The thorny issue of suffering in a world created by God has been the cause of a lot of disillusionment for many people. They wonder, “How a good and loving God could allow suffering to happen?”
Last week, I wrote in this column about how God has created humankind with a free will and the unfortunate but necessary consequence of that being the ability of humans to inflict suffering on each other. I said that the idea that God should intervene and stop suffering would ultimately mean He would have to eliminate all free will. The downside to God using His will to overrule our wills was the potential scenario of being forced to do things you might now otherwise not want to do. Perhaps something such as going to church and even worse, having to donate to it.
So what should God have done? Before He allowed the world to get into the mess it’s now in, He could have stopped the entire program from unfolding. He could have exercised His option to wipe Adam and Eve off the planet after their sinful choice to disobey Him. That’s one option He had.
His other option was to let it keep on going and see what potential good could still come out it. Perhaps, He could still make something good happen out of what was beginning to look like a bad thing already.
I like the way CS Lewis puts it in his book, Mere Christianity: “Of course God knew what would happen if they (Adam and Eve) used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”
So what were some of the good, even redeeming, things that could possibly come out of such a bad start? The next couple of columns will give several answers, but here’s one for today:
God knew that wonderful things could happen if, in some cases, He chose to directly intervene and resolve the problem of suffering. One such illustration can be seen a story in the Bible where the disciples of Jesus see a man blind from birth. They ask Him, “Whose fault is it that this man was born blind from birth? This man’s or his parent’s?” Jesus replied,“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
Jesus’ point was that God would receive glory from the man’s being healed by Him. And that’s what Jesus did: He healed him and the man left, seeing.
As pastor, I have seen that over and over again in my 50 years of ministry: in the midst of great suffering, God shows up, often in answer to prayer, and heals the person who has been suffering.
I recall a number of years ago, a teenaged girl in our church being diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, the flesh eating disease. The doctors had told her parents they might have to amputate her leg. Her anxious father called to tell me the bad news and I quickly arranged for a group of people to pray over her that same evening.
The next morning, the father called to say the doctors were stunned at the turn around. In a few days, her foot was back to normal. Today that girl is a mother of four lively boys, and very capably walking on both legs.
I had someone say, “But Henry, that was just a coincidence. You prayed and coincidentally, she got better.” My reply was, “Well, I find that when I pray, these coincidences happen. And when I don’t pray, they don’t.”
Ah, but someone may say, “What about all those cases God doesn’t show up in the suffering? What about all those cases when there isn’t an immediate deliverance?”
An answer to that next week.
