Pain and suffering are words used to describe the very worst aspects of our human experience. They are the things that hurt us and cause us grief. When we are in pain or see people close to us suffering, our experience of life alters as does our mood and feelings from positive to negative, from contentment to despair.
The “Problem of Pain” is also a catchy phrase, coined to summarise the question, “How can a loving God allow suffering in the world?” We’ve all experienced some trauma ourselves, and seen the people we love hurting and it becomes easy to conclude that because there is adversity in this world that either the God of the Bible cannot be loving, or it suggests that actually he doesn’t exist at all. To those who have already decided that there is no God, the question becomes a simple proof of what they’ve believed all along.
Our modern minds, conditioned by culture, are easily swayed by this superficially logical line of reasoning. It sounds like sense to us, and at first there appears to be no easy way to answer this line of thought. In fact, it is often presented as one of today’s unanswerable arguments. However, it is an interesting fact to consider that this query is relatively recent and is found nowhere in more ancient texts. It did not used to be a question at all. So why is this?
We can trace the roots of the question of why God allows us to suffer to the time a couple of hundred years ago, we now call “The Enlightenment”. This was when, in Europe, an intellectual movement began emphasizing reason, science and individualism over ideas from earlier times. People began to see the world less in terms of the ‘collective good’ and with God at its core. Instead, the individual took centre stage in the ‘enlightened’ world-view. Self-fulfilment and attaining and maintaining personal happiness became the primary human goal. Unthinkingly, we recite enlightenment values when we say of our children, “I just want them to be happy”. We recognise contentment as a human right and suffering as an enemy to our personal enjoyment of the best that life can give. We now live in a world where we assume that our experiences should be pleasant and make sense to us in the present, but these ideas have shallow roots and the tree that grows from them does not stand strong in life’s storms.
When hard times come and we consider what really matters, we recognise that life is full of challenges and realise that more often than not, it is our resilience and capacity to overcome the difficulties we face, as we love and support the people we care for, that matters more than our fleeting moments of happiness. In an almost counter-intuitive way, we know that the pursuit of self-gratification leads to an emptiness and a lostness, which can destroy the pursuer. Yet a commitment to give to and support the well-being of others usually results in a deeper joy and contentment for the one who embraces this way of life. The Bible also points to these truths, but the influence of contemporary culture is compelling and it can be hard to isolate ourselves from its ideas.
The Bible writers did not attempt to answer our question, nor did they seek to explain the existence of suffering in the way we do. Hardship was an everyday reality for them. Life was often short and existence hard. They knew about trauma, but they also knew God. God had created the world and made everything within it good. Suffering and the evil associated with it was not created by God but came instead when people turned away from him and his goodness. They knew this too, and so in the face of affliction, they did not question God’s goodness, love or power, but instead they recognised that when people came together to create communities faithful to God, the impact of suffering and evil could be absorbed, resisted and transformed while they waited for better times. They waited because they believed that God had promised that one day he would restore this world and all suffering would cease. And while they waited, they looked forward to this day with hope and trusted that God would be with them through all the agony they experienced.
Today, we are not so good at waiting, and we also have different expectations of God. We use the word ‘love’ to describe many things, most of which find their centre in ourselves and our own fulfilment. We may love another, sometimes for their own good, but often because of the way the other person makes us feel. The Bible writers used a number of different words to describe the different aspects of love, but the word used to describe the way that God is loving, has a specific meaning which is grounded in suffering itself. God’s love is self-giving, seemingly unmerited on the part of the ones who receive it, and comes at the greatest cost imaginable.
The gospel writer, John, used the words of Jesus to tell us that the most powerful expression of love, is the laying down and giving up of our own lives for the benefit of others. His are the words we see inscribed on war memorials to remind us of the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for, family, friends and nation’s sake. “Greater love hath no man than this…” Yes, God is loving, but his love is defined by his own definition. He is the God who took on human form, who entered into our hurting world, and met suffering face-to-face. He is the one who, in Jesus, laid down his own life for the benefit of everyone throughout all time, who would become his friends. He is the God who overcame death, rising to a new life, and in doing so gives the promise of new life to all who would follow after him. Jesus’ resurrection, the first sign of God’s restoration and recreation of this world.
So when we study Scripture we learn that God does not simply allow us to suffer out of cold indifference, or a suspected incapacity to act. Far from it! God has taken the suffering that we have allowed to enter his world, and through the sacrifice of himself, has absorbed it all into himself, so that we can look forward in hope to a restored world and life lived without pain or tears.
It is this vision, of the God who has demonstrated his love of us by his willingness to subject himself to the worst suffering the world has devised, to give us courage in this world and a sure hope for the one that is to come, that is revealed to us in the closing verses of the Bible.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:1-5)
Be encouraged.