April 3, 2022 Sermon - Hard Questions Series; “If God is Good, Why is There Suffering?”
Where IS God when things go wrong? If God is good, why is there suffering?
Today is the last in our short series where we have been exploring hard questions of the Bible, of God. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief journey.
We really hope that it’s become clear that we can ask questions, we can struggle with the Holy Scriptures, we can talk to each other to help each other wrap our brains around the Word of God.
It’s a very important part of growing as disciples of Jesus.
Did you know that we do this together anyway on an ongoing basis?
That’s part of why we run two weekly Bible studies, one where we unpack the Scriptures and themes that we focus on on Sundays, and the other a study for men who are really growing in our fellowship and love, and in mutual sharing and caring for one another. We are discipling one another.
I hope you consider connecting with one of our weekly Bible discussion groups that we promote every week during our announcements.
And if the time they are held doesn’t work for you, please let us know that you are interested in connecting but at a different time. And we’ll work toward making that happen!
This church is a safe space to explore, to question, to doubt and to grow in our understanding of God and His immense love for us.
We’re not afraid of questions, because we know that questions asked in sincerity can clarify our understanding of ourselves, of the Church and of God.
I came into the faith with nothing but questions and doubts. Probing those questions and doubts led deepened my faith, and is likely why I’m here today.
Again, when we’re sincere and genuinely seeking God, our questions can and will deepen our understanding and deepen our faith
WHEN we are open to the answers. WHEN we are open to the answers. And I’d suggest that our sincerity in asking questions gets revealed by our openness to good answers. When we are genuinely seeking God we will be open to good answers to our questions.
So the question of how God can be truly good, and yet why in the world when God is good, is there still suffering in the world - that’s a good question! That is a really, really important question. Really important.
I’m a bit of a Bible nerd, so for the other nerds here I’ll say that the fancy name for this topic is Theodicy.
Theodicy means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. It is the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.
Here’s the problem in a meme:
Some think of this as a perfect argument against God. I once thought of this as a perfect argument against the existence of God.
This is considered the best summary statement against God by a lot of scholars and people who spend way too much time trying to come up with reasons to ignore God.
Bertrand Russell, an author I used to read to validate my disbelief in God said this: “The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil”.
So the question of: “If God is good, why is there suffering?” is a good question. But you know what’s more important?
The answer to that question is actually more important, because the answer we come to will define us as people, and for sure it will define our faith journey.
A good answer helps us to sort through, to reconcile the genuine, painful hardships of life that are common to all - suffering is the one constant that everyone faces
- and a good answer can help us to mature, to grow, to probe our doubts and then draw much closer to God.
A poor answer that ends up supporting the doubts expressed in the question might shipwreck faith. I’ve seen it happen.
Some folks just don’t develop a healthy ‘theology of suffering’, so when hardships come - and I can guarantee you they will come - when bad things happen, we’re then left without being able to sort through them, to understand them, and we’re left with a huge hole in our hearts, a hole that can then grow calloused and even resist inviting God to heal.
Same thing happens to a good answer that is nevertheless rejected. It leaves us adrift, at sea spiritually, which I don’t think is where we want to be. So our answer to this question gives us our theology of suffering: Where is God in suffering?
God wants to heal us from all the hurt we face. He wants us to grow through the hardships we endure. A good answer will enable us to draw nearer to God when things go terribly wrong.
And for us as a community this is in no way an abstract idea. We each know suffering. We each know trauma. It’s part of our story.
On Thursday our beloved Debra, who you see here singing almost every Sunday; Debra’s son died in a terrible car accident. It was all over the news. That’s why you don’t see Debra here today. Debra and her family are in mourning over the loss of her son.
So even as we pray for dear Debra, and for her family who mourn the loss of her 36 year old son, we mourn with her. God calls us to mourn with those who mourn.
To grieve with those who grieve. To suffer with those who suffer. That’s the meaning of the word: compassion. To suffer with another.
So as we look at our topic today, let’s consider the following:
1. Suffering is always close by. It is real. Suffering is universal.
The Bible doesn’t pretend that suffering is rare or that it’s not a serious thing. Jesus Himself was blunt about it: “In the world you will have tribulation” He said. John 16:33
That word “tribulation” is loaded. It means: trouble, distress, oppression, tribulation pressure.
That covers a lot of what we would think of as suffering.
There is no avoiding it; no one can go through life without experiencing suffering - be it their own, and/or the suffering of those they care about, and/or the suffering of others, perhaps far away (the Ukraine comes to mind).
The Scriptures strongly suggest that in some ways being a follower of Jesus might subject us to other kinds of suffering: 2 Tim 3:12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
Nowadays, unlike in the 50’s or 60’s, being a follower of Jesus is a very unique thing.
Most people don’t follow Jesus, and we should expect and be prepared to suffer for our faith if that is what God calls us to. This can happen in small ways.
When I came to faith, I was the first person in my family to do so for a few generations. My family thought I was nuts - they thought I’d joined a cult or had been brainwashed.
Most family gatherings in those days were pretty awkward affairs, both because my becoming a Christian was offensive and alarming to my family, and because I was brand new to being a Christian and I struggled with how to express my faith in Jesus, under significant pressure, with grace.
Suffering is everywhere, but we can be very unaware of it, until it comes close to us.
In fact all kinds of suffering can be happening around us and we may not particularly notice it or take it as seriously as we should, empathizing with those who are struggling. Often it’s not until it hits us that we notice it and start asking questions.
So if we keep our eyes open more consistently, we will observe and then hopefully have compassion for those who are suffering.
The benefit of that can be that with this general awareness of the hardships of life, when suffering does hit us, it won’t seem so out of the blue, so unfairly foisted upon us; and if we think about the suffering around us, and develop a healthy theology of that suffering, when when it does hit us, as it will, we won’t find ourselves in shock and wondering how God could let suffering happen.
In fact, I think there’s a better question than: “Why is there suffering?”
I think a better, more insightful question is: “Why isn’t suffering a constant and continuous reality that we and everyone and every thing on the planet experience?” Another way to word that is to ask: “Why is there ever any relief from suffering?”
That raises the question of “why do we expect life to be easy?” If we’re even a little aware of the history of the human race, we would know that for most of the time that people have been on this planet, life has been incredibly tough, very short, full of war and disease and trauma. So we might more thoughtfully wonder: “Why isn’t all of my life suffering?” Just food for thought.
2. Suffering is caused by sin - humanity’s rejection of God, human evil, and its impact on all of creation
The Men’s Bible study on Wednesdays has been going back and forth between the book of Genesis and the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5 to 7.
We’ve been learning about God’s original pleasure with his creation, taking delight in it - calling it good; and then taking special delight in the creation of humanity - calling it VERY good.
The picture of God walking in the garden in Genesis chapter 2 with Adam and then Eve, is a beautiful one.
It’s an image of bounty and freedom and beauty and satisfying relationships. It’s a picture of God giving humanity massive freedom over 99.99% of the Garden of Eden where they lived.
And then it’s a story of humankind being dissatisfied with not having access to that .01 percent, just a tree, albeit a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The founding humans, Adam and then Eve, wanted to be God, or like God.
So they, being easily strung along by Satan’s deceit, flagrantly disobey God's tiny rule requiring just a smidgen of obedience, and in disobeying that rule, giving in love by God, they destroyed the blessing of Eden.
The first man and the first woman, in our first shot at existence, chose to live a lie, to think they could be like God, to sin against the living God Who made them and loved them. And because of that, sin entered into the world.
Scripture speaks quite plainly about this. It does that, but I love that as God speaks to us through His Word about this most serious and important of issues, He speaks of the problem side by side with the solution.
So we see in what we will look at how close God is to humanity, to us, as we face the problem of sin, which again is the source of all suffering in the world.
First we have 1 Corinthians 15: 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
Who is that man through whom death came into the world? It was Adam, the same one I was speaking about from the book of Genesis. Death had a source, and that source was the first human.
Now track with me here. Let’s look at Romans chapter 5. For the sake of attempting to be clear I’ve bolded the parts of the passage that bring home this issue of human responsibility for sin.
And I’ve, for now, temporarily, whited out some really important details we’ll look at later.
Romans 5: 12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned...14...death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come...15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
Without too much commentary, This should make it clear that death, and by extension sufferings less than death, came into the world through us, through humanity.
Now, we may really dislike this teaching. We may take offense at it. We just don’t want to think that our actions can have such an effect. Or we don’t believe that we are significant enough to be able to cause such a rupture.
A lot of folks have disliked this idea and have rejected the Bible’s teaching about this subject. I don’t think we want to do that.
As disciples of Jesus, as students of Jesus, we want to trust the Word of God as Jesus Himself did, even when it rubs us the wrong way; or as it presents an understanding of life that is different from the one we have had so far.
We want to press in to gain understanding, not reject it and the deep understanding it gives us of the problem of suffering.
We will come back to this passage in a bit and focus on the full picture it presents - not just one of the big problem, but one of God’s great solution.
Let me just say quickly that you sometimes may hear people saying: Why doesn’t God just destroy all evil? If He’s all powerful, that wouldn’t be too much for Him. Here’s the thing: He did do just that.
The harrowing account of the flood that takes up a big chunk of the first book of the Bible, chapters 6 to 8 of the Book of Genesis, is God looking at the problem of human evil. He sees how it was absolutely everywhere.
He sees people behaving with unimaginable cruelty and evil toward each other without pause. He decides to wipe out that evil, while preserving for himself a remnant that would carrying on the human race. It’s a difficult read.
So God does deal here with the problem of human moral evil. Perhaps oddly, perhaps not, the same ones who say:
“Why doesn’t God just destroy all evil?”, then when he did, they accuse God of being evil for having done just what they wanted him to do.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian novelist and Soviet dissident is helpful here.
To the question: Why does God allow sin that brings suffering? Why doesn’t he destroy all evil? “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
If we think about it, we probably don’t want God to wipe out all evil, because sadly it would wipe out humanity across the board.
To finish up this part, I refer as Pastor Arleen did recently to Romans 8
??20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
From this we can understand that creation itself suffered the consequences of human sin.
The fall of humankind into sin brought a curse on all of creation: God’s order for the world was overturned, leaving the earth to face disasters, disease and death.
Paul pictures creation as a woman in childbirth, groaning to be delivered from the condition she is in. When God finished His creation, it was a good creation (Gen. 1:31).
But today it is a groaning creation, filled with suffering, death, and pain. All of this is, of course, the result of Adam’s sin.
Creation itself not at fault. Note the words that Paul used to describe the plight of creation: “suffering” (Rom. 8:18), “futility” (v. 20), “bondage” (v. 21), “corruption” (v. 21), and again “groans and labors with birth pangs”
I don’t have a lot of time to talk about another important thing here: Free will.
Some fault God for giving humans the ability to make choices, especially when they think about the bad choices, evil choices we can make that hurt us and others.
But let me ask you, to make it personal: How would you feel, for example, if you were all of the sudden not allowed or unable to make any decisions at all?
Rather you and your whole existence was programmed to do everything you do, without ever making any real choice?
You’d likely feel like a computer that serves a function, but that has no agency.
Nothing you do would be an expression of you. For those familiar with Sci-fi on TV, you would be very much like a Borg, assimilated to perform a function with zero ability to have independent thought.
Nothing would be genuine. Love wouldn’t - couldn’t be experienced or offered freely, since it would be programmed.
Instead, we have been made in the Image of God. It was God’s intent that we should imprint on Him and find our identity and purpose in Him.
We were created to bear the image of God, that is we are like God in our moral and reasoning capacities. That is also why we are free.
We were given self-awareness (‘Who am I?’) and a sense of what we ought to do (‘What’s my purpose?’). We were given a free will so that these capacities to love and choose could be exercised.
All of God’s intentions for creating humanity are wrapped up in love. God, who was complete in Himself within the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit –God chose to have a people who would dwell with Him in love forever. We see a picture of that in Genesis.
We see another picture in its fulfillment of that in the book of Revelation, chapter 21:
"God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
This of course will be possible because you and I were given a free will, and to choose to respond to the love of God expressed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ in faith.
There is obviously a lot more to say on this issue, and we’ve really just scratched the surface. If you’d like to discuss this in more detail, I’d love to meet with you to do so.
Let’s finish by revisiting that earlier passage from Romans chapter 5, this time more fully: [first time non-bolded text is whited out on Powerpoint, this time it is demonstrably filled in].
Romans 5: 12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned...14...death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come...15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
So we finish with the good news. The disobedience of humans, of the first man and the fist woman, is not the end of the story.
That’s because God loves you. God so loves the whole world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish.
Adam was a pattern, an outline, a rough sketch of the One to come, the one Who would come with a gift. That gift would not be like that original sin, that trespass. Though all died spiritually through Adam’s disobedience, because of God’s grace, his unmerited favour
– the gift He delivered in person by the grace of Jesus Christ overflows to many. To all who will believe that Jesus died on the cross for them.
Adam’s sin brought judgment and condemnation. Jesus' suffering and death and resurrection bought our justification. That’s a fancy word that many break down to mean “Just as if I’d never sinned”.
Although spiritual death came because of Adam’s sin, the obedience of Jesus enables us who believe to receive the gift of salvation and so be made right before God. That’s another way to think of the word “Justification”.
So there you have it. That wraps our short series on questions about the Bible and about God.
I hope you have more questions, and I hope you will talk to myself or Pastor Arleen or Pastor Jan or our Elders who are here, Darlene and Breda, about other questions you have that we haven’t had time to address.
Even better, you can become part of an ongoing conversation about the Bible and how to live as disciples of Jesus in one of our weekly gatherings.
Those gatherings are currently online. Eventually they will be hybrid - both in-person and online at the same time. (Pause)
God has blessed us with the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, for us, yes, but also so that we could be the agents of blessing all of His creation.
It was God’s intent that the joy of community and harmony found in the bosom of the Triune God should be multiplied through His image bearers.
So remember to live as one who bears the image of God, being made in His likeness.
Remember to live knowing that God is truly and completely good, and He wants to dwell in intimate communion with you, now and forever.
And remember to read the Word of God and contemplate it so that it travels that lengthy distance from your mind to your heart.
Then you will be able to give an answer to anyone who asks for the reason that you live with such hope.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.’
