Centerpointe Community Church

QUESTION: IF THERE IS A GOD, WHY IS THERE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD?

ANSWER: This week a young single mom asked me, Why is there pain and suffering?

The fact of suffering often causes people to have doubts about God.

C.S. Lewis pointed out this problem with these words, "If God were good, he would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty he would be able to do as he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both."

So if God is all-powerful and he is good, then why is there suffering?

It seems to be all BECAUSE OF LOVE. What?

It seems to be because God wanted creatures who would be FREE to love. People who would have a FREE WILL to respond to his love and love him back (otherwise we'd all be robots).

But with this freedom, of course, also came the freedom to NOT love him. And freedom to do wrong, to hurt other people. So wrong actions were a real possibility when God gave a free will to his human creatures. And where wrong actions occur, suffering is inevitable. Does that make sense?

Enter temptation. The Bible tells of a rebellion in heaven that came to earth in the form of a temptation to do wrong. Free will was exercised in doing wrong and then evil, pain, suffering and even death resulted. The first recorded sibling rivalry ended in murder when Cain killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4:8).

Fast forward the tape just a few generations and you have a real mess. Genesis 6:11 says, "Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence." It was so bad that God chose to end it all with a flood instead of letting it end in a slow destruction. By the way God too suffered unimaginable pain because of the way his creatures were bringing this suffering upon themselves. Genesis 6:6 says, "The Lord was grieved...and his heart was filled with pain."

So it's not because of God's inability or neglect that we suffer, but because men and women made choices and continue to make choices that bring pain - choices to go to war, to kill, to gossip, to rob others, to commit adultery, and to do all kinds of other destructive things that cause pain.

OK, but I thought God wanted us to be happy...hello?

As a matter of fact God DOES want us to be happy. But since he is the source of all goodness and joy, we could never be happy as long as there is anything that keeps us from him or impedes his expression of love to us. That's exactly what sin does. It keeps us from God and keeps his love from us. Isaiah told God's people, "But your iniquities have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2).

So God's plan is to get rid of that impediment...to get rid sin (those bad choices that cause suffering). He did that by sending his son Jesus to suffer for us, and to die for us, to take all the consequences of our actions on himself, so that our sins could be forgiven (John 1:29)

And then once we are forgiven, he goes to work using everything that happens to us (especially suffering) to shape and mold our character to be more like Jesus every day (see Romans 8:28-29). It's interesting how God would rather let us suffer temporarily the loss of things that block him from us than to let us go on without a relationship with him. C.S. Lewis later observed, "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

So we see that even though God did not cause suffering he uses it in our lives. That's the thing he uses to make us more like him. And the holier we are the happier we will be. Only when we are like Jesus and God can love us without impediment will we be able to be truly happy.

The Bible says one day when we see him we'll be like him to live with him forever (1 John 3:2) in a place where there will be no more suffering. There will be a new order, a new heaven and earth. John tells us, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

Let me encourage you to put your faith in Jesus Christ and have your sins forgiven.

Not only will you have the assurance of eternal life, but you'll discover a purpose in this life worth suffering for. And amazingly you'll find that God will begin making sense of all the suffering you're going through right now.