The extent of suffering in the world is so vast and all-encompassing that it permeates and affects all humanity and every human being to a greater or lesser degree; and we cannot escape it. And when we look at a particular aspect of suffering – say, kidnapping of women to be sold as sex slaves, and the living hell that must be; or that there is a massive number of people, a whole class in Indian society, who are so desperately poor that they live in the garbage dumps of the cities, where they’ve established a community complete with ruling class, and with those who are comparatively rich and more powerful than others in that community – it is hard to comprehend the enormity of it all; to name but two of countless other examples. In fact, suffering is part and parcel of being human; it is as inevitable as death.
And so, people ask, why does God allow it. If God is good, why does he allow suffering in the world? The only way we can understand is to look at the bible and see what it tells us – the bible is, after all, the revelation of God to man and it enables us to see life from his perspective. Only the bible can explain suffering.
Original Sin and God’s Curse
At the very beginning, when God finished his work of creation, he “saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). The prophet says of God: “Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing” (Hab 1:13). If that is true, and it is, then God would not have pronounced the creation as it came from his hands as being good – which, when speaking of God in this way, means it was perfect; without blemish, fault, or corruption. No sin, no death, no suffering. Creation was good and beautiful, and Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, or Paradise (Gen 2:8). But within a day or two, they did the one thing that God told them not to do, and we lost everything. Consequently, he and his wife hid from God (Gen 3:8), and we’ve been separated from God ever since.
The whole catastrophe is recorded plainly and simply: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen 2:16-17). But another voice was heard in the Garden; the voice of someone who shouldn’t have been there; the voice of a malicious enemy (Matt 13:25). And that voice whispered deception, doubt and mistrust of God into the gullible and naïve ear of Eve: “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5).
Little did she realise that she and her husband were already gods, for God had delegated power, authority and responsibility to them. “God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen 1: 28).
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen 3:6). The apostle Paul states in a few words the tragic, enormous, consequences of this incident: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom 5:12).
When Adam sinned, as the representative of the whole human race he dragged all of us down with him. Eve was in that fallen state before she even conceived her first child; and Adam, who fertilised the egg in her womb with his seed, was also fallen. Therefore, that first child, and every child since then, has been born in a fallen condition; born in sin and as innate and hereditary enemies of God: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5). And Paul writes that all humanity is dead in trespasses and sins, and humans are by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:1-5), slaves of sin (Rom 6:20), hostile to God and unable to please him (Rom 8:7-8).
After our first parents had sinned and brought utter disaster on the whole creation, God came to them and allowed them to give their defence. He then pronounced judgment on them in the form of a curse and banished them from his presence (Gen 3:8-24). God was within his rights to destroy them and start over. But he didn’t. He did the very opposite, in fact. He promised a Saviour, cursing the serpent at the same time, saying: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). And the rest of the Old Testament, from Abraham to John the Baptist, tells of how God prepared the world for the coming of this Saviour, who was Jesus Christ, God revealed in flesh. On the cross, Jesus struck the head of Satan, defeating him by dying as a true human being, making atonement for humanity in his resurrection and ascension, for “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).
Suffering is a Consequence of The Fall
So we see that suffering in the world is the result of humanity’s fall from innocence and perfection, and their separation from God. Suffering is one of the consequences of sin. Humanity is under God’s curse. The whole creation suffers from this curse and is in bondage to it. Humanity has no right to complain to God for any reason, even the immense amount of senseless pain and suffering in the world. Death was not part of creation and is alien to it. Death is the penalty for sin (Ezek 18:4, 20). We have offended the holy and righteous God, the creator of the universe, and our creator. The evidence of the truth of this is that all die, even little babies.
Now that sin had entered the world, creation couldn’t simply be renovated; it had to be totally re-made. Sin has corrupted the world so thoroughly that anything less than its total destruction only dresses it up; it can never change the enmity to God that is now innate to the whole creation. That’s why Peter tells us that it will be destroyed (2 Pet 3:10, 13), after which time the creation “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). We suffer here on earth due to injustice, abuse, sickness, sorrow, pain, war, famine, poverty, persecution, and so on. It is the consequence of Adam’s disobedience, and there is no escape. Death follows life, and on the way we suffer, some more than others. “Life’s a bitch; and then you die”, as someone cynically observed.
But we don’t give up on God because in him we have hope. He gave us hope from the very start, as soon as our first parents sinned; he gave us hope when Jesus died for sinners; and he gives us hope as we look forward to the return of Jesus Christ, when he will return to put all things right, banishing death, sickness, suffering, sorrow, and every other ill that came as the result of Adam’s sin. We have every reason to hope and not give up.
The Prince of the Power of the Air
But not only is humanity living in rebellion to God, there is also a spirit at work in the world, Satan, always and at every opportunity resisting God and trying to thwart everything he does. Peter describes him “your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Paul describes him as “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Eph 2:2). As God’s enemy, and ours, he is filled with malice and evil intent; it is he who instigates and propagates evil and suffering in the world. One only need look at Job chapters 1 and 2 to see his power and his activity described, and their devastating effects in people’s lives; but those same chapters show how Job, the victim of his malicious attacks clung to his faith in God, even though he faltered, and in the end, was vindicated (Mk 13:13). Again, these chapters show how God is in control even over suffering. He allows Satan to go so far and no further because he has a plan, not only for Job, but for all generations who follow him. The name and person of Job are synonymous with suffering, and he has been a source of comfort and strength to multitudes for thousands of years. For example, James, the brother of Jesus, presents Job as an example of patience in suffering (Jas 5:10-11).
If God is not doing anything about suffering; if all this demonstrates a God who is not worthy of trust and worship; then what is? What more could he do? He didn’t have to do anything – it was and is, after all, humanity which rebelled against their Creator. God was under no obligation to humanity whatsoever. No – to accuse God of being unwilling or unable to do anything about suffering is rank ingratitude and wilful disobedience; to reject God because there is so much “senseless pain and misery” in the worldis blasphemy.
We don’t have the right to say that. If God is God, then we have to accept him as he is, whether we like him or not. If God is there, he is there, and nothing can change that. So it’s no good saying we find it impossible to believe in such a God, and thus abandon him. That doesn’t change anything and is detrimental to our own selves. If we say we can’t believe in a God who allows suffering, it doesn’t change the fact that we still must stand before him when we die, and give account of ourselves to him. Denying reality doesn’t change reality. Denying the existence of God doesn’t stop him from being. He is and he is there, and if a person doesn’t accept this, they’re in for a very costly shock, and will have all of eternity to contemplate their stupidity.
God Uses Suffering to Bring Good out of Bad
God, as creator and ruler of the universe, tells us, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isa 45:7); and Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6). But while he brings judgment on sinners and workers of evil, it does not follow that he brings only good on the righteous or the innocent. This does not make God capricious or evil himself. He has a plan for the universe and for everything in it. He assures his people that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).
God does not and cannot bring suffering unnecessarily, because this is against his nature. Satan caused Eve to doubt God’s kindness and good intentions by suggesting that he was withholding something good from her, and that she would be missing out on it if she followed God’s command. It was Satan’s lie to Eve and it is Satan’s lie to us today – God is mean and vindictive and he doesn’t deserve our service and worship.
God uses suffering to accomplish his good purposes. It is a sad fact that people won’t turn to God until there is no other option, and the history of Israel demonstrates this repeatedly; one could open the Old Testament almost at random and find God sending affliction on his people to bring them back from their persistence in sinful practices, which practices caused great damage to them, such as child sacrifice, gross immorality, the weak and the vulnerable taken advantage of by prince and priest, and apostasy. Despite the afflictions God sent them they refused to turn, until there was no other way to bring them back but to destroy their city and send them into captivity, thus separating them from all those things that would support them in their wickedness.
So the people of Judah were taken to Babylon, wicked and innocent alike, because of the sin of the nation as a whole. They thought it was calamity, and it was. But God meant it for their good and warned them not to resist, because he was going to preserve them (Mic 4:10). They thought that going to Babylon was the worst thing that could happen to them, but in fact it was the best. God was removing them from their security and all the things that distracted them and drew them away from him; it was an act of judgment but it was not a final casting away. These were his people and he wanted the best for them, despite their sin and horrific crimes. The destruction of their city and their removal to Babylon was meant to purify them.
And the prophet Amos prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel that God had sent judgment after judgment after judgment upon them – famine, drought, pests and diseases on their crops, disease on the people, and war – and after he enunciates each of these judgments, he accuses them: “…yet have ye not returned unto me” (Amos 4:6-12). God wasn’t just inflicting suffering on them because he is a bully and he could; the suffering was so that they would realise the seriousness of what they were doing, and return to God in repentance and faith. But they refused. And so God pronounced those dread words: “prepare to meet thy God” (Amos 4:12).
In the same manner, God sought reconciliation even with the nations who were not his people: “I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant. I said, Surely thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive instruction; so their dwelling should not be cut off, howsoever I punished them: but they rose early, and corrupted all their doings” (Zeph 3:6-7).
From Suffering to Glory
The Christian who reads his bible understands that this is all a matter of comparison. The apostle Paul explains, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom 8:18). We persevere because we know that this earth is not all there is. Our rest is not in this world or this life or this age because they are all passing away. We are not citizens of this world but of heaven; we are just passing through here and our destination is still ahead of us. There are trials all the way there (Acts 14:22), and there are many who want to stop us from reaching our destination. But, like the people of faith of old times, we press on: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:1-2).
All scripture references are from the Authorised King James Version of the Bible.