As we conclude our series this morning entitled “Faith Has Its Reasons” I want to take up one of the most common questions raised to those who commit their lives to God: How Can I Trust in a God Who Allows Suffering?
On a philosophical level this is often referred to as The Problem of Evil. It might take the form of a question such as “If God is all powerful; then how can he allow evil to exist?
That’s a fine and fair question! But more than a philosophical question, it carries a personal dimension as well.
We all know something of the face of evil…the suffering so inherent to our human condition.
· A world in which nice people can feel painfully lonely.
· A world in which marriages can become battlefields…and the children often bear the scars.
· A world of crippling conditions…physically, mentally, emotionally…with us or around us.
· A world in which diseases such as cancer take too many we love too soon.
· A world in which parents die and our pasts feel lost; children die and futures feel lost.
And of course even the suffering of those far away doesn’t completely escape us!
· The hungry children in drought stricken countries we pray for…yet so many still die.
· The oppressed and persecuted…still beaten.
THE QUESTION WE CONSIDER THIS MORNING IS A QUESTION FOR ALL WHO HAVE WEPT AND WONDERED.
All of us who have been born as human beings are likely to weep and wonder at some point and in doing so, we share in a desire to MAKE SENSE OF SUFFERING.
Interesting thing about this process is that while some may find it causes them to question God …for others it causes them to believe in God.
I don’t intend this morning to solve the problem of human suffering, as much as to enlighten it.
For that is perhaps what we should really expect from God. We as finite creatures cannot expect to understand all that is involved in an infinite reality, but we can seek to enlighten our perspective.
How much light? Enough to live by.
Let’s consider a few points of light which God offers us…
1. The problem of evil…of suffering…is real!
This may seem obvious enough…but this is where the reality of the Bible stands uniquely on the side of our experience.
Most people think the problem of evil and human suffering is a problem for those whose view of the world is understood in light of God’s Word; without realizing that everyone hold’s a view of the world and each world view must evaluated in the light of reason.
· Atheistic-life is governed by chance, not order. Therefore there is no right, no wrong, and no evil. There is really no basis for complaining…nor for causes or compassion.
· Eastern worldview… involves two concepts;
1) Evil is an illusion, the problem is merely our perception…through enlightenment we can see this…and then pursue detachment from all desire which is the source of all suffering.
2) There is karmic justice. We are reincarnated according to past evil or progression. In essence, there is perfect justice. Whatever one experiences is the result of a perfect impersonal system of justice.
In contrast…BIBLE AFFIRMS OUR CRY.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning” Psalm 22:1 (cf. Jeremiah 15:18)
God respects honesty…Job got mad at God and meets with favor, for deep in his soul he is pursuing God. His quarrel with God is a lover’s quarrel. His apparent hate and rejection are born out of desire for affirmation and reconciliation.
The central arena in the book of Job is not the courtroom but the heart, and in the end those who cry out find themselves closest to God. (Job, Psalmist David, Christ.)
If we believe that suffering and injustice are real… and the Biblical worldview uniquely affirms this, we then want to understand: Where did evil come from? and What is God’s response? What’s He doing about it?
2. GOD DID NOT CREATE EVIL.
At first thought, it may seem like basic logic that if we assume God as the creator of all, He must have created evil, and be responsible for it… but …
God created everything, but evil is not a “thing.”
· We may think of a sword or a gun as evil, but the aren’t.
· Where is the evil? Evil is in the human will, the choice to harm, the intent.
· Even physical evil is not a thing. A paralyzed limb is evil but it’s not a thing like another limb; blindness…not a thing, but the negation of the good thing God created.
· Evil is merely the negation of good; it does not have actual existence it’s merely the “non” of something else.
Evil is the result of falling from the goodness of freedom
· Part of the “good” of God’s initial creation was freedom…free will…freedom inherent to establishing relationships of love. The Bible describes the beauty of such freedom as well as the consequences…
· Even the devil is revealed to be an angel who freely turned from God.
· In leading humankind away from God…the whole earth was subjected to a fallen state.
· If we ask, why didn’t God create a world without sin and suffering? He did.
· If we ask why didn’t God create a world with the possibility of never sinning and suffering? He did.
· Why did he give us freedom? Didn’t give us freedom like one gives a dog to a child…rather as one gives three sides to a triangle. It’s an essential quality of who we are. God desired relationship…not robots or puppets.
· In facing the condition of human suffering we are facing the condition of our freedom…and the problem is no longer this “thing” out there, but this “nature” here.
The London Times asked a number of writers for essays on the topic “What’s Wrong With the World? G.K. Chesterton’s reply was the shortest and truest in history.
Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely, G.K. Chesterton
· In our suffering we may be tempted to simplify the problem as all “out there”…some sort of thing that God should get rid of so that we can be free of evil.
· In our private dreams and moments of passion, have we not all found thoughts of harm upon another…found coveting and greed…found sexual passions that betray our moral sense?
· What we really want is NOT justice for it would begin with us. Often our cry for justice is really a desire to bring justice to all the profuse evil right up to the front door of our souls.
Suffering is not God’s ultimate will
· God is sovereign over evil…not of evil.
· Sovereignty over something is not the same as being the source of something
· Suffering reflects we’re part of the planet, not part of a plan.
· Rom. 8:28 “… we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” The “all things” which God can work for good does not mean that they are in themselves good.
· God’s sovereignty over evil never claims the current condition of human kind or this planet to be his will. Rather he proves sovereign over the great dilemma.
So what has God done in response?
3. LIKE SUFFERING ITSELF, GOD’S RESPONSE IS PROFOUNDLY PERSONAL.
Suffering is profoundly personal. Whatever physical dimension is at hand, the deepest pain lies in the soul’s doubt.
Am I hopeless, lost, abandoned? To this cry, God entered the world in Christ, who declared his ministry in
· Luke 4:18-19 (NIV) “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he anointed me to preach good new to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed.… to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Upon raising to life the only son of a poor widow, Luke says of the people, “They were all filled with awe and praised God…they said. “God has come to help his people.” (Luke 7:16)
They recognized what every soul longs to know and God longs to communicate.
> In Christ …God is with us
While all religions commonly ask humanity to rise above their pain, only in Christ we discover God descending to our pain.
The writer of Hebrews…states the significance of Christ to a suffering world. Begins quoting a Psalm describing God’s intents for our human positions.
“God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. BUT WE SEE JESUS, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Hebrews 2:8-9
How can I trust God in the midst of suffering when I can’t expect to share the fullness of His perspective? Because I share the fullness of his presence. He’s come in person.
In Christ I discover that it is God who suffers with us…for us.
And God’s suffering is not merely passive …but purposeful and powerful; for he comes to pay off our personal debt. On the cross he paid the price of our sin and shame.
Many think that God should look at the world and his heart should break. It has!
Many think that God should look at the world and somehow, bear the load. He did!
They tell the story about a great Russian tribal leader in the early days who had two laws. The first was that all the tribe were to love their parents and the second was they were not to steal. This man’s leadership and these laws made his tribe the greatest in all of Russia. Now one day they discovered that someone was stealing. This angered the leader greatly and he brought all the people together. He said, :Let the thief come forward and receive 10 lashes for his crime.” No one came and he upped the ante to 20 lashes. Then 30, then 40 lashes. He stopped there for he knew that it would take a strong man to survive 40 lashes with the whip. The crowd dispersed and the leader sent his men to find the thief. Within a week they brought the thief to him and the leader gasped, for the thief was his own mother. The guards were wagering among themselves as to what this great and wise leader would do. Would he keep his word, obey his second law and whip his mother? Or would he obey the first law, love his mother and let her go free, thus disgracing himself and the laws he sought to enforce: If the crime went unpunished surely everyone would steal. The leader gathered the tribe together. They brought his mother forward and bared her frail back. “Ah, ha,” thought the people, “He’s going to whip her.” Then, just before the whip master brought the whip to bear, the leader strode over to his mother, tearing his shirt off as he went and draped himself over her frail body, taking the 40 lashes himself. That’s exactly what Jesus did for us. Jesus took our punishment on the cross. We should have rightly died for our sins, but Jesus took our place.
AND SO IT WAS, THAT WHEN THE CROSS, THE ULTIMATE POWER OF CURSE AND JUDGMENT WAS LIFTED UP, IT WASN’T US HANGING ON IT, IT WAS GOD.
Important that we don’t separate the suffering of Christ as God the Son from that of God’s nature in its fullness.
· “Jesus answered anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:9
· “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” Hebrews 1:3 (cf. 2 Cor. 4:4, Col. 1:15).
· At the very beginning, following our fall from freedom, Genesis 6 says,… “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become…and his heart was filled with pain.” Genesis 6:5-6 (cf. Hosea 11:1-3, 2 Peter 3:9.)
The sin and suffering of humanity has always meant suffering for God. “The cross is not merely a New Testament reality. Sin has been the crucifixion of God from its inception.”
The bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament is the suffering love of God.
We may often appreciate such Divine suffering because it may strike us as inconsistent with other attributes we know to be true of God…such as being omnipotent…immutable.
GOD IS NO LESS POWERFUL… FOR HE CHOOSES TO SUFFER…
God is not a victim of circumstances. His sacrifice and suffering only reveal the strength of His love. When we declare God as “OUR ROCK”…lets us understand…strength of his longsuffering love.
In Christ, God has destroyed the ultimate power of evil and suffering.
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death…that is, the devil…and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Hebrew 2:14-15
The greatest power of suffering and death is fear… fear that we are lost and hopelessly abandoned.
Several years ago a schoolteacher assigned to visit children in a large city hospital received a routine call requesting that she visit a particular child. She took the boy’s name and room number and was told by the teacher on the other end of the line, “We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now. I’d be grateful if you could help him with his homework so he doesn’t fall behind the others.” It wasn’t until the visiting teacher got outside the boy’s room that she realized it was located in the hospital’s burn unit. No one had prepared her to find a young boy horribly burned and in great pain. She felt that she couldn’t just turn and walk out, so she awkwardly stammered, “I’m the hospital teacher your teacher sent me to help you with nouns and adverbs.” The next morning a nurse on the burn unit asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” Before she could finish a profusion of apologies, the nurse interrupted her: “You don’t understand. We’ve been very worried about him, but ever since you were here yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment…it’s as though he’s decided to live.” The boy later explained that he had completely given up hope until he saw that teacher. It all changed when he came to a simple realization. With joyful tears he expressed it this way: “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?”
In the same way God entered our world to show we need not die…to empower us with the hope of eternity. He destroyed what we fear most…death in all its finality.
THE CROSS AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST ARE GOD’S DEFINITIVE STATEMENT TO US.
Often we think of evil and suffering primarily as a present condition, and equate God’s response to that of healing and changing our present circumstances…but God sees a greater battle. Jesus looked on the multitudes and had compassion on all of them. He healed some as a “sign”…a revelation of eternal life. Miracles are definite signs of God’s power over suffering, but the cross and resurrection are His definitive statement.
Because of that statement we can find strength in all that we may feel and face in this world.
Jesus said, "I have told you these things (referring to hardships), so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)
Peter described this as a “living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So how can we trust God in the midst of a suffering world? How might we who face suffering actually find greater trust in God?
1. God’s Word validates our experience of suffering. (In contrast to other world view options.)
-C.S. Lewis - "I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun—not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
2. He awakens me to see the more pervasive and personal reality of evil…that it’s never just a thing out there, but a disposition that my own nature shares in.
3. God himself faces the essence of evil and suffering on my behalf.
4. As a result God has defeated evil on the cross and established its end. He’s provided the power of his resurrected presence even now.
5. He can lead me in compassion…love and power.
Paul described the power of our hope in Romans 8….
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. …And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to hoi purpose.”…”What, then, shall we say in response to this ? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare is own Son, but gave him up for us all…how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”…”Who shall separate us from the love of Christ: Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:18,28, 31-32, 35, 37-39)
There lies the power to trust God in the midst of a suffering world.
Our response to suffering is not simply one of attitude, “Be Happy”, but it is one of disposition.
The problem with blaming God is not the anger itself, but allowing our anger to close our souls to the greater truth of God’s presence…and power.
If we will open the eyes of our souls…we will discover we are in His presence, then we can fulfill our souls cry like the Psalmist.
“I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you.”…”For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” “The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him…may your hearts live forever!” Psalm 22:22,24,26
Perhaps your own heart has not connected with God’s own pain…the power of his longsuffering love…; Encourage you to take a moment and share your heart with the God who suffers with you, ….and for you…and has overcome.
Perhaps…realize you have never surrendered to God…never settled your relationship…because you have never seen Jesus clearly…Encourage you to offer him your own sin and shame…and to invite him into your life as the forgiver and leader of your life.
