Before you read any further, let
me ask whether you are personally having to deal with suffering at the moment.
If you are, let me tell you some of the message the Bible has for suffering
people, then we can look at this question is a more detached way.
The Psalms are full of anger at
injustice in the world, full of pleading, questioning and even complaint. Anger
is often our first word to God, but if we are willing to be transformed by his
mercy, then faith is often our last word. This is because we discover...
As Psalm 34 says, "The
Lord is close to the broken hearted."
He, himself, suffered on the
Cross, and triumphed over it. He is with us in the suffering and because he has
had that experience, he is able to help us in our time of need. The Letter to
the Hebrews in the New Testament particularly develops this theme.
When Jesus hung on the Cross, God
the Father was losing his and the Son his Father. On the Cross, Jesus said, "My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me."
This is the conclusion of the
books of Job, and many of the Psalms I referred to above. Another thing Jesus
said on the Cross, even though he felt the experience of forsakeness by God,
was "Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit." He knew he
could trust his Heavenly Father.
This was something Jesus
constantly encouraged in the people he met. "Don't cry," he
said, pointing people to look forward to a day when there will be no more tears
and no more crying.
You may feel no need or desire to
read any further on this subject. But if you would like to consider some
further points from a slightly more detached point of view, here they are. They
will not necessarily help the suffering heart, but they may go some way towards
giving an explanation for the mind.
The answer to this question has
been debated time and again for thousands of years. Clearly we cannot do it
justice on one page. But this handful of considerations will hopefully
stimulate your thinking, and maybe help you to draw closer to God even if this
question weighs heavy in your heart and mind.
Pain is part of God's good
creation: it teaches us to beware of the things that endanger life. Some of
these are physical dangers - fire, poison, wounds etc., some of them are
emotional dangers: hatred, abuse, mistrust etc. Pain also teaches us
compassion: it teaches us to care for one another. Because I feel pain, I can
begin to enter your pain and care for you. Pain is therefore part of the fabric
of human relationships.
I think dandelions are very
beautiful - especially when they are held up to the sunlight. Yet they are so
fragile - a simple puff and their beauty is destroyed. Beauty is often fragile.
Some of the most beautiful poetry is written by people who also suffer greatly,
either physically or emotionally or both. If not, they certainly have the
capacity to enter others' suffering. The fragile or sensitive elements of God's
creation are particularly vulnerable to suffering. It may seem hard - but
that's the way it is.
The world is also tremendous, but
dangerous - and perhaps we need to recover some of our awe at creation. The
same basic geological factors that caused the great mountain ranges to come
into being are the same as those that cause earthquakes. We may enjoy the
thrill of seeing the Alps - or even skiing down them - but our heart goes out
to the victims of earthquakes. Yet we can't have one without the other. Maybe
God could stick great signposts in the ground saying, "Don't build
here" yet since human beings have ignored just about every other piece of
advice he's given, it seems unlikely that it would make any real difference.
The world is extremely finely
balanced. There is a fine line between sanity and madness, genius and
psychopathic conditions. The same factors that cause life and growth - i.e.
cell multiplication - also cause the growth of cancer. Or to quote a well-known
gardener's phrase: "a weed is simply a flower in the wrong place." Of
course we wish with all our hearts that that person we know wasn't afflicted in
that way, but something has happened in God's creation to upset the fine
balance.
The Swiss theologian, Emil
Brunner, described the world as a chessboard. "All the pieces are
there," he said, "but the board has been knocked and now they're all
out of place." The Bible describes the same fact by telling a story - the
story of Adam and Eve. The world was indeed finely balanced, but the balance
was upset when human beings disobeyed the first great signpost God put up, and
ate of the forbidden fruit. From that moment, they would never enjoy a perfect
world and a perfect relationship with God: everything in all creation would be
out of kilter.
You can be sure, that if we know
how to suffer pain, then God also knows what suffering is. We are after all
made in his image. Reading the gospels - particularly that of Matthew - we
become very aware the compassion and empathy of Jesus toward those suffering
around him. The Old Testament paints the same picture as well: "The Lord
is close to the broken hearted," we read in Psalm 34, "and he saves
those who are crushed in spirit." Often those who are going through
suffering themselves are far more aware of God's presence with them than those
who are looking on. God's primary will is not for innocent people to suffer. He
does not enjoy it. But the fact that Jesus came to this earth, toiled among us,
and suffered and died on the cross, shows that the Christian God does not stay
aloof, and this is a pattern of response to pain that for Christians to follow.
We assume that if God is
all-powerful, then he will 'intervene.' In fact, however, God is exercising
just as much power in self-restraint. When Jesus gave up his life in
self-sacrifice on the cross, his mockers challenged him to save himself if he
was the Son of God. His reply was that although he could call upon the power of
an army of angels, he chose not to - for it was to this suffering and death he
came.
Self-restraint is a legitimate
exercise of power. We may wonder why God uses his power in this way, but
he is certainly using it. When we consider the pain in his heart - countless
times that within our own hearts; when we consider the anger in his heart
countless times that within our own; the impulse to simply destroy the world
and start again must be enormous. The impulse to 'intervene' and change all the
laws of freedom, the way the world is, the manner in which it has evolved, the
possibility of human free will - that impulse must be absolutely awesome in
power.
Just imagine a really big dam.
Just imagine the power to turn a space rocket around. Surely the impulse for
God the Creator to throw our world away and start again must be thousands of
times stronger than these. When we consider these 'only natural' impulses of
the Creator God we can begin to appreciate how his power is used in
self-restraint, and we can praise him for it with grateful hearts.
The answers to such questions as
why the world is as it is are, by definition, absolutely enormous, and so I'd
like to ask, "Why do we feel we have the right to know?" Why do you
think you have the right to know? What makes you so special that you should
know the answer to this mystery? What makes you so different that God should
tell you what the reason is? Have you followed all the things that he has told
you so far?
These kinds of questions may seem
a little aggressive, but they are worth thinking about. We assume that we have
the right to know, and that until we do know, we shall suspend judgement on our
opinion of God. But when you think about it, doesn't that attitude seem a
little bizarre - just a touch arrogant?
God has given us enquiring minds,
but they function at their best when they are tempered by the humility that
comes from worship of the One who created them.
I hope your mind has been
stimulated by some of the points raised in answer to this question, but for a
more satisfying answer I would suggest that you come to God in worship, laying
your questions at his feet and leaving them there. Bring him the pain you feel
and the anger. Let it resonate with his pain and his anger. Bring to him the
failure of human kind - the fact that we have consistently disregarded his
instructions - and consider your own failures. His vision is to make all things
new - and it starts with the cleansing and renewal of each of our hearts.
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