Why Suffering预览

A God Who Wants To Know You

One thing we hope these devotionals have shown is that it’s okay to ask the hard questions about God. In fact, God welcomes that. In fact, He delights in it!

There is little better in life than when someone really wants to know you—deeply. When they want to understand even the parts of you that others find messy and complicated, the parts that others object to, avoid, or run from altogether.

God gets that same delight when we strive to understand who He is and the ways He is at work in the world—when we say to Him, “Help me to understand You more. To the limited extent that I’m able, I want to know everything about You and the way You made the world and the reasons You have for the things that You do. I want to understand even the things that others find confusing and difficult about You, the things others attack, mock, and make every effort to dismiss.” 

A tyrant doesn’t want to be questioned; he wants only to be blindly followed. But a loving father welcomes questions. In the Bible, God is referred to as Father literally hundreds of times. Yes, He wants His children to follow His lead. But He also wants His children to begin to understand Him, and to love Him, and to trust Him. 

And so in Christianity there is the freedom to wrestle with the question, “God, why would You allow so much suffering?” The longest conversation in the entire Bible—the Book of Job—is on this very question, and Jesus’ earliest followers spent much of their time thinking about the hard questions of faith and discussing those questions with others. 

Christian faith isn’t a blind faith. Christian faith doesn’t shy away from the tough questions. In fact, the Bible praises those who “examined” the evidence every day to determine if what they were being told was true (Acts 17:11).

There isn’t a conflict between Christian faith and reason. God gave us our hearts and our minds, and He wants us to use both in our pursuit of Him. 

Sometimes we’re so quick to say God isn’t there, especially when we’re suffering. Have we asked Him to be there?

Jesus lived a life centered on an unconditional commitment not to cause suffering but to help others through it, no matter the cost: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16). 

At its core, this is what it means to be a Christian—to place your trust in a person who was willing to lay down His life to defeat the sin and suffering in your life, and to commit to following Jesus by being willing to lay down your life for others. 

Maybe you thought suffering was a knockdown objection to Christian faith. Maybe now you see that this isn’t the case. If God can be loving and good even amidst suffering, then perhaps He can be trusted with the rest of life as well. That commitment of trust can be made with simple but sincere words:

     “I’m sorry.” 

     “Thank you.” 

I’m sorry God for the suffering I’ve caused—the suffering I’ve caused You, the suffering I’ve caused others, the suffering I’ve caused myself. 

Thank You for not giving up on me. Thank You for being willing to make even the greatest sacrifice on my behalf, and in doing so proving that when I know pain in the heart and tears from the eyes, when the only words I can manage are “Why suffering?” You hear and You respond. 

In creating, God chose, by grace, to love human beings despite their vulnerability to suffering. When humanity fell into sin, God would not reject us. By becoming a man, God suffered with us. At the cross, God displayed the limitlessness of His love for us. He sent His Spirit so we would know His presence amidst suffering and have the power to stand against it. He sends His followers to every corner of the earth, to share with all people everywhere that suffering need not be their end. And in the end, He will ensure that, if we trust Him, suffering will be no more. At every point in salvation history, within every major doctrine of the Christian faith, there is a substantial divine response to suffering. 

It’s true that one day God will bring the suffering of this world to an end. But on that day the celebration will not be that there was never the possibility of evil and suffering. It will be far greater than that. It will be that the possibility of evil has been overcome, triumphed over, forever defeated by the necessity of the good—God himself. 

Reflection Questions

• Is there another way of viewing reality that responds to suffering with the grace, compassion, and courage of Jesus Christ?
• Is the loving parent the one who never allows the possibility of suffering, or the one who ensures that there is reason to hope even amidst suffering, and reason to hope that suffering will one day be overcome?

Bible Verses

• Acts 17:11
• Jeremiah 29:13
• 1 John 3:16