Why SufferingSample

God: The Author of Life

To grasp the significance of human freedom in the Christian understanding of suffering, one must first appreciate a central tenet of the Christian worldview: God is the author of life.

Often, what naturalists present as the ultimate cause is nothing more than an intermediary one. For example, when physicists boast that gravity explains everything, this is no more an explanation than saying that the printing of a dictionary is explained by the existence of an alphabet. Scientists of such caliber as Sir Frederick Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have even gone so far as to advocate a panspermian theory for the origin of life, according to which spores from the clouds or another planet seeded the earth.

In fact, the theory of panspermia has become the mainstream in the new science of astrobiology—a link between astronomy and biology. The reason scientists keep probing for life forms on other planets is because our scientific laws don’t explain the origin of life. All this to say that the theories of origins proffered by scientists run the gamut from how our values “biologized” to how our origins are “astrobiologized.” In humility we must recognize that the vastness of knowledge is still far from our grasp. There is still a blank sheet before the naturalists. 

Regardless of the how, for the Christian the starting point is that God is the author of life. So the difference really lies in one of two beginnings:

1. In the beginning God—with a purpose, with intent, with design, with a revealed blueprint—brought the created order into being; or
2. In the beginning nothing—no purpose, no design, yet from primordial slime or cloudburst (no one asks from whence the slime or cloud) with no prevision—became something, and the something gradually moved up the scale of complexity until thought emerged and, finally, this self-caused entity we call Homo Sapiens appeared. 

In the beginning was matter, or in the beginning was the mind of God? From these two starting points we have to understand why evil and suffering—why we hurt, bleed, die, and suffer.

It’s interesting that when Job cried out to God for answers to his pain and suffering, God began His personal response by going back to the beginning of time, asking Job how much he knew about how things came to be: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:4). 

God then moved directly to the created order. The point is clear that if God is the author of life, He has an answer to suffering. If something indeed came from nothing, then nothing is really the answer to suffering. But if we are the creation of a personal, moral, infinite, loving God, then He will have the answer for us. 

After listening to God, Job asks in utter humility that God reveal to him much that he didn’t know. Through that ordeal of losing everything he had except his life, Job found that all he needed to know was to keep his feet on the ground and his mind above the clouds. It was in the valley of his darkest nights and fears through which Job labored for his answers.

Who then is the Creator? From the Christian worldview, He is the non-physical, intelligent, moral, and personal first cause of the universe who, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, revealed Himself to mankind. With God as the prime mover, an explanation for everything else can be found. 

Reflection Questions

• Why is it that the spiritual realm of existence, rather than the physical/material realm, gives light to and explains everything else?
• Why is it reasonable to conclude that if God is the author of life, then He has an answer to suffering as well?

Bible Verses

• Job 38:4
• Genesis 1–2
• Hebrews 11:3