A Note on Suffering: Part 1

I would begin here by saying that I have only tasted evil, never drank deeply from the well of human suffering that exists in the world, and for that I am grateful to God Most High who has spared and protected me from so many things that there can be no doubt but that I am blessed. What follows is simply a few thought I jotted down one morning... I pray it is not too simple as to offend those who have felt a depth of pain I can only hope is never mine. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for my own life and I pray you would comfort and enlighten those who cry out this day to their Maker for the darkness they feel.

“Nothing that exists or occurs falls outside God’s ordaining will [including evil]...

How can God govern the choices of human beings without that entailing that those choices are no longer free? How can the same event have two complete explanations? My answer is this: We cannot understand how these things can possibly be... we can understand why we cannot understand it. It is because our attempts to understand this involve our trying to understand the unique relationship between the Creator and his creatures in terms of our understanding of some creature-to-creature relationship.” [Mark Talbot, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, John Piper, Justin Taylor, eds. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006) 43, 69]

That may be the best brief explanation of the sovereignty v. free will dilemma that I’ve come across. I mean, people bang their head against this wall ALL THE TIME, and it just doesn’t crack. What interests me the most is that I found it in a book dealing with the Problem of Evil. People think theology isn’t important, but they’re wrong. Evil effects us all, and we all ask, “Why?” And the answer is too often unsatisfactory. Plain and simple, we don’t know. SO, how do we go on from there? When evil or suffering touches your life, and you sigh to the heavens, “WHY, O LORD, WHY?!” and are met with little more than the echo of your own mind, what happens next?

For many, the answer is to turn their back on God. In the silence of their own personal night, they brood and become embittered. Their faith withers, as the seed sown among thorns in Matthew 13, whose faith is choked out by the worry of the world. Or perhaps they are like that sown on rocky soil that withers for lack of a root in the Word of God. Either way, the results are the same; they suffer, and in their suffering, they lash out for an answer they will not tolerate. This I understand. As a child I grew up in an alcoholic home, and God was my scapegoat for the anguish I felt every day. Unlike Job, I cursed God, and in rage asked to die, to suffer in Hell for that would be better than eternity with such a spiteful God. It is a real and human reaction. I do not belittle the bitterness of others. But it is wrong.

“...who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it?”
(Romans 9:20 NASB)

“Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? ‘Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding,’”
(Job 38:1-4 NASB)

I understand that there is not much comfort in those words, so where is the Comforter in the midst of suffering? I don’t know. I don’t know, but I trust God. I trust Him because He is sovereign. I trust Him in His oft resounding silence because I have said to my own kids, time and again, “Because I said so!” For that is really all this boils down to. If God is all-good and all-knowing and all-powerful, then I am willing to trust Him just like I hope my own kids will trust me when I make them suffer. And you will make your kids suffer! When you get them inoculations, they suffer. When you punish them for wrong-doing, they suffer. When you prevent them from doing wrong, they suffer. And often, they cannot understand why. My five year old twins have been warned many times and in loud voices to GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN! Because there are hot pots on the stove or pans coming out of the over; because our kitchen is small and not always safe. Do they understand? Not always. Should I just dip their fingers in boiling water that they might ‘get it?’ Please, get serious. Yet we demand of God, whose understanding is infinitely greater than ours, an equal knowledge, and we pout when it doesn’t come. ‘Children of God,’ indeed!

“I will lift up my eyes to the hills—

From whence comes my help?

My help comes from the LORD,

Who made heaven and earth.”
(Psalm 121:1-2 NKJV)

I trust God because He is sovereign. Because I have seen His hand at work in my life often enough that I know He’s there. I have experienced His grace, His patience, His love, and when the weight of suffering is mine, I turn to Him who suffered most. Christ is the ultimate picture of suffering, and He did it for me. When the weight of suffering is mine, I turn to His word, that has proven perfect and true hundreds of time over in my own life alone. When the weight of suffering is mine, I turn to the brothers and sisters I have in Christ who are themselves an answer promised in His word, and will pray for me and suffer alongside me because I would do the same for them.

Is that enough? For millions of Believers who have suffered far more than me, the answer has been yes.

“Weeping may last through the night,

but joy comes with the morning.”
(Psalm 30:5)