“I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.” ― Helen Keller

Suffering unlike culture, cuisine, and language, has no borders. Suffering is not even limited to human kind. To have life, is to have suffering. Answering the questions on suffering are some of the most difficult. We may think that if we were God, we would have done things differently and better.

Ultimately, it is our thoughts of being a god that greatly contribute to suffering. Evil, suffering, and disease exist for now, and they exist as a result of sin. They exist because Adam thought this world would be better than one submitted to God where he ‘would be like God’ and so he ate the fruit. Like Adam, in our natural state, we have preferred this world of death to the one of being submitted to Christ. Like Paul wrote, “No one seeks for God. All have turned aside.” Even if we could, before we met Christ, we would choose the world with death. Before Adam and Eve sinned, God called Earth a good world. Creation was delightful, good, and nourishing. Now with sin present, we Christians look forward to the day when sin will be separated from us, and we will never again know the effect of sin: disease, harm, and evil.

When we deal with the question of why good people suffer, we should remember that there was only one good person, and His suffering was so that we may live. Atheism claims that there is no benevolence, purpose for life, or point to suffering. The religions outside of Christianity only give people gods who are incapable or indifferent to acting on the suffering of the world. Our God is different. He has not ignored our suffering. He took part in our suffering. Our God who knew no sin, came and lived in a world marred by suffering, a world marred by the effects of sin. He became our sin on the cross and took the death we deserved. God knows our suffering. Isaiah 53 is one of the best gospel summaries we have, and it was written 700 years before Christ was born. This story of Christ is known as the ‘suffering servant.’ Like I said before, God knows our suffering. David writes of God being the Good Shepherd, not because He takes David out of the valley of suffering, but because He walks with David through it.

While we have spoken on why suffering exists and God’s answer to it, there are a few places in the Bible that we can look for how Christians deal with suffering. The book of Job is a book dealing with suffering. Job encounters one heartache after another until his wife even tells him to “curse God and die.” His friends try to convince him that his suffering exists because he must have earned it. What Job nor those around him knew about, was of a contest between God and Satan. A contest that we readers get a glimpse of, but Job as far as we know, is never aware of. We learn from the man in Job, that in trial we look to God in trust and for our future deliverance. The encounter with God shows us that evil only happens as it is given permission. We see that God limits the evil that happens. From here and the letter of James, we see that suffering for a Christian is to be defined as a trial. Suffering has an end, and for us Christians, James says it makes us “perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” God uses the sufferings that Christians go through to make us more like Him and bring us to being more complete. Satan tries to destroy, but God turns it into our sanctification.

When we look at the story of Joseph, we see how personal suffering can be the result of the sin of others. Joseph is sold into slavery and sent to Egypt by his covetous brothers, and later Joseph is placed into prison for refusing to sleep with his master’s wife. Through it all, we see God is with him and even blesses him in these difficult places, and as a result of Joseph’s suffering, he is able to save the lives of his brothers. When a famine strikes the land of Joseph’s family, his brothers come to buy food only to meet a different Joseph, one whom through God’s blessing, had been put over Egypt. At this point, Joseph could have returned evil for evil, but his trials had taught him more of God and he knew of God’s mercy and grace, and so he is not evil to his brothers. Instead of giving his brothers evil, he gives them provision and nourishment. He tells them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.” God took the evil acts of the brother’s and used it for the good of many, including Joseph’s brothers.

Suffering exists as a result of sin. We may not always understand why we go through our personal sufferings, but we can trust in our God who can know and feel our sufferings. In Christ, we know that our sufferings are temporary, and will one day end. Jimmy Inman in a sermon said, “Sometimes God delivers us from things, sometimes it is through things.”

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

-The Apostle Paul, from a prison in Rome

Why Does God Allow Evil?

When you and I are asked this question, it is often more of a question mentally phrased as, “Why does God not act the way I would like?” or “Why does God not hate the same people and things I do?” I say this because the question of God allowing evil, is normally followed with how that person would do things differently. The people who ask me this, often believe they could be a better god.

Ultimately, all will face God’s justice. When we do see God’s justice carried out on earth, the people who questioned God allowing evil, are the first to object to it. People will ask, “why does God allow evil?” But their next question will be, “how could God order that an entire city to be destroyed?” They claim that God is immoral and evil for not bringing justice to His creation and ending the evil within it. They also claim God is evil when the Creator executes His creation for it’s evil and wickedness. Part of this question is of ignorance of God’s holiness, if God did immediately terminate evil, we would not exist right now and be able to question His judgement. Another part is of our lack of understanding of what evil is. We do not see evil as absolute. We do not see evil as anything that violates God’s will. We often see evil as that which goes against our own will. Lastly, we ask about evil existing because we think that if we were God, we would not have evil. Evil actually exists because we try to be our own gods.

Evil exists because God has patience with us. In our fallen state, you and I naturally prefer an evil broken world over one that is subjected to God’s goodness. Sin is rejection of God’s authority. Rejecting God is what brings evil. We have temporary evil today because people are naturally evil beings and God has mercy and patience.

“When you say there's too much evil in this world you assume there's good. When you assume there's good, you assume there's such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that's Who you're trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there's no moral Law Giver, there's no moral law. If there's no moral law, there's no good. If there's no good, there's no evil. What is your question?” -Ravi Zacharias