suffering is a sufficient condition for being a Christian, but only if it is a necessary condition. 

Secondly, my question assumes that you can understand things without living them, for if lived experience were the condition for understanding, this might mean that everyone understands all of their own experience (and that is clearly false).