THE PERPLEXITY OF PAIN

 

 

In The Hiding Place, amid the suffering of the death camp, Corrie Ten Boom and her sister were challenged, “If your God is all-merciful and all-powerful, why doesn’t he stop such suffering?

 

The sisters were at a loss to answer this ever-perplexing problem. They could merely affirm that from their experience, God is truly love.

 

Is this answer adequate? Perhaps we can add several philosophical remarks like:

 

·       We cannot understand His ways, or…

·       God has good reasons for allowing humanity to reap the consequences of our evil choices, or…

·       We must learn the lessons that only evil and suffering can administer, or

·       We need to learn that we are inadequate, and that God only must be our hope.

 

These answers are all inadequate, even though they are true. I think that it comes back to the answer supplied by the Ten Booms - “We know God, and that He is love.”

 

This answer stretches beyond reason and logic into the realm of experience. It is the experience of a baby in her mother’s arms “knowing” that she is safe there.

 

Is her trust warranted? From her limited experience, yes! Her mother might not always be on time, but she always comes to feed her baby.

 

I have joined a witches’ group on Facebook. They all want to place themselves under the influence and protection of a safe and protective “goddess.” However, they can know nothing about this entity accept what the entity “reveals,” but this entity can know everything about us, especially how to deceive us.

 

Perhaps the Bible has been put together by another entity to deceive me. I struggled to answer this doubt. Finally, it was resolved. Someone who had died the most excruciating death to prove His love for me couldn’t be a deceiver.

 

Did Jesus really die this horrid death? Even the skeptics have called this an “indisputable fact”:

 

·             NT scholar, John Dominic Crossan: “That He was crucified is as sure as anything historical ever can be.” (Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 2007; 113)

 

·             “Both Gerd Ludemann, an atheistic NT critic, and Bart Ehrman, who’s an agnostic, call the crucifixion an “indisputable fact.” (113)

 

·             Tacitus, Roman historian (110 AD): “Jesus suffered the extreme penalty under the reign of Tiberius.” (113)

 

·             “Josephus [the Jewish historian, 90 AD] reports that Pilate ‘condemned him to be crucified’…Even the Jewish Talmud reports that ‘Yeshu was hanged.’” (113)

 

Deceivers do not die such a death!

 

·             but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:8–10)

 

Pain is bewildering while we are enduring it, but I am sold on Jesus. I remain in His arms even as I suffer.