This combination of two posts answers a key question that Christians are
often asked to answer: Why Does God Allow
Suffering? I thought I would share it and hopefully it will help you
to have a slightly clearer answer! {HTB /
Nicky Gumbel: Bible in a Year Daily Devotional – click to read the whole
passage: part 1 / part 2}
A young New
Yorker named Glenn Chambers had a lifelong dream to work for God, in
Ecuador. At the airport on the day of departure, he wanted to send a note
to his mother but he didn’t have time to buy a card. He noticed a piece
of paper on the terminal floor and picked it up. It turned out to be an
advertisement with ‘Why?’ spread across it. He scribbled his note
around the word ‘Why?’ and put it in the post box. That night his
aeroplane exploded into the fourteen thousand foot Colombian peak El
Tablazo. When his mother received the note after the news of his death
the question burned up at her from the page … ‘Why?’
Why does God allow such suffering? We are constantly
confronted by suffering. It bewilders and outrages us. It is the
single greatest challenge to the Christian faith. The amount of suffering
and its distribution seem to be random and unfair.
Theologians and
philosophers have wrestled for centuries with the mystery of undeserved
suffering and no one has ever come up with a simple and complete
solution. Today and tomorrow’s passages are only part of the answer, but
each of them gives us some insight.
In today’s
passages we see that although suffering is never good in itself, God is able to
use it for good in a number of ways. God loves us. Our suffering is
also God’s suffering. He suffers alongside of us. Yet he does not
simply remove suffering from our lives. He often uses bad things to bring
about his good purposes.
1. God uses suffering to
transform us
2. God uses suffering to save us
3. God uses suffering for his
good purposes
4. See the suffering of this
life in the context of eternity
5. Understand the relationship
between human freedom and suffering
6. Always respond to suffering
with compassion
The promise of the New Testament is that God will use
everything that happens to us for good. As we face trials, temptation,
struggles and difficulty, the New Testament assures us that ‘in all things God
works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his
purpose’ (Romans 8:28).
A one-year-old
boy shattered his back falling down a flight of stairs. He spent his
childhood and youth in and out of hospital. Gavin Read, the former Bishop
of Maidstone, interviewed him in church. The boy remarked, ‘God is
fair.’ Gavin stopped him and asked, ‘How old are you?’ ‘Seventeen,’
the boy replied. ‘How many years have you spent in hospital?’ The
boy answered, ‘Thirteen years.’ He was asked, ‘Do you think that is
fair?’ He replied, ‘God has got all of eternity to make it up to me.’
We live in a
world of instant gratification which has almost entirely lost its eternal
perspective. The New Testament is full of wonderful promises about the
future. All creation will be restored. Jesus will return to
establish ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Revelation 21:1). There will be
no more crying, for there will be no more pain and suffering. We will
change our frail, decaying mortal bodies for a body like that of Jesus’
glorious resurrected body.
Suffering is not
part of God’s original created order (see Genesis 1–2). There was no
suffering in the world before rebellion against God. There will be no
suffering when God creates a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation
21:3–4). It is ‘an alien intrusion into God’s world’.
A great deal of suffering can be explained as being the result
of the fact that we live in a fallen world: a world where all creation has been
affected by not only the sin of human beings, but even before that, Satan’s
sin. The serpent existed before Adam and Eve sinned. As a result of
Adam and Eve’s sin, ‘thorns and thistles’ entered the world (Genesis
3:18). Ever since that time ‘the creation was subjected to frustration’
(Romans 8:20). ‘Natural’ disasters are a result of this disorder in
creation.
Satan was allowed to bring several major tragedies into the life
of a man who was blameless and upright, who feared God and shunned evil (Job
1:1). Job suffered loss in the areas of money, material possessions
(1:13–17), family life (1:18–19), personal health (2:1–10) and even eventually
the support of his friends.
When we face unexplained suffering it can be very easy to blame
God. Yet, although Job did not know why he was suffering, he responded by
continuing to trust in God. He resolved to trust and worship God in his
suffering, just as he had in his good fortune (1:21,2:10). The writer
tells us admiringly, ‘In all this, Job did not sin in what he said’ (v.10b).
He remained faithful in the most difficult of circumstances.
This was not the end of Job’s story. In the end, God
restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. Now we
know that, through Jesus, God has all eternity to more than compensate for all
our sufferings in this life.
Blessings!
Ronell x
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