For the first eight years of my life, I lived on the south side of Dallas, TX. Across the street from us lived the Hicks family. They had four children, all of them older than we were, but we occasionally played with them, until they got too big for us and then we moved away. When I was in the seventh grade, just four years later, we joined Hampton Place Baptist Church. The Hicks family were members of our church. Their two oldest children were grown and married by this time, but Kenny and Jackie, the two youngest were still attending church with their parents. Kenny was a student a UTA majoring in Art. Jackie was still in High School, and she was still cordial to me, even though I was much younger. One summer, the Mr. & Mrs. Hicks and Jackie took a trip out to California where their oldest daughter lived. Somewhere in Arizona, their car went out of control, smashed into a concrete abutment, burst into flames and they were all three burned to death. My brother and I were pall bearers for Jackie.
Kenny, the youngest son, who had been a football player, and who I idolized, lost all heart for going to art school. He decided to become a Dallas Policeman. What a magnificent figure he made in his policeman’s uniform. He married a young lady in the church. And they started a wonderful life together.
Early one morning, around 2:00-3:00 a.m., Kenny was coming home across the Trinity River bridge when he noticed a car driving somewhat erratically. He followed the car into an apartment complex and when he got out to investigate, one of the men in the car shot him in the neck. When he was finally found, he was rushed to Parkland hospital. But, in spite of all the doctors could do, Kenny Hicks, age 23, was paralyzed from the neck down. I remember going to see him in the rehab hospital. He sounded upbeat, but later I learned from the guys in his Sunday School class who stood by him for seven years until his death, that he often wanted to die.
At his funeral, as our pastor spoke with choked rage and emotion, he told that the man who shot Kenny was already out on parole. Kenny’s relief came in the form of death. In a paralyzed body, as a young newly-wed, death seemed better than life.
For the first time in my life, I came face-to-face with the shattering enigma of human suffering. Sometimes it is our own suffering. Sometimes it is the suffering of others. But suffering of some kind is part of the experience of every life. Consequently, the suffering question is one of the most profoundly disturbing factors today.
Three thousand years earlier, the Psalmist also experienced the suffering question. What compounded the problem for him was his observation that the righteous seemed to suffer more than the unrighteous. He looked at the wicked and saw them basking in prosperity.
The Psalmist said in verse 4 they cursed God and, yet, seemed to receive His blessings. "There are no pains in their death," He declared in verse 7, "Their eye bulges from fatness."
In contrast, the Psalmist tried to live the righteous life, tried to do what God wanted him to do. Yet, he said in verse 2, it was as if the very foundation of his life had been swept out from under him.
All of us have been in the Psalmist’s shoes. Some are walking in them right now.
You live for God, follow His way and, then, suffering comes. Or you stroll along casually in life, minding your own business, and some disaster strikes. And like Thomas Huxley, we want to cry out against the "unfathomable injustice of the nature of things."
Notice several things in the 73rd Psalm about the suffering question.
The Perplexity
First, notice the perplexity of suffering. In verses 10-12, the Living Bible has the Psalmist say, "And so God’s people are dismayed and confused, and drink it all in. ’Does God realize what is going on?" they ask. ’Look at these men of arrogance; they never have to lift a finger ... theirs is a life of ease; and all the time their riches multiply.’"
Written between the lines of these verses is the perplexing inquiry, "How can these things be? Why is there such human suffering for some and such blessing for others?" We do not have a completely adequate answer to that question, but some clues will help us understand why there is so much suffering in the world.
Some suffering comes because of THE DYNAMICS OF LIFE. That is, the factors of human life explain much of our suffering.
One factor is the constancy of the universe. Certain uniform principles govern the universe. An example is the law of gravity. If a person jumps out of the window of a high-rise office building, he will be smashed to death on the ground below, or if an airplane’s engine fails, the plane will crash. That law affects the righteous and unrighteous alike. But this same law of gravity gives the basis for an organized, rational world. If, for instance, we jumped into the air and sometimes the law of gravity was in effect and sometimes it was not, sometimes we went down and sometimes we went up, this would be a chaotic, unlivable world.
A second factor is the progressive nature of the world. Life is not static. Both individuals and mankind as a whole are in a growth process in our physical development, in our intellectual achievement, in our social understanding. In this struggle to grow and develop, there are growing pains which often bring suffering.
Another factor is the power of moral choice. Although our freedom is not unlimited freedom, we do, nevertheless, have the freedom to determine the destiny of our lives. We are not puppets who automatically jump when God pulls our strings. We can choose to accept God or reject Him. We can choose to expose our body to things that will destroy it. We can choose to do good or evil. Because the choice to do evil is so often made, much suffering is brought into the world.
A fourth factor in the dynamics of life is the intermeshed character of human relationships. As the poet put it, "No man is an island." We are all interrelated. As individuals and nations, our problems and tragedies spill over into other people’s lives.
These four factors are essential to life.
• We would not like to live in a whimsical universe which had no laws.
• We would not like to live in a world which was static instead of progressive.
• We would not want to be puppets with no freedom of choice.
• We would not like to sever all our mutual relationships.
But the irony of life is that the same factors which make possible life’s progress also make possible life’s pain. Some suffering comes simply because of
the dynamics of living in today’s world.
Some suffering is RETRBUTION FROM GOD FOR MAN’S SIN. People ask if God punishes us in this world for our sin. The answer is absolutely. The Bible teaches it and history proves it to be true. Just look at Acts 5 and read the story of Ananias and Sapphira.
But we need to be careful not to apply this truth too broadly. Some preachers will tell you, "Every time you suffer, God is trying to tell you something." That is what Job’s friends said to him. The reason Job is in our Bible is to let us know that this is not true. There is a connection between sin and suffering in some cases, but not in every case.
Some suffering is A DISCIPLINARY MEASURE BY GOD. That is, it is not punishment for sin, but, rather, it is God’s method of producing moral improvements in our life. It is His discipline. Proverbs 3:11, for instance, says, "My son, despise not the discipline of the Lord, and resent not His correction; for whom the Lord loves, He corrects." Again, though this is an explanation for some suffering, it is not the explanation for all suffering. It still couples suffering with sin, but does not explain innocent suffering.
Some suffering can be explained as PROBATIONAL. Sometimes suffering provides an opportunity in which one’s faith in God can be tested. This is the meaning that the prologue of the book of Job gives to his experience. The sufferings of Job were to test his faith.
God wants us to serve Him simply because we love Him and not because of the things He gives us. The only way to be sure a person’s faith is not dependent upon prosperity is to remove that prosperity. That’s what happened to Job. In doing this, God was not trying to break Job’s faith. He was merely demonstrating to Satan how strong Job’s faith really was. Sometimes, suffering comes to see if our faith is real, if it is genuine, or if it is a faith that depends on good circumstances in our life.
Some suffering is REVELATIONAL. That is, it offers an opportunity for us to enter into a deeper fellowship with God.
Joseph used his suffering in the prisons of Egypt to develop a spiritual maturity which enabled him to be a wise leader for Egypt. Hosea used his affliction of an ungodly wife who left him to come to a deeper understanding of God’s love for Israel. Even Jesus did. Hebrews 6:8, in the Moffatt translation, gives this explanation of Jesus’ suffering: "Son, though He was, He learned by all He suffered." Sometimes in suffering, our self-trust is broken down, and that is the time God can really reveal His will to us.
In addition to these other explanations, we can say that some suffering is caused by Satan. Satan is alive and well on planet Earth, and every day he is planting a million seeds of discontent, trouble, and human suffering, trying to lead men away from God.
To the Psalmist of old, and to the saint of today who find himself facing the perplexity of human suffering with the anguished cry of "Why?" these are the answers we can give: suffering comes partly from the dynamics of living in our universe, partly as punishment for sin, partly as a disciplinary measure for God’s children, partly as a testing of our faith, partly as an experience in which we can refine our understanding of the mysteries of God, and partly because Satan is alive and at work among us.
The Promises
The greatest need facing us in the midst of our suffering is not an explanation for it, but a power which will enable us to face it. So we need to understand the promises of God in relation to suffering.
First, He promised His presence.
God promised to be with us in our suffering. The Psalmist said in verses 22-23: "I was like a beast before thee. Nevertheless, I am continually with thee; thou hast taken hold of my right hand." Through every experience of life, God will be with us.
This is the meaning of the cross. We often think of God as a spectator dealing out pain and suffering to see how people will react. But when we behold again the cross and grasp the fact that the sufferer hanging there is not just another martyr dying for His faith but the incarnate God dying for the world, then we know God is not outside the tears and tragedy of life. He is in it with us.
The lesson of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the companions of Daniel, is that whenever God puts His children in the fire or allows them to be put in the fire, He is going to be in the fire with us. God will be present with us in our suffering.
Second, He promised His power.
But there is more. God not only promised His presence. He also promised His power. In verse 24, he says, "With Thy counsel Thou will guide me." Not only will God be with us in the suffering, but He will also guide us through it
and enable us to win victory over it. When God comes to us, He comes with power.
Third, He promised His prospect for the future.
But there is still more. God not only promised His presence. He not only promised His power. He also gives us His prospect for the future. God also promised to balance the accounts in eternity. That was the discovery the Psalmist made in the sanctuary that day.
We will all suffer in this life. Being a child of God doesn’t free us from the pains of life. However, we can face these times of suffering provided we trust in the promises of God. When that happens we find that God teaches us things we can only learn in the vice-grip of suffering. And when this life is done, provided we put our faith in Christ, we will have known what so many others who have suffered before us. Death is sometimes more precious than life. For you see, death is the doorway to heaven for all of us, provided Christ doesn’t return beforehand.
