Someone has said that half truths are whole lies. One of the
greatest causes for conflicts and misunderstanding among Christians
through the ages has been over enthusiasm for a half truth. People will
take an idea that has a portion of the truth and wrap it up in a box and
say it is The Truth. For example, there are those who say suffering is
an illusion, and not a part of reality. This is the view of the Christian
Science people. The fact is, in many cases they are correct. It is a
proven fact that the mind can cause all kinds of suffering by worry or
fear which has no basis in reality. Some people are habitual worriers,
and if they cannot find anything in the past or present to worry about,
they can always find something in the future. The result is ulcers,
indigestion, and a number of other nervous disorders. We must admit
there is some truth in the idea, for much suffering is an illusion. But to
make this the whole truth is to make it a lie, for there is so much
suffering that is no illusion. Who would call the sufferings of Christ on
the cross, an illusion. And who would call the sufferings of war and
cancer illusions.
Another popular idea among Christians is that God's will is behind
most or all of the suffering of the world. He is the one who ordains all
accidents and deaths. When a persons time has come God causes some
accident or sickness to take them out of the world. It is a theory that
grows out of the mystery of why some die and others do not. A
woman's parachute does not open and yet she survives the fall. Others
are in terrible crashes and live, while others in minor crashes are
killed. One man goes through the battle field with bullets flying
everywhere, and yet he lives. Another does not leave the safety of the
camp, but is killed by one sniper bullet. To account for these mysteries
man has come up with a simple theory that when your number is up
you will die no matter what you are doing, and if it is not up, you will
live no matter how dangerous a situation you are in.
This theory is based on a false assumption, and a logical conclusion
that is impossible to accept. The false assumption is that death is the
servant of God performing His will. Scripture represents death as
God's enemy, and the final enemy to be destroyed, and not the servant
of God. God declares that He has no pleasure in the death of the
wicked. He is not willing that any should perish. There are judgments
where God does take the lives of men, but most death is not His
judgment.
If we think God appoints all death, then we make all the tragedies
of life the will of God. Why blame Hitler for killing millions of Jews if
God ordained they had to die then. If Hitler had not killed them in
large groups, they would have to have died in millions of separate
accidents, and so he just made the judgment of God more efficient.
This is the ghastly conclusion this theory comes to, and it is totally
unacceptable in Christian thinking, for it makes God the author of all
evil. This theory eliminates the work of Satan in the world by making
God the author of all his evil deeds.
We need to look at suffering from the point of view of the great
Christian thinkers of the centuries, and not lock ourselves into any one
simple theory that ends up making God the culprit. That God is the
cause of some suffering is true, but when we see the whole picture we
discover that to be just a small part of the issue. We want to look at
the full picture which deals with what Christians have come to see as
the seven basic causes for all human suffering. The combination of
these seven will account for most, if not all, the suffering we can
imagine. The whole picture will prevent us from putting the blame on
God, and help us see our own role in the issue of suffering. Here then
are the seven.
1. THE WILL OF GOD.
This is simple, but hardly a satisfying or biblical answer. People
who believe God is the cause of all suffering end up angry at God for
things He hates even more than they do. Jesus spent a major portion
of His ministry fighting suffering.
He had compassion on people who suffered, and He healed them,
because He saw much suffering as the work of Satan, and He came to
destroy the works of the devil. We read in Luke 13:16 where Jesus
said, "Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom
Satan has bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath
day from what bound her?"
When people have the attitude that suffering is the will of God,
they lose the motivation to fight it and overcome it like Jesus did. In
India, for example, they would throw garbage down on the lower caste
because they believed all suffering was the will of God, and you would
not suffer unless God willed it. Christianity changed this, and many
other foolish practices that brought suffering that could be avoided.
They simply recognized that God was not the author of human
foolishness. Unfortunately, even Christians have been guilty of believing
that suffering is God's will.
In the 19th century, the greatest physician of the day was Sir James
Simpson. He was made senior president of the Royal Medical Society
at age 24. He was driven by Christian compassion to relieve suffering
in operations. He had doctors come to his home on Monday evenings,
and they would burn chemicals, and breathe in the fumes. One day
the burned a crystal of chlorophorm. One by one they sank under the
table. When they awoke they realized they had found what they were
looking for. They had found a way to put people to sleep during
surgery. But he was attacked by God fearing people who accused him of
interfering with God's will. They said, if God wanted men to sleep
during surgery He would have given them a switch.
Simpson went to prayer. He asked God to give him a clear
revelation from His Word that what he was doing was right. He
started to read the Bible, and very soon came upon the verse that
says, "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam."
With this verse he refuted his critics, for in the first operation in
history, God put Adam to sleep. God did not want Adam to feel pain
when He removed the rib. He made man with the capacity to suffer,
but He did not will that he suffer unnecessarily. Pain is inherent in the
human body. It is part of being a creature with a nervous system.
Adam was without sin, but he still would have felt great pain had God
not put him to sleep. The possibility of pain is built into us by God,
but the nervous system is also the source of all our pleasure. Pain has
a positive side, which we will not explore now, but simply say, that the
lack of pain destroys the warning system God built into us. Leprosy is
a curse because it destroys the whole pain system.
The point I am making is that relief from suffering was God's first
concern, and this was the concern of Christ in His earthly ministry.
Where the spirit of Christ is there will be compassion to fight the evil
of suffering. History reveals that where the Gospel goes there soon
will be hospitals, doctors, nurses, and all forms of research to discover
ways to prevent and to cure suffering. Most suffering is not the will of
God. When it is His will, it is for two things: Discipline and judgment.
These are only His will in a secondary sense. His first will is that there
be no discipline because there is obedience, and it is not needed. His
first will is also that there be no judgment, because there is no
rebellion that needs to be judged. So suffering is never the primary
will of God.
2. PUNISHMENT FOR SIN.
This is in close connection with the first one, but it is distinct. Here
again, there is a truth. Suffering does result from sin, and it is the will
of God that sin result in suffering, but not in the sense that God gives
cancer to people who sin. All sin will result in some suffering, but not
all suffering is the result of sin. The suffering from sin may not
physical at all. Wicked people may live to ninety and not suffer a
tooth ache, but their soul suffers hardness and blindness, and they are
without God and without hope, and they are storing up wrath for the
day of judgment. God does not make this life the time of His major
judgment. This life is a time of probation, and a very evil person may
not experience as much suffering as a righteous man.
When Christians sin, God may cause some form of suffering as a
way of discipline. As a father I cause pain in my children's bodies in
order to teach them, but I never cut off an arm, or gave them poison
that would destroy vital organs. God's discipline is also to help get
people back on the right path. It is never designed to do permanent
damage. Here in our text in verses 2-4, Jesus used contemporary
events to teach that tragedy and suffering are not God's punishment
for particular sins. If He were speaking today, He might say, do you
suppose that young girl who died in a plane crash trying to travel
around the world was more wicked than others? Jesus referred to
people who died tragically as not being worse sinners than those who
did not so die. The Pharisees had the false idea that people who died
in violence must have been wicked. The friends of Job had the same
philosophy which said, "you suffer because you sin. We are not
suffering, because we are righteous."
There is a danger of Christians doing the same thing. Our wicked
neighbor may be cutting his grass on Sunday and get his foot cut off.
We say that is the judgment of God, but when we cut off our foot on
Monday, we call it an accident.
The facts of life and the teaching of Scripture do not support the
theory that suffering is always connected with sin. In fact, Jesus says a
great deal of suffering is the result of not sinning. He said, "If you
were like the world they would not hate you, but because you are not
of the world you will be hated and persecuted."
The amount of suffering Christians have endured because they
have refused to sin is enormous. But Jesus said, "Blessed are those
who suffer for righteousness sake." Suffering is often due as much
because of salvation, as because of sin. The point is, you dare not link
suffering to sin, for it is a theory that will not hold water, except in
clear cases, such as the bank robber who gets shot while robbing the
bank. Most suffering, however, does not have a clear connection with
any particular sin. So if God is opposed to needless suffering, and
most suffering is not directly connected with known sin, where do we
look for the answer to so much suffering? The next most common
answer is-
3. THE DEVIL.
It is obvious that the universe contains an evil force that opposes all
that is good, and poisons all that is pure. The Persians came to this
conclusion on the basis of natural revelation. They saw a negative for
every positive, and for every good there was an evil. The battle of
light and darkness convinced them that the cause of all evil was the
Evil One. We call him Satan or the devil. We see this battle
everywhere. For the criminal element there is the police force; for
fires there is the fire department; for disease there is the medical
profession; for germs there are the white corpuscles, and for a lost
world there is a Redeemer. Written into every structure of reality is
this battle of good and evil. Paul speaks of principalities and powers
with whom we struggle. In this larger cosmic struggle we find the
greatest clue to the mystery of suffering, but it also is not the whole
answer.
Satan is the cause of much suffering, but he is not responsible for a
good deal of it. If I eat soup that is very hot, and I burn my tongue,
this is not God's will, nor is it punishment for sin, and neither can I
blame the devil. Jesus in the parable of the sower (Matt. 13:1-9, 18-
23) said that Satan is only responsible for some of the seed that does
not grow and produce fruit. To blame the devil for everything that
causes suffering does not fit Scripture or reality. I can drive 90 miles
an hour trying to get to church on time. It is not God's will that I
crash, and the devil can't make me do it, for if he could, he would have
done it long ago. This was a choice I made, and so there are other
causes for suffering, and you cannot say the devil made me do it. We
want to look now at the four other causes which added to these three
account for all the suffering we can imagine.
4. NATURAL LAW.
Cold freezes, fire burns, and matter falls with impartial
mathematical precision. If you hold a match to your finger it will
burn and cause much suffering. God does not want you to hold a
match to your finger; Satan cannot make you do it, and so if you do it,
they are not to blame, but you are for trying to defy a natural law.
Gravity is a law necessary for the existence of our universe. God is
the Creator of that law, yet it is gravity that brings planes to the
ground so fast and hard that it kills. It is gravity that causes a child to
fall down the stairs and be injured. Possible even for life. Without
this law you would eliminate this suffering, but at the cost of
eliminating life all together. All would be chaos without this law.
The uniformity of nature is one of our greatest blessings. It gives a
world we can count on. All of science is based on it. What kind of a
world would it be if one day when you stepped out of the house you
began to float up into the clouds? What if when chemicals are mixed
one day and you get sugar, and the next day the same chemicals make
dynamite? Life would be a nightmare. We count on the laws of
nature not to change. When you try to break a natural law, it breaks
you. We see then that the very thing that is good and necessary for
our life and pleasure is also the source of much of our suffering. We
have to accept the liabilities along with the assets. This kind of world
makes pain not only possible but inevitable. Thank God for minds
that are able to understand these laws, and prevent much suffering.
But our cooperation is not always perfect, and so every time we allow
a child to ride a bike we are taking a chance on causing suffering due
to a fall caused by gravity.
Almost everything we do carries the risk of being hurt by not obeying
some natural law. Again, God does not want us to break these laws;
Satan cannot make us, and so this leads us to the fifth reason for
suffering.
5. FREE WILL.
You can blame God, as many do, for making us persons instead of puppets;
men instead of machines. God made man a causal agent and
not merely a pawn. We can make free will choices, and the result is,
we can choose ways of acting that make suffering inevitable.
I can choose to ignore a detour sign and get stuck, and have
to get out and push the car. I may fall and break a rib in doing so,
and then cry out to God, "Why did you let this happen to me?" In other words,
why didn't you make me with wheels and a track so I could only go where I should
go? We blame God because we use poorly this great gift of free will.
God says, do not steal, and so we know what His will is, but people
can still choose to steal, and they do. Every once in a while I hear
someone bring up the idea of God's permissive will. This is a greatly
misunderstood concept. People come to think that if God permits
something, that means He must will it. Not so!
God permits everything that He forbids. All of the Ten
Commandments, and every other thing God forbids, are laws that are
broken every day many times over. God does not will what He
forbids, He hates what He permits. To say, because God permits
something that it is His will is a great perversion. He permits murder
every day, but He hates it and forbids it upon great judgment. God
permits evil because He respects man's free will. He permits them to
use it to make very bad choices, but it is folly to blame God for these
bad choices which He forbids.
The Sun has no interest in blinding anyone, or in giving them
sunburn or strokes, but these things happen all the time because
people make unwise choices. I once spent a whole afternoon in the hot
sun spearing carp in a lake with some other teenage friends. I was
having great fun, and did not realize I was getting too much exposer to
the sun. I ended up sick in bed with severe burns because of it. It was
not God's will, nor could Satan make me do it, and it was not due to
any sin. I was just making a foolish choice. Much of the suffering of
life is due to such choices. Someone told me of a pastor who was blind
because as a kid he bet his brother he could look at the sun longer
than his brother could. He won his bet, but lost his sight. This leads
us to look at the next reason for suffering.
6. HUMAN IGNORANCE.
This is a combination of two others. It is the use of your free will in
relation to the laws that govern the universe. Jesus told of the foolish
man who built his house on the sand where it floods every year. His
house fell flat when the rains came down. The wise man, on the other
hand, built his house on the rock, and he avoided the foolish loss of the
other. Jesus was saying, a lot of suffering in this world is caused by
human ignorance. The foolish man was not necessarily wicked at all.
He was just not very well informed about an intelligent place to build
a house. His ignorance cost him plenty. No doubt Satan was glad for
this ignorance, but you cannot blame the devil for it. God does not
want us ignorant, and so it is never His will that we do stupid things,
but we are free to do them, and pay the penalty when we do not know
what we are doing.
The world is full of deformed babies caused by people taking drugs,
and it is tragic suffering caused by human ignorance. The plagues
that killed masses of people were caused by garbage and sewage
carelessly thrown in the streets. History is full of suffering people
have brought on themselves by their ignorance. Some have argued
that this was the will of God, but others suspected it was due to the
ignorance of men, and they decided to abolish the filth. The church
took the lead in helping people become educated, and avoid suffering
caused by ignorance. Every time you tell a child to wash his hands, or
cover his mouth when coughing, you are cooperating with God in the
fight to eliminate suffering caused by human ignorance. Before it was
understood that germs cause disease, doctors were spreading disease
from one patient to another by not washing their hands. Ignorance
killed many, but when knowledge replaced that ignorance many were
spared.
7. THE TOGETHERNESS AND INTERDEPENDENCE OF MAN.
All sports accidents are due to the fact that we play sports with
other people, and we can run into them and get hurt. But the risk is
taken because there is so much pleasure to be gained. We know that
suffering is always a possibility, but we risk it for the blessings. We
have to use the same highway with drunk and reckless drivers, and
this leads to the possibility of innocent suffering. All of the
communicable diseases are also due to our association with other
people. We are social beings, and this means the suffering of some can
lead to the suffering of others. But the blessings make it worth it, for
all of our food, clothes, books, medicine, and a host of other good
things come from our togetherness and interdependence.
Weatherhead said, "If some people were not farmers all of the time,
all of us would have to be farmers some of the time." We need other
people.
One man can get angry at his boss, and do a sloppy job of tuning up
a plane. This can lead to the plane crashing and killing dozens of
people, all of whom have dozens of relatives who will suffer. Hundreds
of schedules will need changing, and appointments canceled, and
anxieties created. There will be funeral arrangements, and long range
fighting over wills. A fireman called to the crash sight gets injured,
and ends up in the hospital. His daughter counted on him being home
for her birthday party. Her heart is broken, and in anger she hits her
little brother. He goes off crying, and kicks the cat. And so you see a
chain reaction of suffering from that one man that cannot be
calculated, and it may run its course to the end of time.
The only way to avoid this kind of suffering is to live a totally
isolated life. You would have to keep your children at home, and not
let them play with anyone, or do anything with risk. You may avoid
suffering of one kind by so doing, but then you will have to endure the
suffering of loneliness, which can even be worse.
CONCLUSION.
What is the value of seeing the seven causes of all suffering? The
value is, we do not then have a limited view that leads to folly. It is
folly to blame God, as many do, for suffering that is not His will, and
which He hates and wants His people to fight. It is folly to blame
Satan for that which is a matter of human choice, and let men be
excused for their folly. It is folly to blame sin for everything, for this
is a slam to those innocent suffers who may be suffering because they
did not sin. The point is, a limited view of suffering will make you a
part of the problem rather than a part of the answer. People suffer a
lot because of stupid views of suffering, which lead them to hurt other
people with their false concepts. This is what the friends of Job did,
and they added greatly to his suffering.
There is popular view among some Christians that we are to praise
God for everything. I've read several books that sound very
persuasive, but the problem is, they go beyond Scripture and ignore
the teaching of the Bible that does not fit.
This is the problem of all good ideas that pretend to be the only idea
acceptable. A partial truth made into a total truth is blown out of
proportion and becomes a falsehood.
The Bible does teach that we are to rejoice evermore, and in
everything give thanks. The positive spirit is there, but this is often
twisted to mean that everything is God's will, and everything is good.
This is folly. Jesus did not practice any such thing Himself. On the
cross He cried out, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me."
Should we condemn Jesus for not praising God and giving thanks?
No! We should use our heads and common sense, and recognize the
reality of evil. To legalistically tell people that they must praise God
for everything leads to a state of confusion where they can no longer
make a distinction between good and evil.
Evil is real, and God hates it, and we are never to praise God for
evil as if He did not hate it. In evil situations we are still to praise
God, but we are not to praise Him for evil. Paul never praised God
for the sin and folly of the Christians to whom he wrote his Epistles.
He rebuked them, and he urged them to change their behavior, and he
never once said to them to praise God for their bad behavior. He did
not write to the Corinthians and say, "I praise God for your immature
fighting which is causing divisions in the church." People who get so
wrapped up in this idea of praising God for everything become worse
than silly. They become immoral. I read of one pastor who counseled
a man whose wife was being unfaithful, and he told him he had to learn
to praise God that she was sleeping with another man. Others are told
to praise God for one tragedy after another. Some good results can
come because of a positive spirit, but in the end it leads to confusion
by blurring the distinction between good and evil.
The person who praises God for everything has to believe that God
is the author of everything, and so there is really no such thing as evil.
It may not seem like it, but if you are praising God for it, it must be
good. So this whole practice leads to the elimination of evil, and so, to
superficial theology. This can be avoided by a common sense theology
of listening to the plain teachings of the Bible that make it clear, much
in this life is not the will of God. The world is full of things that God
wants us to prevent, and not praise Him for. This whole idea leads
people to the conception that all suffering is the will of God. This has
done more harm than any other idea I am aware of. When you look at
the seven causes of suffering you discover that none of them are good.
There is no good suffering in itself. It can lead
to good if responded to properly, but that same good would be better
reached without suffering. All the good that comes out of the suffering
that God wills in discipline and judgment is better arrived at without
suffering. A child who rebels and gets a good spanking may be a better
child for it, but it would be an even better child if it never rebelled and
avoided the spanking. Every other form of suffering is also bad in
itself, for none of it will be in heaven where God's will is complete, and
no suffering of any kind is any longer permitted. If it had any inherent
value it would continue, but it is totally eliminated. All suffering is
ultimately evil, and can have to part in the final kingdom of the
redeemed.
Over the years I have met so many people who are angry at God
because they blame Him for the things they have suffered. My first
day in the ministry I made two calls where people had suffered
tragedy, and in both cases they blamed God.
That motivated me to do the research that lead me to discover these
seven causes of suffering. We are part of the answer when we see that
much suffering is preventable with education and cooperation with
God. If we are suffering, our interest should not be in the issue of who
to blame, but in the issue of finding ways to prevent and eliminate such
suffering. Jesus came into the world to fight and overcome the forces
of evil, and this is the calling of all who love and trust Him as their
Savior. We are to overcome evil with good, and be ever seeking ways
to add to the world's pleasure rather than its pain. May God help us
to be suffering fighters.
