Why SufferingSample

What It Takes To Be You

“What is humankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4)

It is typical to think of the problem of suffering like this: We picture ourselves in this world of suffering; then we picture ourselves in a world with no suffering or far less suffering. And then we wonder, “Shouldn’t God have created us in the other world – the world with far less suffering?” That’s a reasonable thought. 

But it may be a thought that relies on a philosophical mistake. It relies on the assumption that it would still be you and me who would exist in that other world, and that assumption is questionable. Let me explain. 

There was a pivotal moment early on in my parents’ relationship. They were on their second date. They were standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, overlooking the picturesque New York City skyline, and my dad noticed a ring on my mom’s finger. So he asked about it, and she said, “Oh, that’s just some ring one of my old boyfriends gave me. I just wear it ‘cause I think it looks nice.” 

“Oh, yeah, it is nice,” my dad responded. “Let me see it.” 

So my mom took it off and handed it to him, and my dad hurled it off the bridge and watched it sink to the bottom of the East River! “You’re with me now,” he said; “you won’t be needing that anymore.” 

And my mom loved it!

Now it was a pretty risky move my dad made hurling my mom’s ring off the Brooklyn Bridge. She loved it, but what if she hadn’t? What if she had concluded that my dad had lost it and then ran off with her old boyfriend instead? What would that have meant for me?

I might be tempted to think that if Mom had wound up with her old boyfriend, I could have been better off. I might have been taller. I might have been better looking. Maybe the other guy was royalty. That would have been cool! I could’ve lived in a castle! 

But actually, that’s not right. There’s a problem with wishing my mom wound up with the other guy, and the problem is this: “I” never would have existed. 

Maybe some other child would have existed, and maybe that child would have been taller and better looking and lived in a castle. But part of what makes me who I am – the individual that I am – is my beginning: the parents I have, the sperm and egg I came from, the combination of genes that’s true of me. 

Asking “Why didn’t God create me in a world with far less suffering?” is similar to saying, “I wish my mom had married the other guy.” I’m sure my mom and her old boyfriend would have had some very nice kids, but “I” would not have been one of them.

Very understandably, we often wish we could take some piece of suffering out of our world while keeping everything else the same. But it doesn’t work that way. Changing anything changes everything, and everyone.

Why didn’t God create a very different world? When this world fell into ruin, why didn’t God give up on it and start over? Well, it depends on what God was after. It depends on what God values. And what if one of the things He values, values greatly, is you, and the people you love, and each and every person you see walking down the street? 

Sometimes we wish God had made a different sort of world, but in doing so we unwittingly wish ourselves, and our loved ones, right out of existence. And so the problem of suffering is reframed in the form of a question: 

Could God have wronged us by creating a world in which we came to exist and are offered eternal life, rather than creating a different world in which we never would have lived? 

There is a general theme in Scripture about God having certain people in mind even before they came to exist (Eph. 1:4–5). Some verses refer to God’s choice of specific people for specific purposes (Jer. 1:4–5). But since God has control over all that comes to be, there is also a sense in which each and every person is chosen by God—known by Him before conception, knitted together by Him in the womb (Ps. 139:13), loved by Him from all time. 

God never wishes you were anyone else. Certainly, God could have given up on this world and created something else, but then He wouldn’t have gotten you, and He wanted to love you. You were not an accident. God knew you in full—every imperfection, every failure, everything you would ever do wrong—and yet, even before you were born, He chose to give you life. 

This suggests that the possibilities for a Christian response to the problem of suffering are richer and more numerous than typically assumed. The explanation for suffering is to be found not only in past human guilt or future human potential, but also in each person’s status as a present and enduring object of God’s love.

I don’t think this makes God’s decision to create and sustain this world easy, just as it is not an easy decision for human parents to bring a child into this world. But if human procreation can be an act of love so long as the parents are committed to making sacrifices for their children and to carrying their children through suffering, then divine creation too can be an act of love because our divine Parent was willing to make an extraordinary sacrifice on our behalf and He is committed—even willing to die—in order to carry us through suffering to a place where “He will wipe every tear from [our] eyes,” where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:3–4). 

Reflection Questions

• Abraham was told that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gen. 22:17). Suppose Abraham’s father Terah (Gen. 11:26) was miraculously protected from all suffering in his life, as a result of which he settled in a different city where Abraham fell in love with a woman other than Sarah. How might this one alteration radically change the entire course of Israelite and biblical history?
• When God chose to create this specific world, He knew and intended that you would come to exist. What does that say about your value and worth? How does that knowledge make you feel? 

Bible Verses

• Jeremiah 1:4–5
• Ephesians 1:4–5
• Psalm 139:13–16
• Psalm 8:4