Why Do We Have To Suffer?
Bible Study
Hope For Tomorrow
What Jesus Would Say Today
Object:
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
-- William Faulkner in his Nobel Prize speech of 1950
* * *
I feel in my heart what you are thinking, dear one. You must not think so. God has a great destiny for you. He is our Father and we are his children. Do you think he would inflict sorrow and pain on us for no purpose? He would have us come to Him.
-- The little girl Rubica, to a friend of Saint Luke's who is dying, sensing the boy's feeling of injustice. In Dear And Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell
* * *
I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when feeling it not.
I believe in God, even when he is silent.
-- Words scratched on the wall of a cave, next to the body of a Jewish girl who had escaped the Warsaw ghetto
Why Do We Have To Suffer?
"God will bless you for this, if you endure the pain of undeserved suffering because you are conscious of his will."
-- 1 Peter 2:19
Why suffering must be part of all human experience is our most perplexing philosophical question. More books may have been written in an attempt to speak to this fact than on any other single religious issue. As Archibald MacLeish observed in his play J. B., "God always asks the proof of pain." All of us have to suffer sooner or later, in one way or another. I knew a nurse who worked in the children's cancer ward in my city. She frequently complained to her roommate how terrible she found it to watch little ones suffer, to see mothers and fathers struggle to appear calm until they found their way into the hallway, there to weep inconsolably at what was happening. One day this nurse went home and killed herself. Even Archie Bunker struggled to understand. His son-in-law "Meathead," an agnostic, asked, "Archie, if there's a God why is there so much suffering in the world?" Archie replied: "I'll tell you why ... Edith, if there's a God why is there so much suffering in the world?" There is only awkward silence so Archie yells, "Edith, would you get in here and help me? I'm having to defend God all by myself." Every clergyperson has heard the person who argues, "How can I believe in a loving God when I see so much suffering?"
* * *
In sum, the New Testament assumes suffering as part of human experience and views it as a means of drawing near to God, of developing inner qualities of character.
* * *
There is, of course, the traditional reasoning: if God is all-powerful, then he must not be as loving as we like to suppose. Or, if God is as loving as we suppose, he must not be all-powerful. J.B., the main character in MacLeish's play, saw it this way: "If God is God he is not good, if God is good he is not God." Woody Allen's answer to that dilemma is that "God is good, he's just an underachiever." Job, that eloquent sufferer of the Old Testament, argued his case until he finally realized God had no intention of explaining. Job did, however, decide that if he would trust God in the absence of explanations, it might all make sense later on.
What does the Bible have to say? Jesus' good friend Peter, who himself paid the price of pain, said, "It may be necessary for you to be sad for a while because of the many kinds of trials you suffer. Their purpose is to prove that your faith is genuine" (1 Peter 1:6). He believed that "if you endure suffering even when you have done right, God will bless you for it" (1 Peter 2:20). He went on to counsel, "Be glad that you share Christ's sufferings, so that you may be full of joy when his glory is revealed" (1 Peter 4:13).
Paul felt that "what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18). He understood that suffering is at the heart of creation, that "all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth" (Romans 8:21). He was convinced that, like it or not, real character comes in no other way. "Trouble produces endurance," he wrote, "endurance brings God's approval, and his approval creates hope." Or as The Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates: "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character" (Romans 5:3-5). Surprisingly, Jesus had very little to say directly to the problem of suffering. He did, though, warn that "If anyone wants to come with me, he must forget himself, take up his cross every day, and follow me" (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23).
In sum, the New Testament assumes suffering as part of human experience and views it as a means of drawing near to God, of developing inner qualities of character. It accepts Jesus' promise that to follow the Christian way will involve cross bearing, which means voluntary suffering, the kind that goes with sacrificial love. Beyond this, the New Testament, while accepting human suffering as our common lot and seeing it as ultimately beneficial, doesn't answer the question "why?"
I have taken the liberty of suggesting elsewhere that our human efforts to explain God's ways are a little like those of four-year-olds trying to explain the complexities of their households, why Mom must do other things beside cater to them, why Dad leaves in the morning and is gone all day, and why they must go to bed while everyone else is settling down in front of the television. Yet it's part of the human search for faith to strive for understanding. As Christians, we believe we receive guidance in the process through the Holy Spirit, "God's gift to us." So, there are some things to be said about suffering which make sense.
We start with the conviction that God created each of us with free will. Concepts of good and bad would have no meaning otherwise. If I do something "good" because it was preordained, or because some enticing incentive is offered, my "goodness" is meaningless -- I had little or no choice. On the other hand, if I'm free to do what's right or what's wrong, then to choose right is good. My daughter had a friend in junior high school whose mother followed her around. When the girls went to a movie, Mother went too, sitting a few rows behind. When her daughter went to a school party, Mother sat outside in the car. Mother hovered over her daughter at all times, seeing to it that the poor kid did nothing wrong. The effect, of course, was twofold. It kept the daughter out of trouble, while creating a tremendous amount of resentment toward the parent. It also failed to enable the girl to develop her own integrity. They moved away, so I don't know how she turned out. Fortunately, God doesn't do that to us. We're free to choose.
The effect of this freedom is that some people do wrong, bringing sin and evil into the world. People will be hurt, innocent people, because of the wrongdoing of the few. The Old Testament writers frequently argued the injustice of it all and insisted that God do something. But of course, God couldn't interfere if human freedom is to be respected. It isn't always bad people who hurt others either. We all hurt those closest to us at times. A popular song of my young years had the line: "You always hurt the one you love, the one you wouldn't hurt at all." Someone once suggested that people living together are like porcupines living on a hilltop in the winter -- having to decide whether to draw close to each other for warmth, and thus to injure each other with their quills, or to stay apart to be safe and risk freezing.
We're all familiar with envy, jealousy, temptation, feelings of competition and failure, feelings of rejection, grief, guilt, anxiety -- all painful emotions resulting from freedom and the human situation as we know it. Paul is undoubtedly right that we grow in the process of facing and overcoming these problems, but there are many times when we'd prefer to be set free of the necessity.
* * *
"My new philosophy -- I only dread one day at a time."
-- Charlie Brown
* * *
Disease, earthquakes, accidents? If I may be personal on this point, my own dear wife died in a car accident. For weeks I screamed my fury at a God who would allow that to happen to me, one of his ministers (and incidentally, I discovered it's okay to get mad at God and tell him). Where did I come out? With a great discovery. God cared. God cried with me, and grieved with me, and hated what had happened with me. I learned a truth so great it has carried me through other sufferings. It may be the only earthly answer to suffering: God cared enough to suffer with me. You ask me how I know? I know. Leslie Weatherhead wrote this: "When we petulantly ask of any human tragedy, 'Why does God allow this to happen?' we ought to complete the question and ask, 'Why does God allow this to happen to himself?' " I felt the truth of that.
Most of you know that the more you love, the more you must be willing to suffer. God loves absolutely. So God suffers most of all. A popular song of a few years ago said it:
I touch no one
And no one touches me.
A rock feels no pain
And an island never cries.
The world holds a thousand sufferings. If Jesus were only able to speak to us now, I believe he would ask us to face our sufferings with courage, do everything within our power to alleviate suffering, both for ourselves and for others. But understand: God cares and God has an answer. God cannot remove our suffering upon request, in which case we'd all be good little Christians. The Bible writers are surely right. Our sufferings now won't compare with the joy that lies ahead. There is a purpose and one day we'll understand. Maybe we can't see it yet, but it must all be part of a process of creation and redemption which begins to make sense as we face our pains and one day look back to discover that God not only cares, but in ways we must accept by faith does see us through, does bring comfort through the power of prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit. Aeschylus touched the heart of truth with these words: "Pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair -- against our own will -- comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
An author whose wife died during the early years of their happy marriage once made the happy discovery of this truth. He wrote the following letter, as though to his wife:
Dearest Love:
I'm sitting before the fire now where you and I shared so many perfect hours together. A crust of ice already covers the pond and the second winter since your leaving has settled over the earth. Perhaps you can forgive me for calling you back this once. As when we were together, I find myself needing one more time to share with you the deepest contents of my heart. And then, my love, I shall let you go until we meet somewhere.
As you know -- for some deep instinct persuades me you have continued to sense my moods -- even as you so easily did in life -- as you know, I suffered more deeply in sorrow than I dared even let any of our friends know after your death. My grief was the profoundest pain I have ever known. Though the sun often shone in the heavens, dark clouds were ever present in my heart, and for the longest time I knew I should never know love, or peace, or joy again. So often I was tortured by the memories of your joyous laughter and your soothing touch. Each corner I turned, each drawer I opened, each time I made the bed -- our bed -- some plaguing reminder opened again the flowing wounds of my grieving heart. As I believe you also know, there were moments when in my desolation I toyed with the thought of following you in death, though you always knew me as a passionate lover of life.
I cannot say how it happened. Maybe you'll be amused at what I now tell you; surely you have a right to be. It happened in a church, of all places. It was a lonely church; dark, damp, covered with vines, all in all a particularly dreary sounding place when one describes it, hardly where one would expect to encounter joy. Why I entered I'm not sure. Perhaps it was the authentic Norman portico. Or the slightly altered medieval nave. Whatever the reason, I was somehow drawn to its heart and there, in an awful stillness, I sat in heartbroken loneliness and prayed. Possibly that will surprise you. One of my regrets is the way I let you develop your faith with hardly more than ill-concealed tolerance. How little I knew then. But as I sat in the darkened loneliness of that deserted, ancient church, and poured out my grief against its silence, a quiet settled on my saddened heart like nothing I have ever known. It was as though someone heard, and understood, though I looked around and saw no one. You will not laugh, I know (for you never laughed at me when I was truly serious): as I wept there, arms enfolded me. Not really, I suppose. That is, I was still alone. Nothing touched me physically. And yet, I have no other way to say to you what happened: arms enfolded me, and I found myself surrounded by what I have since come to think of as the awful mercy of God. My dear, I do not understand this, but as I sat there I was healed. My heart, which will always preserve a place for you through all eternity, was restored and my grief was gone.
The ice grows heavy over the earth, my love. Now is winter. But inside me is a warmth I have rarely known, except in those special moments between us. And in my heart is springtime. Good-bye, my dear. May your life be filled with the joy that is part of your world. I will not call you back anymore. I have a new life to live now; new friends to meet, who knows, maybe if it is to be, a new love to find. God go with you as, to my delighted surprise, I have learned he does with me. And I am whole once more in the awful, splendid Grace of God.
Philosophically, theologically, intellectually, there are no answers to the question: "Why must we suffer?" There is another answer, but it only speaks its word into the believing heart. God loves us, and God's love will see that nothing is lost, that one day all will be well. So we can sing:
O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee,
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
Questions For Discussion
1. Could God eliminate suffering?
2. Have you grown as a result of pain?
3. If you were to suffer now, what should you do?
4. Should prayer eliminate pain or should it enable us to endure?
5. If we're angry at God because of suffering, how do you think God reacts?
-- William Faulkner in his Nobel Prize speech of 1950
* * *
I feel in my heart what you are thinking, dear one. You must not think so. God has a great destiny for you. He is our Father and we are his children. Do you think he would inflict sorrow and pain on us for no purpose? He would have us come to Him.
-- The little girl Rubica, to a friend of Saint Luke's who is dying, sensing the boy's feeling of injustice. In Dear And Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell
* * *
I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when feeling it not.
I believe in God, even when he is silent.
-- Words scratched on the wall of a cave, next to the body of a Jewish girl who had escaped the Warsaw ghetto
Why Do We Have To Suffer?
"God will bless you for this, if you endure the pain of undeserved suffering because you are conscious of his will."
-- 1 Peter 2:19
Why suffering must be part of all human experience is our most perplexing philosophical question. More books may have been written in an attempt to speak to this fact than on any other single religious issue. As Archibald MacLeish observed in his play J. B., "God always asks the proof of pain." All of us have to suffer sooner or later, in one way or another. I knew a nurse who worked in the children's cancer ward in my city. She frequently complained to her roommate how terrible she found it to watch little ones suffer, to see mothers and fathers struggle to appear calm until they found their way into the hallway, there to weep inconsolably at what was happening. One day this nurse went home and killed herself. Even Archie Bunker struggled to understand. His son-in-law "Meathead," an agnostic, asked, "Archie, if there's a God why is there so much suffering in the world?" Archie replied: "I'll tell you why ... Edith, if there's a God why is there so much suffering in the world?" There is only awkward silence so Archie yells, "Edith, would you get in here and help me? I'm having to defend God all by myself." Every clergyperson has heard the person who argues, "How can I believe in a loving God when I see so much suffering?"
* * *
In sum, the New Testament assumes suffering as part of human experience and views it as a means of drawing near to God, of developing inner qualities of character.
* * *
There is, of course, the traditional reasoning: if God is all-powerful, then he must not be as loving as we like to suppose. Or, if God is as loving as we suppose, he must not be all-powerful. J.B., the main character in MacLeish's play, saw it this way: "If God is God he is not good, if God is good he is not God." Woody Allen's answer to that dilemma is that "God is good, he's just an underachiever." Job, that eloquent sufferer of the Old Testament, argued his case until he finally realized God had no intention of explaining. Job did, however, decide that if he would trust God in the absence of explanations, it might all make sense later on.
What does the Bible have to say? Jesus' good friend Peter, who himself paid the price of pain, said, "It may be necessary for you to be sad for a while because of the many kinds of trials you suffer. Their purpose is to prove that your faith is genuine" (1 Peter 1:6). He believed that "if you endure suffering even when you have done right, God will bless you for it" (1 Peter 2:20). He went on to counsel, "Be glad that you share Christ's sufferings, so that you may be full of joy when his glory is revealed" (1 Peter 4:13).
Paul felt that "what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18). He understood that suffering is at the heart of creation, that "all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth" (Romans 8:21). He was convinced that, like it or not, real character comes in no other way. "Trouble produces endurance," he wrote, "endurance brings God's approval, and his approval creates hope." Or as The Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates: "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character" (Romans 5:3-5). Surprisingly, Jesus had very little to say directly to the problem of suffering. He did, though, warn that "If anyone wants to come with me, he must forget himself, take up his cross every day, and follow me" (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23).
In sum, the New Testament assumes suffering as part of human experience and views it as a means of drawing near to God, of developing inner qualities of character. It accepts Jesus' promise that to follow the Christian way will involve cross bearing, which means voluntary suffering, the kind that goes with sacrificial love. Beyond this, the New Testament, while accepting human suffering as our common lot and seeing it as ultimately beneficial, doesn't answer the question "why?"
I have taken the liberty of suggesting elsewhere that our human efforts to explain God's ways are a little like those of four-year-olds trying to explain the complexities of their households, why Mom must do other things beside cater to them, why Dad leaves in the morning and is gone all day, and why they must go to bed while everyone else is settling down in front of the television. Yet it's part of the human search for faith to strive for understanding. As Christians, we believe we receive guidance in the process through the Holy Spirit, "God's gift to us." So, there are some things to be said about suffering which make sense.
We start with the conviction that God created each of us with free will. Concepts of good and bad would have no meaning otherwise. If I do something "good" because it was preordained, or because some enticing incentive is offered, my "goodness" is meaningless -- I had little or no choice. On the other hand, if I'm free to do what's right or what's wrong, then to choose right is good. My daughter had a friend in junior high school whose mother followed her around. When the girls went to a movie, Mother went too, sitting a few rows behind. When her daughter went to a school party, Mother sat outside in the car. Mother hovered over her daughter at all times, seeing to it that the poor kid did nothing wrong. The effect, of course, was twofold. It kept the daughter out of trouble, while creating a tremendous amount of resentment toward the parent. It also failed to enable the girl to develop her own integrity. They moved away, so I don't know how she turned out. Fortunately, God doesn't do that to us. We're free to choose.
The effect of this freedom is that some people do wrong, bringing sin and evil into the world. People will be hurt, innocent people, because of the wrongdoing of the few. The Old Testament writers frequently argued the injustice of it all and insisted that God do something. But of course, God couldn't interfere if human freedom is to be respected. It isn't always bad people who hurt others either. We all hurt those closest to us at times. A popular song of my young years had the line: "You always hurt the one you love, the one you wouldn't hurt at all." Someone once suggested that people living together are like porcupines living on a hilltop in the winter -- having to decide whether to draw close to each other for warmth, and thus to injure each other with their quills, or to stay apart to be safe and risk freezing.
We're all familiar with envy, jealousy, temptation, feelings of competition and failure, feelings of rejection, grief, guilt, anxiety -- all painful emotions resulting from freedom and the human situation as we know it. Paul is undoubtedly right that we grow in the process of facing and overcoming these problems, but there are many times when we'd prefer to be set free of the necessity.
* * *
"My new philosophy -- I only dread one day at a time."
-- Charlie Brown
* * *
Disease, earthquakes, accidents? If I may be personal on this point, my own dear wife died in a car accident. For weeks I screamed my fury at a God who would allow that to happen to me, one of his ministers (and incidentally, I discovered it's okay to get mad at God and tell him). Where did I come out? With a great discovery. God cared. God cried with me, and grieved with me, and hated what had happened with me. I learned a truth so great it has carried me through other sufferings. It may be the only earthly answer to suffering: God cared enough to suffer with me. You ask me how I know? I know. Leslie Weatherhead wrote this: "When we petulantly ask of any human tragedy, 'Why does God allow this to happen?' we ought to complete the question and ask, 'Why does God allow this to happen to himself?' " I felt the truth of that.
Most of you know that the more you love, the more you must be willing to suffer. God loves absolutely. So God suffers most of all. A popular song of a few years ago said it:
I touch no one
And no one touches me.
A rock feels no pain
And an island never cries.
The world holds a thousand sufferings. If Jesus were only able to speak to us now, I believe he would ask us to face our sufferings with courage, do everything within our power to alleviate suffering, both for ourselves and for others. But understand: God cares and God has an answer. God cannot remove our suffering upon request, in which case we'd all be good little Christians. The Bible writers are surely right. Our sufferings now won't compare with the joy that lies ahead. There is a purpose and one day we'll understand. Maybe we can't see it yet, but it must all be part of a process of creation and redemption which begins to make sense as we face our pains and one day look back to discover that God not only cares, but in ways we must accept by faith does see us through, does bring comfort through the power of prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit. Aeschylus touched the heart of truth with these words: "Pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair -- against our own will -- comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
An author whose wife died during the early years of their happy marriage once made the happy discovery of this truth. He wrote the following letter, as though to his wife:
Dearest Love:
I'm sitting before the fire now where you and I shared so many perfect hours together. A crust of ice already covers the pond and the second winter since your leaving has settled over the earth. Perhaps you can forgive me for calling you back this once. As when we were together, I find myself needing one more time to share with you the deepest contents of my heart. And then, my love, I shall let you go until we meet somewhere.
As you know -- for some deep instinct persuades me you have continued to sense my moods -- even as you so easily did in life -- as you know, I suffered more deeply in sorrow than I dared even let any of our friends know after your death. My grief was the profoundest pain I have ever known. Though the sun often shone in the heavens, dark clouds were ever present in my heart, and for the longest time I knew I should never know love, or peace, or joy again. So often I was tortured by the memories of your joyous laughter and your soothing touch. Each corner I turned, each drawer I opened, each time I made the bed -- our bed -- some plaguing reminder opened again the flowing wounds of my grieving heart. As I believe you also know, there were moments when in my desolation I toyed with the thought of following you in death, though you always knew me as a passionate lover of life.
I cannot say how it happened. Maybe you'll be amused at what I now tell you; surely you have a right to be. It happened in a church, of all places. It was a lonely church; dark, damp, covered with vines, all in all a particularly dreary sounding place when one describes it, hardly where one would expect to encounter joy. Why I entered I'm not sure. Perhaps it was the authentic Norman portico. Or the slightly altered medieval nave. Whatever the reason, I was somehow drawn to its heart and there, in an awful stillness, I sat in heartbroken loneliness and prayed. Possibly that will surprise you. One of my regrets is the way I let you develop your faith with hardly more than ill-concealed tolerance. How little I knew then. But as I sat in the darkened loneliness of that deserted, ancient church, and poured out my grief against its silence, a quiet settled on my saddened heart like nothing I have ever known. It was as though someone heard, and understood, though I looked around and saw no one. You will not laugh, I know (for you never laughed at me when I was truly serious): as I wept there, arms enfolded me. Not really, I suppose. That is, I was still alone. Nothing touched me physically. And yet, I have no other way to say to you what happened: arms enfolded me, and I found myself surrounded by what I have since come to think of as the awful mercy of God. My dear, I do not understand this, but as I sat there I was healed. My heart, which will always preserve a place for you through all eternity, was restored and my grief was gone.
The ice grows heavy over the earth, my love. Now is winter. But inside me is a warmth I have rarely known, except in those special moments between us. And in my heart is springtime. Good-bye, my dear. May your life be filled with the joy that is part of your world. I will not call you back anymore. I have a new life to live now; new friends to meet, who knows, maybe if it is to be, a new love to find. God go with you as, to my delighted surprise, I have learned he does with me. And I am whole once more in the awful, splendid Grace of God.
Philosophically, theologically, intellectually, there are no answers to the question: "Why must we suffer?" There is another answer, but it only speaks its word into the believing heart. God loves us, and God's love will see that nothing is lost, that one day all will be well. So we can sing:
O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee,
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
Questions For Discussion
1. Could God eliminate suffering?
2. Have you grown as a result of pain?
3. If you were to suffer now, what should you do?
4. Should prayer eliminate pain or should it enable us to endure?
5. If we're angry at God because of suffering, how do you think God reacts?
