Why is there Pain and Suffering in the World?

Graham Leo

This question is one of the oldest in the world. It is typically presented in these terms:

a)    If God exists, he must be all-powerful,

b)   If God were all-powerful, he would not allow pain and suffering to exist;

c)    Pain and suffering do exist; therefore, there must either be no God, or he is not a good God.

C. S. Lewis provides a comment that is really worth thinking about: If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. If we are willing to confront what scripture says is the truth about this topic, we are more likely to find comfort than if we try to construct our own fairy-tale of answers.

Although we could turn to any number of Biblical passages, both Old Testament and New Testament to demonstrate the truth of the human condition, Romans 1:18-32 reveals to us the whole problem in a fairly short space. Here is a very brief summary of Paul's argument:  

1.      The world is broken, damaged, severely dysfunctional, both because of the general introduction of evil into the world, but also and even mostly, because of specific, deliberate human sin.

2.      This brokenness is evident at an individual, personal level, as well as a community or societal level, and affects every aspect of human relationships:

a.     Marriage and family life

b.     Romance and sexual behaviour

c.      Leisure and social activities, including social and mass media

d.     Commerce and work life

e.     Government and political life

f.       International relationships

What ancient peoples knew, and what we have largely forgotten – or to use Paul’s far more challenging accusation – what we have deliberately ignored despite knowing it full well – is that our brokenness and our dysfunction is a marker of our fundamental separation from God. It is mostly our own fault, not God's. Despite all the wrong that we do ourselves, he alone is good and true and beautiful, and in him alone can we find the peace and comfort that we so desperately desire.

Only in the last century or so, have masses of Christians joined with those who try to charge God with neglect or being uncaring, suggesting that a good God wouldn’t behave this way, allowing sickness and tragedy, allowing the Holocaust or earthquakes and so on. When we do this, we effectively take God off his throne as Judge of the Earth, and place him in the prisoner’s dock, with ourselves as the Judge. 

We really need to grasp the effrontery of this question. We humans presume to take God’s place on the Judge’s bench, and we place the King and Righteous Judge of all the earth on trial, in the prisoner’s dock, charging him with causing our own misery. Then we proceed quite quickly to pass judgement on him. It would be bad enough that the ungodly do it, but that Christians do it so often, and so thoughtlessly, ought to make us pause for reflection, repentance and deep request for forgiveness.

What about Natural Disasters?

When suffering comes from what we call natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, or hurricanes we must recognise that these are not the result of God getting angry with us, but rather of the general effect of a world that is structured in such a way that tectonic plates shift, [1] weather systems produce storms or droughts which can ultimately cause floods or bushfires. 

In fact, for the earth to allow human life to be here at all, it has to be an earth that has volcanoes, weather systems, occasional crashing meteorites, cancer-causing sunrays, and gravity which sometimes results in people falling over, or things falling on top of them. It is historically as well as spiritually naïve to imagine that the world was ever a perfect place where gravity didn’t work to stop you falling accidentally, or where a volcano or earthquake might not have hurt anyone or caused them loss, or where it might not get very windy sometimes.

Nevertheless, Robert White, in a recent book, [2] argues that with only a few exceptions, natural disasters don’t actually kill many people; rather, people kill people through inadequate preparation for, or response to, natural disasters. Although we can expect some deaths as a direct result of a natural disaster, the numbers of people who die in very low socio-economic areas is greater by many tens and sometimes hundreds of times than the numbers who die in wealthy nations or areas. The difference is generally due to sub-standard housing or public buildings, crowded conditions, lack of emergency services and health support services in the days after a disaster, or poor transport or communication. 

A stark example [3] of this, but by no means an isolated instance, is to compare the deaths from three earthquakes of comparable size (all of a magnitude 6.8 - 7.0 on the Richter scale), all within a few years of each other. 

a)     In 1988, in Armenia, about 25,000 deathswere recorded, mostly as a result of building collapse, from poorly-constructed apartments and public buildings constructed during the Brezhnev era. In this era, the USSR had an advanced, billion-dollar space and nuclear weaponry program, but chose not to build safe housing.

b)     In 1989, in Los Angeles, California, 57 deaths were recorded. Most of these were people trapped in cars under a collapsed freeway that was actually scheduled to be strengthened against the risk of earthquake in the months following. Had the quake occurred just a few months later, the already-low death toll may have been cut by at least half.

c)      In 2010, a similar earthquake in Haiti produced over 230,000 deaths. This huge number was not due to natural elements in the disaster, but to the effects of centuries of exploitation by former colonial powers and corrupt current leaders, all contributing to widespread poverty, ill-considered location of housing settlements, poor building standards, and ineffective disaster relief systems.

In this simple comparison, we can see that while natural disasters might cause some tragedies, the effect is often multiplied by the effects of human sinfulness, operating either indirectly or directly.

A Christian Response to Pain and Suffering

We find in being human, both a deep and sacred honour, and yet a profound disgrace. [4]  We were created to be the absolute pinnacle of God’s creation, living obediently and worshipfully in a world that was so wonderful that the morning stars sang for pure joy at its creation, and all of creation worshipped its creator.

When we finally recognise that things are broken, we also enable a glimmer of hope to emerge in our hearts that there just might be a cure to our brokenness.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ provides the substance for that hope.

It is not that we as Christians find our own selves less fallen, or closer to perfection than others, nor that we find in the ritual practice of our religion a means of  escaping the world of brokenness, guilt and suffering. Some of our children still die in accidents or from cancer, our relationships still cause us pain and sadness. But the Christian's great advantage is that we are aware of the causes of our own broken humanity within a broken, fallen world and we have heard the message of hope in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

One of the strangest verses in the Bible is that one where it says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering.(Hebrews 5: 8)  Why did Jesus have to learn obedience? Wasn’t he perfect? Wasn’t he God’s son?

The word, ‘obedience’ comes from the Latin word ‘audire’, to hear. When we are obedient to our parents, we hearwhat they say and we doit. Hearing and doing are closely linked in terms of obedience. 

Jesus suffered. There can be no doubt about that; and in his suffering he identified with humanity who are desperate to hear God. Not to hear fromGod, but to hear God; to hear God and to dowhat he wants.[5]  

Jesus carried out perfectly what you and I need to do – to hear God and to follow him. He lived the perfect human life that humans were created to live. We failed and Jesus succeeded. Because of our failure, obedience (hearing anddoing) now comes with suffering. That is its price, and it must be paid. It cannot be bought for less.  

In our human parenting we know this deeply. Our children suffer often with real tears, as they slowly learn obedience. As parents, we sometimes make them suffer, by punishing them; sometimes we sit back and allow them to suffer the consequences of their actions. In our human suffering, we may have to ask what it is that we need to hear from God. 

Don’t misunderstand what I am saying here!I am NOT saying that God kills our children, makes us sick, or sends tornadoes or tsunamis because he wants to tell us something. To say that would be the most wicked blasphemy.

But in the accidental or natural processes of this broken world, and our damaged humanity,  whether we encounter them as a family tragedy, or as a tsunami in Asia, what is it that I must hear from God in order to recover my lost humanity in him? It is never that God causes my suffering, but in this world, where suffering is inevitable as part of its very structure (remember those tectonic plates and weather systems) God permits and uses that suffering to transform me into something and someone I could never have otherwise achieved. Indeed, if I am selfish, or quarrel, or act dishonestly, should I not expect to suffer some pain? Why blame God?

God calls us through the Gospel, not merely to be Christians, but to be truly human. Could he have organised a universe where there was no suffering? That is another question entirely, but I suppose it is possible. But if this is the universe he chose to create, then we must take it from him that it is a universe worth living in and a process worth participating in.

The Gospel is the promise, not to take us out of this world to live with him in a pie-in-the-sky-in-the-sweet-bye-and-bye heaven, but to recover our once noble and perfect humanity. This is why Christ came to be human. This is why he laid aside his godliness and took on humanity – to show us the grandeur of our lost humanity, and to provide a way that we could take it up again.

He has given us a glimpse in the Sermon on the Mount of what the world could be like – indeed will be like – when he restores it, too. 

Sometimes the power of prayer and God’s miraculous intervention destroys some of the effects of that wickedness. We do see occasional miraculous healings or provisions, but the definition of a miracle is that it is extraordinary. More often, evil or painful consequences appear to prevail.

I did say, “appear to prevail”. We ought not forget that for every person who dies of a disease, hundreds more are cured or prevented from it by advancements in western medical science. A very large part of God’s healing power in this present kingdom, is the advancement of Western science within a Christian framework of learning and sharing, that has produced our modern medical standards. For every person killed in a natural disaster, hundreds more are helped by generous aid agencies, many of whom are directly Christian. It is a narrow and ultimately self-centred view that says that evil in this world is more prevalent than grace. 

Furthermore, the whole witness of the New Testament is that we can live even in the midst of pain and suffering with joy. Although tears streak our faces at times, we can still know the peace of God in our hearts.   

References:

White, R. S. Who Is to Blame? Disasters, Nature and Acts of God. Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2014.

Footnotes:

[1]N. T. Wright in one of his books said: “A tectonic plate’s gotta do what a tectonic plate’s gotta do”. In other words, don’t blame God when the forces of nature just do what forces of nature do.

[2]R. S. White, Who Is to Blame? Disasters, Nature and Acts of God(Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2014).

[3]These three examples are taken from R. S. White, ibid.50.

[4]In Prince Caspian, by C. S. Lewis (Chapter 15), there is this lovely comment:“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.”

[5]Too many Christians who are frequently found in church and who ought to know better want to hear from God, it seems to me, rather than just to hear and obey him. I’ve met large numbers of Christians who claim to have heard God speak to them – I’d rather meet more who hear God’s words in scripture and obey them.