If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why is there so much suffering? This is a massive question and can be approached from many different directions. As with all of our “Why did God” questions, we cannot answer this one comprehensively, but perhaps we can offer some meaningful answers.
Why so much suffering? Perhaps we need it. I know that I need suffering. Suffering teaches and grows us. Without it, we tend to take our closest relationships for granted. A wife had faithfully nursed her husband through his nine-year struggle against cancer. She explained that he came to truly love her during his ordeal.
A video following the catastrophic Haitian earthquake caught a husband crying and fervently kissing his wife after she had been dug out of the rubble alive several days after the quake. Suffering and loss teach us to value what we have. Therefore, the psalmist had written about our need to be aware of our impending death:
· So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)
We need painful consequences, especially the inevitability
of death provoke us to seek wisdom. The psalmist, King David, suggested that
the awareness of our temporary sojourn also teaches us humility:
· “O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! (Psalm 39:4–6)
It is humbling to realize that we die and that everything we have worked for comes to an end. While a man struggles to exalt himself and to prove his significance, it is nothing after his last breath.
It is also our suffering and neediness that draw us together. Otherwise, we tend to become jaded, self-satisfied, and arrogant when things are going too well for us.
Why are we afflicted with mosquitoes, birthing pains and cancer? Perhaps we need them? Perhaps the curse (Gen. 3:14-19) was a blessing in disguise! Grooming is both the glue and the very substance of baboon society. It is through grooming that baboons establish their social attachments and cohesiveness. However, grooming derives its significance from the presence of misery-inflicting parasite—fleas and ticks!
Perhaps we need the struggles that suffering brings! We are entering into difficult economic and social times. If the comfort we extend to one another produces oneness, then the approaching trials will give us many opportunities. But first we need the fleas to awaken our need for grooming!
Progress Magazine (July 2008) writes about a man watching a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon:
· It seemed to take forever. Finally, being impatient and wanting to free the struggling insect, he took a knife and split the cocoon. The butterfly was born, but it could not fly. The man had prevented a very necessary struggle that the butterfly needed. The struggle forces body juices into the insect’s wings, giving it the strength to fly.
Perhaps suffering is a necessary gift, while we are plagued in this life with the corruption of sin and selfishness. Just consider a world where there are no consequences for evil, no tormenting conscience, where we’d live forever without any infirmities? Sometimes, as I look upon my wife as she sleeps, I remind myself that I will not always have her. This thought makes me want to cherish her before death takes one of us away. (Our prayer is that the Lord will take us together.)
God had barred Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and the tree-of-life, after sin had laid claim to them, lest they eat from it and live forever. Yes, this was a curse, but death seems to have been a needful curse. The Apostle Paul explained the need for the Fall and death:
· Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse [the Fall]. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. (Romans 8:20-23 NLT)
Suffering was both the consequence of human sin and causes us to long for deliverance. It resets our priorities on the things that matter. Therefore, we hunger for the glorious and eternal marriage to our Savior:
· Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world. (1 Peter 4:12-13)
It is a joy to finally receive what we have longed for. How does suffering accomplish this? It transfers our hope in ourselves to hope in our Savior alone. We are created for love and devotion and not for the self-sufficiency we normally crave. Paul explained that suffering was necessary for him to learn that he couldn’t trust in himself:
· We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)
Without suffering, we would never learn to trust God. It’s just too convenient to trust in ourselves. I would like to believe that I have what it takes to successfully deal with all the challenges. However, such a trust would prevent me from learning to cherish God and even others. Instead, without suffering and the self-reflection it brings, we remain blind, proud, and would aggrandize ourselves, as kings often do:
· The people gave [King Herod] a great ovation, shouting, “It’s the voice of a god, not of a man!” Instantly, an angel of the Lord struck Herod with a sickness, because he accepted the people’s worship instead of giving the glory to God. So he was consumed with worms and died. (Acts 12:22-23 NLT)
Herod’s kingship had enabled him to think that he is a god, diminish others, and to abuse them. This is a common theme. It seems inevitable that whenever Israel’s stomach was full, they would forget about God and conclude that they had what-it-takes to live a fulfilling life, as many of Jesus’ parables indicate:
· “Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else” (Luke 18:9).
Self-righteousness is always a comparative exercise. We require more of this commodity than others have, and when we have it, we look down on everyone else. However, Jesus concluded the parable:
· “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)
Humility is the soil into which every virtue must sprout. Humility is also a matter of truth, an accurate self-knowledge of our inadequacies and moral failures, and our utter dependence on God. Consequently, if we reject God, we also reject self-knowledge, the knowledge of our true status, our inadequacy and dependence. Without the love and reassurance of our Savior, we flee from this painful knowledge and disdain humility.
Why then the need for suffering? To shake us up and to open
our eyes to bring about change:
· Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word…It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalm 119:67, 71-72)
The Apostles Paul also taught that if we want to become more Christ-like, there is no way to bypass suffering:
· always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:10–11)
But how do we justify the great extent of such suffering? When we compare it with eternity, it no longer seems so great:
· Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. (Romans 8:18 NLT)
Our hope rests in the bosom of eternity. It is the answer to all our pains. In comparison, our temporary suffering is a small price for the harvest of eternal bliss.
We need a theology of suffering and to understand it as a positive and not a negative in the hands of our Savior. We need to regard our God as merciful and righteous and not a kill-joy! He is training us for the Olympics, and this requires a lean diet.
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