Suffering

How Can There Be A God When There Is So Much Suffering In The World? By Don Bryant Pastor, Coastal Church 145 Webster St., Suite i Hanover, MA 02339 781-871-3442 www.coastalchurch.com

People really do hurt.

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I hurt. You hurt. Evil, pain and suffering are not illusions. No one is served by minimizing, diminishing, ignoring, covering their pain. The lives of young, loved children are snuffed out by leukemia. Honored and adored parents are ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. The stability and happiness of families are uprooted by thoughtless and thankless entrepreneurs who would do anything for a buck. Drunk drivers are criminally thoughtless as they take to the highways and jeopardize the life of the innocent and unsuspecting. Wives give up all for their families only to see husbands walk out arm in arm with the latest model. We have recently emerged from a century unprecedented in its cruelty and inhumanity, where victims of tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse-tung are numbered almost 100 million. ¼ of Africa will die of AIDs. Today one thousand million people in the world lack the basic necessities of life Can you be human if you've never wondered, Why didn't God stop it? Can there, in fact, be a God if there is so much suffering? The fact of suffering poses the biggest single challenge to belief in the existence of God, or, at least, a good God whom we can worship, adore and serve - a God whom we can like, much less love. It is the immediate question on the lips of the skeptic. It is the deepest disappointment in the heart of the sufferer. It is the weakest link in the lives of many professed Christians whose faith wobbles when pain comes in the door. There's two ways to ask these questions: from the head and from the heart. I want to make contact with the way you think as well as the way you feel. The two are not unrelated - like when a doctor understands how a wound feels but also has enough science and useful knowledge to actually make a contribution toward healing. Thought is important, because thought contacts truth. It opens our inner eyes to the light. God is truth. God is light. Therefore thought is a lifeline to God. The head demands truth. We are like a patient in the hospital. "Tell me the truth, Doc. Is there hope? Give it to me straight. Don't say things just to make me feel better." We don’t want relief through silly lies, half-truths and evasions. Real relief in order to be relief is based on (to be redundant) real truth. But we also ask this question from the heart, much like a jilted lover asks why someone who was supposed to love them is now strangely absent. For suffering is a double hurt. The first is the pain itself - the leukemia, the divorce, the lost job, and the list goes on. The second is the sense no one is answering the phone. We feel a1one, that somehow behind everything is a betrayal. That is its own kind of hurt. As CS Lewis recounts, there was a time he did not believe that God existed. And he was mad at him for it. Where is God when I hurt so bad? Since the problem is real, the solution must be real. God must do something, not just sit there, not just say something. He must not just explain. He must change things. The boy with the broken leg is not comforted by the idea of health. Nor is he comforted by an explanation about how legs get broken. The only thing that will do is for the broken bone to heal. So, once again, I ask the question, What has God done? The short answer is: Jesus Christ. Let's call it the Jesus solution. But I am jumping ahead. I don't think you will let it go at that. I didn't guess or even wish that you would. But I do want to be up front with you. I am going to get around to Christ and the Good News He announced and then became for us. After all, I am a pastor. I am not a psychologist. Knowledge of man alone is not enough.. We are, after all, not made in our own image but in the image of God.

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Nothing about us can be ful1y understood without going beyond the image to the thing imaged. Or in this case, a Person. I offer you four propositions. Each one is true. Each one is necessary. And there is no contradiction between them. They are all taught by the Bible. Christians have far all time held to each. 1. God exists 2. God is all-powerful 3. God is all-good 4. Suffering exists People have attempted to "solve" the problem of suffering by denying one or more of these: 1. God doesn't exist because evil exists - the position of the atheist. God by definition is all-powerful and all-good. If suffering exists, it clearly proves that God cannot exist. Case closed. 2. God exists but is not all-powerful therefore evil exists - the position of Rabbi Kushner in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People God would like to help, Rabbi Kushner writes, but he isn't capable of solving all the problems in the world. "Even God has a hard time keeping chaos in check," he writes. What problem this solves I do not know. I am left with a God who can do nothing but pity me. Pity him! 3. God exists but is not good; therefore, evil exists - the position of Satanists and pantheists (those who believe the world and god are an identity; god is simply everything) Satanists believe in a power for evil that is equal to the good. Pantheists believe the same but with a twist - what is, is. Just another way of saying the same thing. God includes the good, but also the bad. Evil exists because God exists. 4. Evil does not exist - the position of Christian Science and Buddhism Therefore, there is really no problem at all. Our job is to do the mental gymnastics so that what appears to be a problem becomes, in fact, no problem at all. Christianity alone holds that all four of the propositions are true, in the same way and at the same time. It teaches that evil and suffering do not ultimately contradict the existence of a God who is worthy of our trust, love and worship. But to get there we have to follow clues. Yes, clues. If we had absolute proof instead of clues, then you could no more deny God than you could deny the sun. God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want him can have him. And He gives just enough space so that those who don't want Him can find a "reason" to walk away. Are you willing to look at clues rather than total answers? Don't forget that true answers might be so mysterious and deep that we couldn't get it all at once. It might be like a

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story, or a person. But that wouldn't be a defect. It would richness. And so I ask the question up front: Would you want to find God behind all the suffering and pain? Would you want to pull on the rope and find that Someone yanks back? As Jesus said, "According to your faith, be it unto you." Clue #1 The evidence of evil and suffering can actually be used in favor of God. If we respond to evil with outrage, that presupposes there really is a difference between good and evil. The very presence of the idea of good and evil in our minds needs to be accounted for. Where did we get this notion of a standard of right and wrong, of what ought to be? If we are merely products of an evolutionary process composed only of stuff, plus time, plus chance, how do we account for our moral stands and sense of justice? If there is no God, where did we get the standard of goodness by which we judge evil as evil? Clue #2 90% of the world believes in God because they suffer. Atheism says that 9 out of 10 people are wrong. It presumes that only l out of 10 people does not have a lie at the core of their hearts. The very thing that an atheist asserts disproves God, the existence of evil, causes 90% of the people to pray to him and believe. And the vast majority of these 90% suffer in larger proportion than do the circles of atheistic philosophy, which in large measure incubates among those with more means and more opportunities for the "good 'life." 90% of the people could be wrong. That's intellectually conceivable. Are they probably wrong? Suffering is more likely to reinforce faith than to sow doubt. Clue #3 Who is to say that suffering is all bad? Human experience teaches us that suffering. can turn out for good. Moral character gets formed through hardship, enduring trying circumstances, and facing pain. We don't do the homework for our children because they learn what they need to know through suffering. We allow our children to play sports in which they can be hurt to learn to face fear, do their best when the odds are against them, play through the pain, and learn the lessons of teamwork. Some of the good things we wish can come to us only through suffering. God has demonstrated how the very worst thing that has ever happened in the history of the world ended up resulting in the very best thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. The death of God himself on the cross in His Son, Jesus of Nazareth is the ultimate evil. It resulted in the greatest good, opening the way to eternal life for all who believe. If the ultimate evil can result in the ultimate good, it can happen elsewhere, even in our own individual lives. If the soul is greater in value than the body, then the good of the soul is greater than the

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good of the body. If we need to suffer to become "soul-wise," if we need to sacrifice some pleasure to be virtuous, if too much pleasure would make us fools, if an easy life would make us less virtuous, then suffering would not contradict a good God. God might use suffering to train us, sacrificing the lesser good for the greater. Suffering then would not be a trap. It is a way out. Our suffering is compatible with God's love if it is medicinal, remedial, and necessary. CS Lewis wrote "God whispers in our pleasures but shouts in our pains. Pain is his megaphone to rouse a dulled world. " Does God need to shout? You be the judge. I, for one, think so. Clue #4 The evil behind suffering does not go unpunished. Justice delayed is not justice denied. There will come a day when God will settle accounts and people will be held responsible for the suffering they have caused others. Hitler didn't get away with it by taking his own life. Stalin didn't get away with it. Criticizing God for not doing it right now is like reading half a novel and criticizing the author for not resolving the plot. God will bring accountability at the right time. And one of the reasons for God's delay is because some people are still following the clues and have yet to find him. His love keeps him from doing justice right now. Clue #5 For God to wipe out all suffering, he would have to wipe out the cause of suffering. And since all people cause some suffering, we would all have to be wiped out. To demand that God eradicate evil now if He is good is to ask for our own bad. But because God is good, He gives the bad time to repent. Once again, the existence of evil does not contradict the existence of God. We ask why God allows bad things to happen to good people. The Bible focuses more on the good things that God brings (like patience) to bad people. And we all have a share in the hurt and pain in this world. GK Chesterton, 19th century social critic and Christian, once wrote the following letter to the London Times. The Times had asked a number of writers for essays on the topic "What's Wrong with the World?"

Chesterton's reply is the shortest and the most to the point in history:

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Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely yours, GK Chesterton Clue #6 The Bible teaches man is responsible for a disordered world that brings misery. Once God chose to create human beings with free will, then it was up to them, rather than to God, as to whether there was sin or not. That's what free will means. He is not the creator of evil, but He created the possibility of evil! Even an all-powerful God could not have created a world in which people had genuine freedom and yet there was no potentiality for sin, because our freedom includes the possibility of sin. 1t's a self-contradiction to have a world where there's a real choice while at the same time no possibility of choosing evil. To ask why God didn't create such a world is like asking why God didn't create colorless color or round squares. To create a world without human freedom would be to create a world without humans. To choose is human. And the overwhelming majority of pain in the world is caused by our choices to kill, to slander, to be selfish, to stray sexually, to break our promises, to be reckless. Clue #7 The meaning and purpose of suffering in history is that it leads to repentance. Think of the famous suffer, Job. He stands for the worst that can happen to any man. His story is in the Bible. He is a wealthy man who is also rich in family and friends. He had it all. And loses it all in a moment. Chapter after chapter of his story recounts the doubt, the agony, the struggle with a silent God and loud "friends." At the end, Job concluded that he was only a sinner who had no claim on God’s goodness. Read the story. Look at the conclusion of the matter. "I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes...So the LORD blessed Job in the second half of his life even more than in the beginning.” Job 45:5,12 Question: Would you rather be Job at the beginning before his suffering or at the end? Your soul will choose the latter. Listen. The soul will not lie to you. It is you. Here is a map. If we do not suffer, we are not wise. If we are not wise, we are not blessed. Therefore, if we do not suffer, we are net blessed. Which of these do you deny? Most do not deny the first. How do we become wise? Experience proves again and again that we gain insight through suffering. Actually we generally feel that people who have it too easy are "light” in the understanding and compassion department. The are missing something. The something they are missing is wisdom. But why is wisdom worth it? Because of who we are. We are not animals. We are human beings, with

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minds, souls, spirits, will. Wisdom is the food of our soul. Without it we starve. Clue #8 Evil is not a thing. The assumption behind the objection that there cannot be a God in a universe with such suffering is to assume that evil is a "thing" God could have stopped at the door of the universe, if not stopped it from existing altogether. And it seems clear that if someone has the power to stop evil and suffering and does not, he either does not exist or is not good and no friend. But a second look helps us to see that evil is not a "thing," like a doorknob, a tree, or a bomb. It is the absence of a thing, primarily the presence of God. Evil is a presence, the presence of the absence of God. The history of our race is self-will and self-absorption. That we would experience the presence of the absence is no mystery. To demand that he be fully present in a world system caught up in its own self is irrational at best. Clue #9 Jesus Suffering is the evidence against God, the reason not to trust him. Jesus is the evidence for God, the reason to trust him. Buddha only sees. Jesus acts. We don't want to just understand why we suffer. We want a way out of suffering. Jesus is that way. How? 1. He came Romans 8:3 reads "God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. " (Message translation) And again the Bible reads in Romans 15:3, "He didn't make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. ‘I took on the troubles of the troubled,’ is the way Scripture puts it." (Message translation) In Jesus, the Son of God, our hurt and pain is taken up into the very Godhead. He is here. He is gassed in the ovens of Auschwitz. He is sneered at in urban slums. He is cut limb from limb in a thousand safe and legal death camps for the unborn where he is too tiny for us to see or care about. He is the most forgotten soul in the world. He is the most misunderstood. He is the one who is paying for the decisions others make. In Jesus we have the company of God in our suffering. We are not alone. Jesus is the tears of God. No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still. In the playlet, The Long Silence, this point is powerfully made:

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At the end, of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God! Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly - not with cringing shame, but with belligerence. "Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?" snapped a young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "We endured terror…beatings…torture...death!" In another group a young man lowered his collar. "What about this?" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. "Lynched…for no crime but being black?" In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. "Why should I suffer?" she murmured. “It wasn't my fault." Far out across the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said. So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, a young black man, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the center of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. 1t was rather clever. Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth - as a man! "Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him he tortured. "At last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it." As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up form the throng of people assembled. And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence." (Searching Issues, Nicky Gumbel, p.22) 2. He transformed the meaning of suffering. Strangely, the answer to suffering is suffering. God's response to our suffering is to give His only Son to suffer. On the cross the sin and misery of this world was laid on Jesus. If you jump to the conclusion, "Good. I won't have to suffer!", then you have done exactly that jumped. Because that is not where the road leads. Where it leads is to the transformation of suffering. Suffering is Christ's invitation to follow him. Suffering is blessed not because it is suffering, but because it is his. In our suffering, if we are Christ's, God is breaking the bread that souls eat and live. In our suffering, if we are Christ's, we taste Christ himself. In our suffering, if we are Christ's, we touch Him and find His presence. Souls left to their own pleasures and desires cannot have His company.

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Therefore, we have the paradoxical testimony of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3:10, "/ want to know Christ... and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death..." (New International Version) Suffering digs the well that finds the water. 3. He rose again from the dead Dying, he paid the price for sin, and opened up a new way. Rising, he transformed death from a hole into a door, from an end into a beginning. What difference does resurrection make? Simply the difference between infinite and eternal joy and infinite and eternal joylessness. Because of the resurrection, suffering and death have become a birth canal rather than a coffin. Because of resurrection, when all our tears are over, we will, incredibly, look back at them and laugh. We do a little of that now, you know. After a great worry is lifted, a great problem solved, a great sickness healed, a great pain relieved, it all looks very different to us than it did when we were facing the journey through. CS Lewis commented that in heaven our worst suffering will look like nothing so much as just a very bad headache. If there is eternal life, and suffering is the door through which we walk to find it, then suffering will in some sense be a good. Even the most horrible life on earth would be only a difficult birth. If there is no resurrection and eternal life is just a product of an overactive imagination, there can be no ultimate meaning in suffering. Where do we go for a conclusion? Perhaps to the most mind-blowing verse in the whole Bible. It's the verse, should you choose ,to be a Christ follower, you will turn to again and again to check rising doubt, to touch the treasure chest and wonder at how rich you have became. "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. " Romans 8:28 This is both a conclusion and a beginning. It teaches us that in one sense there is really no such thing as a tragedy for a child of God. Not because everything is good. But because everything works together for good. It teaches us that in another sense there is really nothing but tragedy for those who are not children of God. Because nothing works together for good - even good things. Even the greatest "blessing" is a curse if we are left far away from faith and trust, the greatest needs of the soul. It is Christ who makes the difference. "The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, therefore you can look forward to sharing in God's glory. It's that simple... Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you see and hear God clearly. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you. " Colossians 1:21; 2:9,10 (Message translation) All the world is full of suffering. But in Christ it is also full of the overcoming of it. It has been pointed out that a fabric viewed through a magnifying glass is clear in the middle and blurred at the edges. But we know the edges are clear because of what we see in the middle. Life is like a fabric. There are many edges which are blurred. But they are to be

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interpreted by what we see in the center - the suffering of Christ, identifying with our misery and carrying our load. We are not left to guess about the goodness of God. “What can we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?" Romans 8:31,32 (New Living Translation) Other asked Questions Question, 1: Why doesn’t God overrule so that evil is stamped out? Or at least where people don’t get hurt as much as they do? Which is like asking why doesn’t God make sure that when we go over the cliff, the fall is never so steep that there’s a death? Question 2: What about suffering from nature? Perhaps we are able to tolerate the terrible truth that most of our suffering is caused by man’s free will. But what about the suffering that comes from forces directly controlled by God, like drought, tornadoes, diseases, etc., forces that cause suffering indiscriminately? God could surely stop the forces that destroy without doing violence to the free will of people. This question assumes that spiritual evil cannot overflow into the physical realm. The Bible is clear: the cause of physical evil is spiritual evil. The body shares in the soul’s fate. All creation groans under the burden of our evil choices. Question3: What about Hell? This is the real question. Free will was created out of God’s love. Therefore, hell is a result of God’s love. Everything is. No sane person wants hell to exist. No sane person wants evil to exist. But if there is evil and if there is eternity, there can be hell. If it is intellectually dishonest to disbelieve in evil just because it is shocking and uncomfortable (just the way some believed there could be no such thing as the German death camps), it is the same with hell. Reality has hard corners, surprises, and terrible dangers in it. We desperately need a true road map, not nice feelings, if we are to get home. It is true, as people often say, that “hell just feels unreal, impossible.” Yes. So does Auschwitz. So does Calvary. Question 4: Why did God start the whole miserable process? Perhaps the reason why we are sharing in a suffering we do not understand is because we are the objects of a love we do not understand. Some things are worth suffering for. Some things cannot be had without suffering. Some things can only be known in the dark. How much could we love and worship if we did not know such proof of love as is shown in Christ? Question 5: Why doesn't God let us choose to get out of this suffering now? He does. Through Christ. He changes suffering. Paul responds in Romans 5 this

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way. "We continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary - we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives... " Question 6: It just doesn't seem fair that I would get hurt by another person's decisions. Then should you be blessed by another person's decision? Doesn't that create the same problem? If we have no problem with being blessed, we should have the steel not to buckle under doubt when others hurt us. Do we choose to be so disconnected from one another that we cannot be touched, cannot be moved, cannot not be really loved? Isn't this what Hell is? Note to the reader. I am indebted to Peter Kreeft and CS Lewis for the seminal thoughts that form the core of this pamphlet. I am inspired by the Apostle Paul, who lived these truths. I am overwhelmed at times by the noble souls in the fellowship of Coastal Church who quiet1y and almost invisibly without drawing attention to themselves are guided by these principles. And in all things I worship Jesus of Nazareth, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame. Considering his story time after time shoots adrenaline into my soul.