Parkstone

A PROBLEM OF SUFFERING

A preacher knocked on the door of a house one day and began to talk to the lady about God and the Lord Jesus Christ. “If you want to tell me about the goodness of God” she said, “then come with me”.

Lying on a couch was a severely handicapped child. “She cannot do anything for herself; she was born in adversity, she lives in adversity and she will die in adversity. Just explain your God of love” was her challenge.

Not only is this one of the most difficult questions to answer, for some people it raises the question of the very existence of a Deity, like one newspaper when reporting the Dunblane massacre (the killing of 16 school children) proclaimed in its headline, “Where was God today?”

Suffering is bound up with the whole history of the human race, so let us start by looking at the subject from a biblical point of view. If we turn to the opening pages of Genesis we find a man and a woman living in wonderful surroundings. The man was given free will but also a prohibition which unfortunately he did not obey. He submitted himself to temptation “to be like God and to know good and evil”
(Gen 3 1-7). His transgression broke the harmonious relationship between himself and God. He had stretched forth his hand towards independence, sinned and brought pain, suffering, hardship and death to the world, this has been with us ever since. Much of the suffering that people endure today, therefore, cannot be attributed to any particular transgression committed now.

Man’s disobedience between himself and his Creator has made him, the woman and us, completely subjected to “natural law”. Under this heading we can list torrential floods, earthquakes, death, famines and natural disasters. Added to which further hardship and pain has been brought into the world by man himself such as crime, war, concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, man’s inhumanity to man, stupidity, carelessness, wickedness and so on. Man’s neglect and his misuse of power have invoked and continues to invoke untold suffering for humanity.

Of course it may be contended that attributing much of the responsibility for suffering to the inadequacy and transgression of man, may not necessarily help a distressed parent who has had a deformed or sick child from birth, or someone who is smitten with a life threatening disease, such as cancer. There are understandable questions, which they ask. “Why has this befallen me?” or, “what has my child or I done to deserve this?” In fact the Disciples asked our dear Lord exactly the same question when they encountered a man blind from birth. They asked, “Who sinned Lord, the parents or the child?” There was an implied assumption that this affliction was an expression of God’s displeasure. Jesus’ reply was that neither had sinned, and in this case Jesus used his healing powers so that the works of God may be displayed in the blind man’s life and Jesus restored the man’s sight. Jesus only partially answered his Followers’ question when he told them that the cause of the blind man’s affliction was not necessarily attributed to someone’s transgression.

So with the information and the understanding available we have to go back to what we know. We live in an imperfect world and the cause is the original damaged relationship between man and God. It is understandable that some people may maintain that such inflicted adversity is unfair and by implication unjust. It must be remembered however, that human reasoning is not always in tune with divine thought. For instance the nailing of the most righteous person, the Son of God, to a piece of wood and let him linger an agonising slow death on the cross, is again from a human point of view, one of the most “unfair” acts in the history of mankind. Without giving further explanation it makes us aware that God’s reasoning is so different to the reasoning of man.

To help us the Book of Job in the Old Testament deals specifically with this theme where human suffering not merely fastens upon the guilty, but upon the righteous as well. The character involved is Job. A righteous man, who in his suffering, has long arguments with his friends as to the reason why this should happen to him. The interesting feature, which deals with the point we are considering, is that at the end of their arguments (Chapters 38-41) God answers Job and his friends. Job had expected that God would give him an answer to his incomprehensible sufferings. But God never alludes to them and takes him on a “world tour”, during which he shows him all the wonders of creation. Job is then asked to look round and to observe the wonder and mystery of the exquisite creation and God asks him if he can give an answer as to how all this came into being.

Job considered God’s mighty works, his Lord’s supremacy, his omnipotence and became more aware of his own inadequacy. The Bible tells us he is satisfied and says simply, “I am of small account, how can I answer you”. The Lord was pleased with his servant’s humility and trust. Job emerged from his ordeal and perhaps surprisingly was enriched and strengthened in his personal faith in God.

These brief thoughts probably do not completely answer the cases of incomprehensible suffering, but if we conclude with Job’s ordeal God says to him, and indirectly to us, look at everything I have done, I want you to trust me. We may not completely understand but it is God’s way of doing things and the Bible does say: “Without faith it is impossible to please God”