Why SufferingMuestra

Many Reasons, Many Responses

To recap what we’ve seen over this devotional series, there are many reasons for thinking that the existence of suffering doesn’t negate the existence of a loving and powerful God: 

• God’s gift of freedom is not itself evil. Indeed, it’s the precondition of love. Rather, it’s our abuse of that gift that is the cause of so much of the evil and suffering around us.
• One of the reasons God values this world is His love for us. We should be slow to impugn God for creating a world that included the possibility of suffering when the creation of a different world would have meant our probable nonexistence.
• If God has willingly suffered death on the cross, He has made such an extravagant display of His love for us that it is rational for us to trust Him, even when we lack full understanding.
• The Christian explanation of suffering is distinct in both the seriousness with which it takes suffering and the richness of its response to suffering.
• The moral outrage at suffering that often motivates the problem of evil finds its justification in the very God that it seeks to dismiss. 
• A good creator might allow suffering if He also provided the power to stand against it. By His Spirit, God has provided such a power. 
• It matters to a parent’s decision to allow a child to suffer whether ultimately the parent can take the child out of that suffering and defeat it. God can do just that.
• For many people God’s presence and goodness are more real to them in times of suffering. One explanation for this takes the form of a relational knowledge of God that is less like reasoning about someone and more like seeing someone with one’s own eyes. This too is reason to trust God amidst suffering.
• Given our finitude, we are far from being disappointed by this array of responses. Instead, we should be surprised that there is so much to say! 

The more reasons God has for allowing suffering, the more likely it is that those reasons add up to a morally justifying reason overall. Even if you question whether any of these reasons are sufficient to justify God’s allowance of suffering on their own, when considered cumulatively they may nevertheless be more than sufficient, and therefore point strongly to the goodness and trustworthiness of God. 

Such a diversity of testimony in God’s favor gives us compelling reason to trust in God’s love even amidst suffering. And if we can trust Him with our pain and suffering, then we can also trust Him with the rest of our lives. 

Reflection Questions

• Who tramples reason: the person who says there is a good God or the person who says there is not even good or evil?
• Can someone who would rather die than see you in suffering, sin, or shame really be someone who is against you?

Bible Verses

• Romans 8:31
• Hebrews 4:14–16