(This article is a continuation of an earlier one. If you haven’t read it yet… read it now!)

Last time we looked at the questions of pain and suffering from the point of each of the world’s main religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and atheism. The treatment of each was necessarily brief, partly because I was trying to boil it down to the core ideas so that we could readily compare, and partly because I am in no way qualified to discuss any more than the basics of any of those world-views.

There was, of course, one notable exception from our list of religions – Christianity. The rest of this article will be devoted to redressing that imbalance.

Before we start, let me offer an apology: If you are expecting to find here the answers to all of your questions how and why God allows pain and suffering to occur then I am afraid you are going to be sorely disappointed. I am not presumptuous enough to think that I have answered all of my questions, let alone yours as well! My aim is much more modest. I have attempted to pull together some (but by no means all!) of ways the Bible treats suffering. I hope that this will be a useful starting point for you as you wrestle with God’s Word yourself.

Because this is both an important issue and a complex one, I would really appreciate any feedback that you have to offer – either questions or comments. You can do this either by emailing me, or leaving a comment here. I will do my utmost to respond to all questions as best I am able.

A result of sin

Key to any Christian’s understanding of the presence of pain and suffering in the world is a correct understanding of sin. As we read through the first three chapters of Genesis, we understand that God created the world, that he created mankind “and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Gen 2:15). Adam and Eve, however, were not satisfied with the role that God had set out for them, and took matters into their own hands; as a result both mankind and the earth itself were placed under a curse (Gen 3). All suffering since is a result of that sin of rebellion, and millions just like it, subverting God’s plan for creation.

One thing that it is important to note, however, is that this relationship between sin and suffering is a causal one, but not a mathematical one. That is to say that more sin does not necessarily mean more suffering on an individual basis. Otherwise why would the psalmist write:

I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles;
    their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from the burdens common to man;
    they are not plagued by human ills.

- Psalm 73:3-4

On the surface, this does not seem at all ‘fair’. Why should it be that “only the good die young” (as Billy Joel would put it)?

[W]e must always remember that the Bible does not present us with a God who chances upon neutral men and women and arbitrarily consigns some to heaven and some to hell. He takes guilty men and women, all of whom deserve his wrath, and in his great mercy and love he saves vast numbers of them. Had he saved only one, it would have been an act of grace; that he saves a vast host affirms still more unmistakably the uncharted reaches of that grace. From a biblical perspective, hell stands as a horrible witness to human defiance in the face of great grace.

- D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?, (Second Edition, Baker Academic, 2006) p. 92.

Don’t fall in to the trap that Jesus’ disciples did, of trying to trace individual afflictions back to individual sins (see John 9:1-2). God doesn’t work that way – at least not in the kind of time frame we can see. Ultimately, of course, God’s justice – his ‘fairness’, if you like – will be revealed in his final judgment of the entire earth.

A signpost to God

[E]verything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or obtained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo… the result would not be to make life delectable but to make it too banal or trivial to be endurable. This of course is what the cross [of Christ] signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.

- Malcolm Muggeridge, Homemade, July 1990, cited in John Piper, Desiring God, (3rd Ed., IVP, 2003) p. 266.

As I mentioned in another place, I believe that God sometimes uses suffering and pain to point us to himself.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperCollins, 2002) p. 91

We have a God who invites us to come to him and express our doubts, to question God and to plead with him for some kind of response. Consider the start of Psalm 22:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, and am not silent.

- Psalm 22:1-2

It is OK for us to be baffled when a father is taken away from his family by a fatal car crash; it is right for us to be outraged at the rape of a young woman; it is proper for us to pour out our anguish when those we love are struck down with cancer. We should, like so many of the psalmists, bring those things to God, because it is in doing so that God promises to act.

No temptation [the Greek word here could also be translated testing/suffering] has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted [tested] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted [tested], he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

- 1 Cor 10:13

God offers us comfort in two facts: he knows you, and will not let suffering increase so much that you cannot bear it; and he will give you the strength and courage (“a way out”) to “stand up under” suffering when it comes.

Jesus was and is certainly no stranger to strong emotion. The gospels record him as being tired (so tired, in fact, he fell asleep in a fishing boat in the middle of a storm! See ); grieving at the death of his friend; indignant at his disciples ‘shielding’ him from children; angry at the immense corruption in the temple; and desperately afraid as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. He suffered agony on the Cross for our sakes – and when he did so, in his hour of greatest suffering and torment, he turned to the very words of Psalm 22 above (see Mt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34).

This is not a cry of self-doubt from Christ’s lips, as if he is here questioning his identity and mission. It his [sic. is] deliberate and agonizing identification with the suffering poet of Psalm 22 and therefore, with all those who have cried out to God ‘Why?’. There on the cross, so the Bible insists, God intentionally enters our pain and misery, getting his hands dirty and even bloody. This is God at his most vulnerable and yet at his most glorious.

- John Dickson, If I were God I’d end all the pain (2nd ed. Matthias Media, 2002) p.66.

Jesus chose the way of suffering, so that he could understand our pain.

For we do not have a high pries who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have on who has been tempted [tested] in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

- Heb. 4:15-16

A cause for hope

Hard as it might seem to believe, God also permits suffering in order to bring us hope. James, the brother of Jesus, puts it this way:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

- James 1:2-4

So, in other words, trials of many kinds help us develop perseverance, which is required for us to be “mature and complete.” Paul fleshes this out a bit more in his letter to the Romans:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

- Romans 5:1-5

The hope, then, is this: through our sufferings, God is making us more and more like his Son every day, in accordance with his will (Rom 8:29). And because of this, we have a hope that is eternal:

Praise be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this we greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

- 1 Peter 1:3-7

My prayer, then, for me and for you, is the same one that James recommends:

If any of you lacks wisdom [to be able to rejoice when facing trials; see v. 2], he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

- James 1:5-6