connecting

Why does God Allow Suffering?
Phil Schaefer
 10/04/09

 

Introduction:
            I hate pain. I try to do all I can to avoid pain. So far, my efforts have been unsuccessful. I hate that there is suffering in the world. I hate it even more when those I love have to suffer. But I hate suffering the most when I am the one going through it.
            (Peter Kreeft- Making Sense out of Suffering)-   “Our bigger problem with suffering is that it is undeserved. It seems random and pointless in so many ways. While one person may become a hero or an example in suffering, there are 10 others who become depressed, despairing, and less than victorious.”
 The honest truth is we all suffer. That’s the rub. We all have hidden (and not so hidden) hurts. We all do a lot of cover-ups. There has been great progress in medicine and the cure of diseases, and in industrialized society a more comfortable life. Where would we be without anesthetics? Yet, people are hurting far more psychologically and spiritually today than ever before. Suicides are up, depression is up, mindless violence is up, boredom is up, and drug escapism is up.
What are we escaping from? We try to escape from ourselves because in one form or another, we all hurt. Usually our hurt is not some tragic, spectacular kind of hurt but a general grayness that settles like dust over our own lives: a drabness, a dullness, a generic unhappiness.

I. The Modern Perspective

  • We are all a part of modernity. It is the air we breathe, the framework by which we value things. Every culture over all of time has asked itself. “What is the best thing in life?”
    • At the time of the Renaissance, there was a shift in perspective. The western mind began to formulate a new answer to this question.
    • The ancients believed in “objective reality”. And the problem was how to conform the soul to objective reality- to the fixed physical and moral laws.
    • For the modern mind, it is a “subjective reality.” The problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of man. Thus suffering becomes a scandal, a problem to be conquered, and overcome--the greatest problem there is. It is not seen in terms of sin. The Christian story seems a failure, for Christ conquered sin, but He did not yet abolish the need for us to suffer and die. To the modern mind, a God who did not abolish suffering, and a God who abolished sin by suffering, is both scandalous and a failure.
    • The ancient perspective on suffering is that it is a mystery and a moral challenge to be lived out. (Eccl. 7:3)
  • Here is the evolutionary problem:
    • “The modern objections to God are based on fair play and justice. People, we believe, ought not to suffer, be excluded, die of hunger or oppression.” (Keller on C.S. Lewis).
    • But the evolutionary theory of natural selection says that death, destruction, and violence are all part of natural selection, or of the strong overcoming the weak. These things are all perfectly natural, and to ascribe a moral worth is to undermine the very theory of evolution.
    • “Tucked away in the modern mind is the premise that, if evil appears pointless to me, then it must be pointless.” (Keller- pg 23)

 

II. The Ancient Perspective

  1. “Socrates, the father of philosophy, taught that the 1sst and most important lesson in all of philosophy is that you are wise only when you are humble. The prerequisite for wisdom is to realize that we are not wise.” (Kreeft, pg 46_
  2. Job 38- 41--When God finally showed up to answer Job’s question of “Why do the righteous suffer?” (Why do bad things happen to good people?), God answered Job’s question with questions.
    1. “Who do you think you are, anyway? By what right do you assume that you can know the answer to this question? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Are you the author of this story that is your life? Are you your own creator and designer? By what right does the character claim to have the author’s point of view?”
    2. We know that God held up Job before Satan as a trophy; as one who loved God not for His blessings but because he knew who God was.- the source of all that Job was.
  3. “Augustine asked God hundreds of questions, and those questions are not accusations towards God, but prayers to God. They are questions of humility. They are questions like Job’s that end with saying, “Eventually, one must become silent before God and let Him answer us however He will.” (Job 42:1-6)
  4. Jacob wrestled with a stranger all night, and God wrenched Jacob’s hip. But Jacob would not let Him go until He blessed him. God said,” Your name will no longer be Jacob-the one who deceives, but Israel- he struggles with God, because you have struggled with God and men and have overcome.” (Gen. 32:22-32) From that day on Jacob walked with a limp. Mike Bickle came and gave us a teaching about “Limping and Leaning and Leaping With God.”
  5. Bob Stricker (former pastor at CFC) had pancreatitis; he thought he was going to die, and suffered a lot. I remember him saying he did not know why he suffered, he had no lesson to impart. That really bothered me. As a young man, I wanted to have a lesson, an insight.
  6. A few years ago I had to take a sudden sabbatical because I was an emotional wreck. I sat for whole days, over whole weeks that turned into whole months, reading the Bible, begging God to speak to me, to give me some answer, an insight into why I was where I was. All I got was silence. Silence and the squirrels running around my deck and around in my head. I came to the thought that if God wanted to send me to hell, then He was justified in doing so. I knew He would be right. I came to the thought that if God never wants to answer me, that is His prerogative; even if He never gives me a clue to my pain, and even if He judges that I deserve hell, He is God. But He is my God and I will put my trust in Him all my days. (Pastor Phil)
  7. You are wise only when you are humble. We cannot make ourselves humble. But humility is worked in us as we submit to God. James says that Job was blessed because he persevered; and the wisdom he gained was that “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” (James 5:11)

III. The Eternal Perspective

  • The eternal perspective to suffering is love.
    1. All suffering is the result of sin, either directly or indirectly. “We live in a fallen world and we ourselves are fallen.” (Francis Schaefer)
    2. Q. Why did God allow sin to enter the world?

A. Because of love.

  • God made us in love. For love to exist there must be free will--the ability to choose.
  • Love is not love if it is forced. It can only be love if there is a real choice.
  • God gave us the freedom to love or not to love Him.
  • Given this choice, men and women from the beginning, have chosen not to love God or to submit to Him as our creator, or to love one another.
    1. (C.S. Lewis- Alpha, pg. 11) “It would have been possible for God  to have removed the results of the first win ever committed and the suffering that goes with it; but this would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the 2nd sin, and the 3rd, and so on forever. If God did nothing but keep overlooking or wiping over our choices, then nothing important would ever depend on human choice. Choice would cease to be choice, and love would cease to be love.”
    2. “The price God had to pay to create a world in which we are free to love each other is also a world in which we are free to harm each other.” (Kreeft, pg. 176)
  • It was because of love that Jesus came. “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) In Jesus God showed that He is not indifferent to our suffering.

IV. The Ultimate Perspective

  • The degree of our suffering in this life will be the degree of our joy into eternal life.
  • In every point in life we can become bitter or we can become better. Worship God or not worship God. Wrestle with God, or we can walk away from God.

 

Discussion Questions:
1. How does the modern perspective on pain and suffering (as a problem to be overcome) affect our understanding of Christianity?
2. Do you agree that experiencing suffering can bring wisdom and humility? In what ways have you seen this play out in your life?
3. How does Jesus’ death on the cross reveal God’s perspective on suffering to us?