Big
Questions . . . Living Answers
“If God Is
So Loving And Powerful, Why Is There So Much Evil And Suffering In The World?”
The
December 1997 issue of Reader’s Digest told of a proud scholar who was bored on
a long plane flight, so he woke up the man sleeping next to him. “Let’s play a game,” he said. “I’ll ask you a question. If you don’t know the answer, you pay me five
dollars. Then you ask me a question. If
I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you fifty dollars.” When the man agreed to play, the scholar
asked, “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?” Stymied, the stranger handed the scholar five
dollars. “Ha!” said the scholar, “It’s
238,857 miles. Now it’s your turn.” The stranger was silent for a few moments and
then asked, “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with
four?” Puzzled, the scholar racked his
brain for an hour, but eventually took fifty dollars out of his wallet and gave
it to the stranger. “OK,” the scholar
said, “I’m stumped. What does go up a
hill with three legs and come down with four?”
The stranger shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” He pulled five dollars out of his wallet and
gave it to the scholar and then went back to sleep having netted $40.
No
matter how smart we think we are, there are always questions we cannot
answer. A Christian is wise to sometimes
say, “I don’t know all the answers, but I believe that God is greater than I am. He does have all the answers, and He has
given me good reason to trust Him on what I do not understand.”
One
of those questions that has left a lot of people stumped concerning their faith
in God is the issue of suffering and evil.
I want us to spend the next two weeks addressing this question: If God is loving and all powerful, why is
there so much evil and suffering in the world?
It
is an objection that many feel is an airtight argument against God’s
existence. It is a centuries old
objection. Epicurus, the Greek
philosopher once wrote, “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he
can, but does not want to. If he wants
to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he
can, and does not want to, he is wicked.
But if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how comes evil in
the world?” Broken down into a logical
syllogism it looks like this:
If
God were all powerful, He could get rid of evil and suffering.
If
God were loving, He would get rid of evil and suffering.
Evil
and suffering are still with us, so a loving and all powerful God cannot exist.
Any
reasonable person would admit that there is an incredible amount of suffering
in this world. Injustice, financial strain, disease, war,
homelessness, hunger, murder
- Some
suffering comes from an attack of Satan – Job was a perfect example.
- Some
suffering comes from other people – Joseph’s brother’s injustice and
mistreatment come to mind. Racial
discrimination, war, murder, gossip are all examples of this.
- Some
suffering comes from bad choices we make – bad financial decisions, disease
from smoking. In cases like these, we
reap suffering as a direct result of a choice we made.
- Some
suffering is a punishment from God for doing wrong – The Old Testament books of
the prophets are filled with warnings of what God will do in judgment of an
individual or a nation for their sin.
- Some
suffering comes because we live in a world that is fallen and a world that
itself groans because it is off course from what God created and intended it to
be – death of an infant, tornado killing innocent people, disease killing loved
ones, and the list is almost endless.
The world we live in is cursed by sin, and because of that bad things
happen to people for no direct reason of their own doing.
- Some
suffering comes because we choose to do what is right, what is God’s will – the
persecuted church.
Bottom
line: No one is immune. And it is the most common question people say
they would ask God if they could. (
I.
But why does God allow pain and suffering?
Since we believe that . . .
A.
God is all powerful. What does that mean? It means that God can do everything that is
meaningful; everything that is possible.
God can’t make a square circle or a rock too big that He cannot pick it
up. Those are absurd ideas, impossible
by definition. That idea plays into this
problem of pain. When God created free moral
creatures, by definition, He had to allow for the possibility of moral
evil. He did not create evil, but He had
to allow for its possibility. It was fallen
angels and then man who actualized evil when thhe chose to disobey God. But God, even though He is all powerful and
wise, could not do something that is impossible by definition: create free moral creatures without the
possibility that they could choose to rebel.
The granting of free will necessitated the possibility of evil, and man
chose that path. God did His part
perfectly, but we messed up big time.
B.
God is loving and good. So why doesn’t He just erase the consequences
of our rebellion? That would not be
“good” or “loving.” God allows us to
have real free will and a real world of choice.
But His love also provided us a way out, a way back to
“For
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes
in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”
C.
God is in control.
The
Bible teaches us that God is sovereign.
In other words, God is in control.
How can that be, with all the evil and suffering? Because God created free creatures, we need
to understand that God has at least three types of wills – or ways of
expressing his control.
1. God’s
intended will. This is what He
originally designed in the Garden of Eden.
It is what He intended for the earth.
2. God’s
permissive will. This is what He allows
in a world contaminated by sin. This is
what we currently live under; a world of both good and bad, pleasure and pain,
triumph and tragedy. Things happen that
are not what God desires, but it happens in a context that He desires; free
creatures making free decisions and a world that reaps the consequences.
3. God’s
ultimate will. This is what He will
restore one day when Christ returns.
What He intended from the beginning of creation will come to fruition in
the end.
In
other words, God’s sovereignty is not expressed by causing everything. He created humans in His image to exercise
free will, to choose to obey or to choose not to obey – to choose to love or
not to love. So God does not make us do
one or the other. But He is still in
control. Though free creatures may rebel
against Him, He is wise and powerful enough to bring about His ultimate purpose
even in spite of – even through our rebellion.
And the cross is the finest example of that. At the cross, the ultimate evil
occurred. And there were those who
intended it for evil. Most of all, Satan
intended it for evil. But God intended
it for the greatest good.
And
likewise, in all the suffering and evil in the world, God will work all things
together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His
purpose. (Romans 8:28). Just because
things are not resolved yet does not mean God does not care or that He is not
in control. We must have faith that He
will resolve it all in the end. He has
promised to do that for those who choose Him even in the midst of suffering.
Living Answer: Ann Perry
Song – “I’ve Got a Hope”
And
if a person abandons their faith in God, does that make the suffering go
away? Of course not. In fact, that just makes the suffering more
unbearable. Now there could be no reason
for it, no possibility of redemption of it, and no possibility of hope to be
ultimately rescued from it. God, as
described in the Bible, gives meaning to our suffering, explanation for its
existence, but most importantly, the promise that through the work of Jesus,
and our faith in Him, He will deliver us from it when Jesus returns.
If
find this interesting too. Even those
who say that pain and suffering must mean there is not a God forget something
important. If a person responds with outrage
to suffering, that presupposes a difference between good and evil. The moment a person says that suffering and
pain is bad, he has admitted that good and bad exist. Good and bad can only exist as they
correspond to a standard – something outside of themselves. And that reality they refer to is God.
*******************************************************************************
Let’s
look a little closer at pain.
II.
Why Pain?
The
Megaphone of pain C.S. Lewis coined this term. He wrote once, “God whispers to us in our
pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
(The Problem of Pain, p. 93). I think he
is very right.
A.
Pain is a gift. The gift nobody wants.
The
best book I have ever read on the subject of pain and suffering is by Philip
Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts? In that book, he details the work of Dr. Paul
Brand, who worked for years with people in leper colonies. It is more commonly known as Hansen’s
disease. His work led him to the
conclusion that pain is actually a great gift.
The alternative is much worse.
You
see, what Paul Brand discovered is that the grotesque disfigurement, the loss
of limbs, the open sores . . . are not a direct cause of the disease. Hansen’s disease does not attack the skin or
joints. It attacks the nervous
system. It shuts down the system of pain
cells in different parts of the body. So
here is what commonly happens:
Dr.
Brand once watched horrified as a person with leprosy reached into a charcoal
fire to retrieve a potato someone had dropped.
He knew he would be treating sores on that man’s hand soon, caused by
burns from a fire, not by leprosy.
One
day he went to retrieve supplies from a storeroom behind the colony
hospital. He tried to open the door, but
a rusty padlock would not yield. Just
then, a young boy, a patient, walked up.
Undersized and undernourished, he reached for the key and turned it with
a quick jerk of his hand. Dr. Brand
looked in amazement. How could this weak
little boy do that? Then he saw a drop
of blood on the floor. Then he looked at
the boy’s hand. Turning the key hard had
gashed his hand, but he did not know it.
To him it was no different than picking up a stone or turning a coin in
his pocket. Whereas a strong healthy man
cannot turn the key because pain tells him he cannot grip or turn any harder, a
person without pain had nothing to tell him he shouldn’t.
So
it was throughout the leper colony. A
guitar player would pick until his fingers were infected stumps. A two year old chewed her fingers off. A woman washes her face in scalding
water. An eight year old girl in a fit
of anger poked both of her own eyes out and pulled out most of her teeth.
Even
when Dr. Brand informed his patients what was happening, they would continue to
injure themselves and lose limbs, fingers or disfigure their faces. Why? A
verbal warning was not enough. Without
the sensation of pain, danger never seemed imminent. Something needed to hurt before a person
would respond to it.
Dr.
Brand found that the tragedy of leprosy was that it was chiefly anesthetic. It numbed pain. You see, we need pain. Why?
Because we need to know when something is wrong with the body so we can
react to it, change it, take care of it.
The alternative is grim. To feel nothing
or to feel a neutral reaction when something is wrong does not work. A neutral feeling is too easily and too often
ignored. No feeling at all means I don’t
even know there is a problem. And then
things just get worse. It’s a gift
nobody wants, but it is a good gift.
Pain demands the attention that is crucial to my recovery. Pain serves us well.
B.
Pain is a message from God.
The
Bible traces the entrance of suffering and evil into the world to the wonderful
human quality of freedom. We have true
choices to make. As a result of our
freedom, human beings introduced something new to the planet – rebellion
against our Designer. This rebellion is
commonly known as “the fall.” That term
is used to describe the massive disruptions and consequences that came as a
result of the rebellion of man against God.
Romans
8:19,20,22 – “For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when
God will reveal who His children really are.
Against its will, everything on earth was subjected to God’s curse. . .
For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth
right up to the present time.”
We
now live on a groaning planet. God is
not pleased with the condition of the planet any more than we are. In fact, He is much more displeased. And the Bible from beginning to end is the
story of God’s plan to redeem us and His creation; to bring in a new creation. To judge God’s goodness or His power solely
by the present world would be a tragic mistake.
It’s like judging a novel before you read the last chapters. This world is not good anymore, not good in
the sense that God pronounced it after He had created it.
And
what can God use to get our attention – to inform us of how wrong things are –
including our relationship with Him? Ah,
pain. Pain shouts that something is
wrong. Physical pain, emotional pain
both shout, “something is wrong! Attend
to it!”
Life
on earth now is not about just having a good time. Look around your world. That is obvious. There is something more. If this world is all there is, it is a
hollow, cruel existence.
I
can let this megaphone of pain drive me away from God even further in
rebellion, or I can allow it to serve its purpose and turn me to God – to find
out what He wants me to do. A German
theologian named Helmut Thielicke once said, “there is a hospital chaplaincy,
but no cocktail party chaplaincy.” Good
point. When all is well in our life, we
don’t hear God much. We don’t sense that
anything is wrong, that we need God. But
when we hurt, we call out to God.
C.
What does God want pain to result in? God rarely causes pain directly, but He allows it in
this fallen world to get our attention that all is not right in the world or
with us personally and our relationship with Him and others. Why?
What good can come from it?
Pain
can help us:
1.
To be changed and prepared for an eternity with God. To suffering
people, the Gospel sounds like great news, not an intrusion or a scolding. They
have little to lose and so much to gain.
2
Corinthians 7:8,9 – “I am no longer sorry that I sent that letter to you,
though I was sorry for a time, for I know that it was painful to you for a
little while. Now I am glad I sent it,
not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to have remorse and
change your ways. It was the kind of
sorrow God wants His people to have . . .”
James
1:2-4 – “Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it
be an opportunity for joy. For when your
faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when
your endurance is fully developed, you will eb strong in character and ready
for anything.”
2.
To fight against suffering and evil, knowing it is not God’s plan.
3.
To concentrate on ultimate issues. Being ready for death. Assessing the meaning of life. Taking time to tend to important
relationships. Suffering people do this
better.
Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago, reflected on having been a prisoner in
one of Hitler’s death camps: “It was only when I lay there on rotting prison
straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually, it was disclosed to me that the
line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes,
nor between political parties either, but right through human hearts. . . I
nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: Bless you, prison, for
having been in my life.”
4. To be equipped to be able to help others when
they face suffering.
The
message isn’t to enjoy the pain, but be glad for what it accomplishes in you if
you let it. A suffering person faces
choices. They can recoil in anger and
despair. Or they can accept the trial as
an opportunity to grow closer to God, to hear His shouts of hope.
So
why doesn’t God get rid of pain and suffering?
He can and He will. However, to
protect human freedom and dignity, to allow us to choose to be with Him in a
perfect world, He allows us to experience a world that is fallen, so that we
can understand and respond to the need to be restored by God.
In
the cross, God did all He could for free creatures, to eliminate evil and
suffering. In the cross, God suffered
more than anyone. In the cross and in
the resurrection of Jesus, God dealt a death blow to evil and death. The
problem with the initial objection (If God is so loving and powerful, why is
there so much evil and suffering in this world?) is that it puts a time constraint on God that
is not fair. God has dealt with evil and
suffering, but as free creatures, we must choose in this fallen world to want
to be restored to God and live with Him in a perfect world. That place is heaven. God does not force His perfect world upon
us. He could not. It would not be a perfect world. A perfect world for free creatures
necessitates that we choose it. And the
cross gives us that choice and that hope.
This world and what God has done in Christ, is the best way – the only
way – to get to the best of all possible worlds.