The Theological Significance of Suffering - Part II

Last time, in my essay, “The Theological Significance of Suffering – Part I”, I examined the definitions of each of the key (boldfaced) words in the question, “How can a loving God allow suffering in the world?” Today, I define “suffering” in the context of the question and then move on to addressing the question’s answer.

What is “suffering”? Man tends to define suffering as any besetting condition or circumstance he does not like.  If he experiences pain in some way, he is suffering. Herein lays the great assumption behind the suffering question: that God defines suffering the same way man does. If that were the case, God would have to constantly intervene to prevent suffering. What room would God’s micromanagement of our lives leave for free will? (I’ll talk more about free will in a minute.)

Ok, on to the question itself. In response to “Why would a loving God allow suffering in the world?”, one might retort, “Why wouldn’t he?”  What is inherently wrong with a loving God allowing man to suffer? If there is any right or wrong to suffering, it lies in what man has caused and what he has made of it.  There is no right or wrong to God’s role.  Hopefully, this will become clearer as we turn our attention to four points meant to answer the suffering question.

To understand the reasons God allows suffering - to understand His motives - one must consider: 1) free will, 2) a fallen world, 3) God’s big picture, and 4) God’s work in individual lives. With respect to free will, as I mentioned earlier, to prevent all suffering, God’s interventions would have to be so frequent and so intensive that free will would cease to exist for mankind.

Imagine God preventing suffering for 7 billion people whose interests often conflict with one another.  He could not prevent suffering unless we were 7 billion robots programmed to act so predictively, so monotonously, and so dispassionately that life would be devoid of any of the noble pleasures: peace, joy, love, honor, and enjoyment of God’s blessings. Think about it, we recognize peace because we have experienced life without it. The same goes for joy. We act with honor because life often requires courage in a sinful and dangerous world. An honorable person is one who has somehow overcome temptation, trials, or danger by the development and application of integrity. We enjoy things that we have obtained, achieved or experienced through our or someone else’s act(s) of free will.

Am I suggesting we must have bad in the world to have good. No, not at all. What I am suggesting is that the contrast between good and bad (or between positive and negative, enjoyable and unenjoyable, etc.) is where we learn what peace in the midst of the storm is, what joy in the presence of suffering is, how pleasant and precious enjoyment of God’s blessings and the other good things in life are in the middle of everyday’s cares and trials. 

Think about it. Free choice allows most of the suffering in the world. But, I would venture that we would find life completely micro-managed by God so bleak (from fallen man’s point of view) that mankind would quickly conclude that a world governed by free will – by our choices – with its attendant suffering, is far preferable to a world without all of the ugliness free will allows. 

Fallen man cannot have free will without suffering. Free will devoid of suffering can only exist when man and his world have been re-perfected. Man does not realize that choice is a more precious commodity in the physical realm than the lack of suffering.  God recognizes this because in order to enjoy our decision to love and obey Him, to give it any meaning whatsoever, He must give us the choice to not love and obey him.    

On to point two: Man lives in a fallen world.  Suffering is a state of our planet.  When Adam and Eve lost their perfection, so did the world they lived in.  The thorns started sprouting, the lions ate the lambs, and the struggle to survive against the elements began (Genesis 3:17-18).  Someday, not only man will be restored to perfection, but nature will as well.  Until then, no matter how righteous or how wicked a person is, he will continue to be subject to the conditions an imperfect world visits upon him (Matthew 5:45).

The restoration of man and the world to perfection will be a glorious day and it will not happen by chance or whim.  It will happen by God’s big-picture plan.  If everything that man understands represents the head of a needle, then the sewing room in which the needle sits is what is left to understand about the temporal universe – the vast, physical space in which we live.  The great mansion in which the sewing room is located is what is left of man to understand about extra-temporal existence.  As great as the contrasts are in this illustration, they still dramatically understate the chasm that exists between what man knows and what is to be known. 

Much of man’s suffering is part of a great plan; a design that far exceeds human ability to comprehend . . . even if God showed up and diagrammed it in crayon.  The fact that man does not understand the cosmic plan in which his suffering plays a part should not lead him to the conclusion that his suffering is arbitrary. God loves mankind so much that He will not abandon man’s best good – His plan for man, the species – in favor of a lesser good for man, the individual.   

This brings the discussion of suffering to God’s work in individual lives.  When God spoke to Job from the whirlwind, He told him “You can’t even understand the ways of your own world, how could you possibly expect to understand mine.” (Job 38 & 39)  Because God’s ways so exceed what one’s senses can perceive and what one’s mind can conceive, man is in no position to judge God over the matter of suffering. Man should understand: 1) God has a plan for each person that sometimes requires suffering and God must simply be trusted; 2) God allows man to suffer in order to perfect His work in him (Man has the most unfortunate tendency to spiritually decay without the regular goading of trials and adversity.); and 3) God is not in the business of interrupting his laws of cause and effect or action and consequence arbitrarily.  He only interrupts His laws when doing so forwards His plan.

So, now that we have addressed the question, next time, in “The Theological Significance of Suffering – Part III” we will discuss suffering for the Christian and how Christians should respond to it. Take care! J