When we consider the question, “Why does God allow pain and suffering?” we do so not merely as an academic question to satisfy our curiosity. We do so knowing what pain is, and we are aware that it surrounds us all the time - even if, in the present moment, we are not experiencing it ourselves. Therefore I believe that this subject must be approached with due gravity. There is a time to laugh, but this is not it. And I also believe there ought never be a spirit of contempt – something I have witnessed many times – a sneering, dismissive contempt for those who seek to come to terms with pain in light of deep questions about ultimate reality. Pain and grief are real, staggeringly real, and may God have mercy on our souls if our response to suffering involves anything less than sympathy, love, and the sharing of tears.
This question why God allows pain and suffering is often asked rhetorically by people who don’t believe in God. For them what lies behind the question is the assumption that if there were a God, he would not allow suffering. Since it exists, there can’t be a God.
This was at least part of the reasoning that led to the most famous deconversion of the 20th century, that of Charles Templeton. Templeton was a friend and colleague of Billy Graham. Like Graham he was a preacher who conducted evangelistic rallies in the 1940s and 50s. In the early 50s he hosted a religious television program. Then in 1957 he declared that he no longer believed in God. Later when asked about any pivotal moments in his deconversion he said, “I was reading LIFE magazine and there was a photograph in the magazine of a black woman in northern Africa and she was holding her dead baby in her hands and looking up to heaven. And I looked at it and I thought, ‘How could a loving God do this to this woman? How is it possible to believe that there is a loving or caring creator when all this woman needed was rain?’"
How does a Christian like me respond to that?
First of all let me tell you something I have noticed over the years concerning this objection to the possibility of there being a caring God in the light of such tragedies as the death of children. Again and again I have seen that these objections tend to come with greatest frequency, vehemence, and even anger not on the part of people who themselves suffered these horrors, but rather from people who, relatively speaking, have led pretty easy lives. Templeton himself is a good example. It wasn’t his child who died of starvation in an African famine. He had four children. I looked them up, and as far as I can tell they have had productive and prosperous lives.
It would have been interesting to ask the African mother of the dead baby if she believed in God. That I don’t know.
I have a friend, now retired, who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in the 50s and 60s. In his neighborhood there were plenty of the older generation who were survivors of the Nazi holocaust. My friend noticed something extraordinary. He said, as a rule, generally speaking, the generation that experienced the holocaust believed in God. But the next generation, growing up comfortably in an American suburb with all their needs met and having no fear of Nazis – they were the ones where you found atheists saying, “How can there be a God – look at the holocaust!”
It is simply not the case that those who have suffered much are more likely to disbelieve in God than those who have suffered little. If there is a correlation, it runs the other way.
When the great tsunami hit the shores of southeast Asia on December 26, 2004, killing hundreds of thousands of people, columnist Eric Zorn wrote an essay that was unmistakably angry in tone and clearly contemptuous of those who exercised religious faith despite such a tragedy. Zorn specifically vented his anger toward those who thanked God for their deliverance from the tragedy. He wrote, “I can’t see all those dead kids and not wonder about the prayers of their parents that went unanswered, the hopes shattered, the lives in ruins.” He attributed to Christians the belief that prayers for deliverance and thanksgiving for it “suggest that those who suffer have it coming – that God was insufficiently praised and begged on their behalf - and that those who thrive are singled out for divine favor.”
In that diatribe that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Zorn did make a parenthetical acknowledgement that he at least was viewing this tragedy “from the safety and comfort of a desk nearly 9,000 miles away.”
I believe that there was great significance, more than Zorn himself seemed willing to admit, in the fact he was sitting comfortably at a desk 9,000 miles away, maybe sipping a cup of coffee, working in a nicely heated office, and going home to a good place with heat and air conditioning and a fully stocked refrigerator, having access to superb health care whenever he might need it, and living out his days in the wealthiest and most comfortable nation that ever existed – and from that vantage point telling people How dare you trust in God, and pray to him and thank him – just look at all those poor suffering souls in Indonesia!
There is what I regard to be an echo of an insidious dynamic that we would do well to be aware of. At the close of my last sermon on the existence of God I talked about the natural and delightful urge to give thanks, to give thanks to a Personal Being for the joys and reliefs that we experience. That is an instinct that can be suppressed and has been suppressed successfully by those who have convinced themselves that there is no God to thank. But having suppressed thanksgiving in themselves, many such people will not rest until they have suppressed it in others too – to the point where your joyful thanks will be upsetting to them. They will find it unnerving and offensive. They may even attack it, try to make you feel guilty about it, and cloak their hostility in the garb of righteousness and moral indignation. “How dare you thank God for healthy children when other people’s children have died!”
Some time ago I saw a posting by an anti-religious zealot, a 3-panel poster. First panel, a pop star with the caption, “Thank you God for helping me win this Grammy award.” 2nd panel: a football player in the end zone with the caption “Thank you God for helping me score this touchdown.” Third panel, a starving African child. No caption. The message was, stop thanking God for these trivial things when other people lack basic necessities. That may sound like a noble sentiment, but please see where it leads. The ultimate goal is to ensure that no thanks be given for anything, ever. How can you thank God for healthy children when others’ children have died? How can you thank God for food when others starve? Do not thank God for sight, because some people are blind. Do not thank him for two good legs, because some people are paralyzed. And so on and so on till every last vestige of healthy, joyous thanks has been shut down, removed from the human soul, and we are all appropriately bitter on one another’s behalf.
I beg you not to be bullied by righteous unbelievers into forsaking the joys of a thankful spirit – especially when that metaphysical bullying comes from people who can be found on their vacations sipping mai tais on a beach in Hawaii and saying “Oh those poor starving Africans, how can anyone believe in God?”
Well, Martin Rinkhart believed in God, and he conducted 4000 funerals, including that of his wife, when plague struck his town of Eilenburg in 1637. Martin Rinkhart is the author of the hymn Now Thank We All Our God:
Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices
Who from our mothers' arms
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today
I don’t know how social relationships work in heaven. But I would count it an extraordinary privilege if I got a chance to look up and meet with Martin Rinkhart.
Of course the question still remains, “Why do Africans starve and local children die while playing in a snow fort?”
I don’t know – I cannot give a complete answer. If I could give a complete answer I’d be God. But the fact that I cannot give a complete answer does not mean that I cannot give a partial answer. There are a few things that I do know. There are some things relevant to this question that I can offer to seekers after God.
The first is to clear up an egregious misunderstanding, an absolute howler of a misapprehension concerning what the Christian faith teaches. In the column I referred to earlier Eric Zorn complained that Christian practice suggests that those who suffer have it coming and that those who thrive are singled out for divine favor. That is just not a Christian belief. In fact, frankly, it’s picking on the wrong religion. Christianity does not teach a simple karmic balance of good behavior rewarded and evil behavior punished. There is a different religion for that. When the Dalai Lama was asked the provocative question, “Do you thank the Buddha for the good things in your life?” he said this:
Frankly speaking, my own happiness is mainly due to my own good karma. It is a fundamental Buddhist belief that my own suffering is due to my mistakes. If some good things happen, that is mainly due to my own good actions, not something related to a direct connection with Buddha.
Now I have nothing against the Dalai Lama personally. He seems like a very nice smiling man. I do find appalling what he calls the fundamental Buddhist belief that one’s suffering is due to one’s own mistakes, and that when good things happen, that is mainly due to our own good actions. I am not a Buddhist, I am a Christian. And as a Christian I feel the full weight of the Bible’s words in Ecclesiastes 8:14 which speak of “the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve.” That is what happens sometimes. In fact the primary tangible symbol of my faith is a cross - A Roman cross, an instrument of execution - where the only perfect human being who ever lived was tortured to death. The righteous one got what the wicked deserved. And in a mystery of unfathomable consequence that causes me to worship God, by that same cross, a wicked one, me, gets what the Righteous One deserves: eternal communion and fellowship with God.
It is frustrating to the point of exasperation when a fallacy that explicitly lies at the heart of another faith tradition gets attributed to Christianity, when Christianity repudiates it with wonder and awe and worship every time we gaze upon the cross.
Secondly: we must not assume that we know everything.
Part of the message of the book of Job is that our scope is limited, we cannot see things from God’s perspective, and we ought not claim to know what we can’t know. Perhaps an analogy will help.
You see a little girl, four years old, playing by herself. A full-grown man, with no provocation that you can see, appears suddenly, picks her up and tosses her violently, causing her to scream out, and become bruised when she falls to the ground. What do you conclude? The man is a monster, a psychopath perhaps. Someone rescue that poor little girl from that beast.
But you have only watched five seconds of an event through a narrow telescopic lens. What you did not see is that the girl was playing on a train track and a locomotive was bearing down on her. The man was rescuing her. Here’s something else you did not see – the aftermath when the train hit him rather than her. And he knew that the only way he could save her was by sacrificing himself. The man you saw was not a monster but the most courageous and godly man you ever would have known.
When Charles Templeton looked at a photograph of a dead baby and a despairing mother and concluded there was no God he had to assume that he had enough information surrounding that event to justify that conclusion. And that is assuming more than we can possibly know. For example Templeton had to assume that the child was not in heaven in the presence of God, perhaps, by now, joined by his mother in raptures of eternal delight. Templeton had to assume that that child, had he lived and grown, would not have become an abuser of women and a murderer. He had to assume that that photograph would not inspire countless acts of selfless giving and charity on the part of loving individuals who made better use of their lives than writing paperback thrillers of the sort Templeton eventually produced.
There is a vast amount of human presumption that is built into the conclusion that there can be no just and caring God when we have barely glimpsed a fleeting moment of time through the keyhole of limited perception. We do not see the bigger picture, and we cannot claim that we see it all. That would arrogant. Jesus once told a story – I think it’s a parable, but I'm not sure – of a fabulously rich man and a homeless beggar whose needs the rich man ignored. The rich man goes to hell and the poor man to heaven and a dramatic interchange ensues. That’s the story that comes to my mind when I imagine the African woman in that LIFE Magazine photo, now united with her son in glory, considering Charles Templeton and asking, “You rejected God because of us?”
My third point I will put in the form of a question. Do you like virtue?
Of course. Who doesn’t like virtue?
Now try to imagine an existence without suffering. Are you able to do that? I think I can imagine that. In fact I believe that is the case in heaven, where every tear is wiped away. There is something that is also true about heaven. The Bible says that no unclean thing can enter it. Sin cannot dwell there. All rebellion against the will of God is banished from heaven. That is why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Heaven is the realm where God’s will is always done, rather than resisted and chafed at and disregarded. All the sins that cling to you must be burned off before you will be a fit candidate for heaven. We are allowed, under the sovereignty of God, to contaminate the earth in all kinds of ways, but we will not be allowed to contaminate heaven, morally or otherwise.
The place where we live now is not heaven. It is contaminated by sin, our own sins, and, I believe, the sins of spirits who preceded us, namely demons. We live in a fallen world.
What does goodness look like in a fallen world as opposed to an unfallen paradise? Well, in a fallen world, goodness necessarily takes on certain forms – forms that delight us and inspire us and that direct our minds to understand the character of God. And goodness could never take on those forms if there were no suffering for it to respond to. That’s why I started out by asking if you like virtue. Yes? Well pick a virtue, and ask yourself if that virtue could exist at all in a world without sorrow.
Compassion, for example. If no one suffered, there could be no exercise of compassion. There would be no such thing as pity.
Courage. There is no such as thing as courage in a world where no danger is faced.
Perseverance. There is no perseverance in a world without obstacles.
Resilience. There is no resilience, no bouncing back in a world where there is no misfortune to bounce back from.
Patience. There is no patience in a world where no circumstances require it.
Sacrifice. There is no beauty of love in a person sacrificing his own pleasures, or even his life, for the sake of others.
Help. The wonderful virtue of help. This Wednesday one of you might find yourself standing outside in -20 temperatures helping a hapless stranger with jumper cables start his car with your healthy battery. I give thanks to God for that. And I also know that there would be no such thing as the virtue of help in a world where no one needed it.
It is a given that we sin. It is a given that our world is fallen into corruption. Given that fact, that we live in a fallen, sinful world, thank God that there is also suffering, because without that, then in addition to the world being sinful, it would be a place without compassion, courage, perseverance, resilience, patience, sacrifice, help, and a host of other virtues that delight the soul and direct the heart to worship God.
The Bible says in Hebrews 8:5 that Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered. Superficially that seems like a weird thing for the Bible to say, because many times the Bible insists that Jesus never sinned at all. "He committed no sin," "He knew no sin," "In him was no sin," etc. So how can a sinless person learn obedience? In this way. There are certain commandments that you will never obey until suffering gives you the opportunity to obey them. How do you bless someone who curses you if no one has ever cursed you? How do you pray for someone who despitefully uses you until someone despitefully uses you? Only when certain kinds of suffering happen can certain kinds of obedience follow. Even perfection has to learn that obedience in the school of suffering.
Fourth observation. Another question: Do people come to God apart from suffering? If they never suffered, would they look to God?
Most people have seen the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life. This past week I re-watched on YouTube the clip of Jimmy Stewart at the point of suicidal despair, praying to God at Martini’s tavern. A perceptive playwright gave Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey these words to pray: “God, God. Dear Father in heaven. I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way God.”
Very interesting prayer. He begins by saying, “I’m not praying man…”. Why not? Why hasn’t he been a praying man? If prayer is a good gift that God has ordained for our delight and his glory, why hasn't George Bailey been a praying man? Well because up to this point in his life he hasn’t felt the need to be. Life in Bedford Falls working at the Savings and Loan may not have been the life he dreamed of, but it’s not so bad. He has satisfaction and health and friends and enough to get by and he’s married to Donna Reed for Pete’s sake. It is not until everything falls apart that his eyes turn heavenward to the God who made him and loved him and created him for the purpose of delighting in him forever. It took a crisis of suffering to get him to think about God.
I know that’s a fictional story, but it’s pretty on target with regard to a theme that dominates many peoples’ lives – that of ignoring God completely until tragedy drives them to their knees.
Let me tell you a real story. In the spring of 1985 I worked a grunt job in a warehouse for minimum wage as I prepared for further schooling and missionary service. The working environment was not morally inspiring, and the talk in the breakroom was not edifying to the soul. And at one point I prayed, “Lord, if there are any Christians in this place, please help me to find them.” Then one day I came into the breakroom and I saw a Bible on the table. So I sat down next to it and waited to see who was reading a Bible on break. Turned it was a couple black guys doing a Bible study together. We shared our stories of how we became Christians.
One guy, soft-spoken, with a look of maturity and peace in his eyes, said that his son led him to Christ. His son was four years old at the time, and had an inoperable brain tumor that took his life. But the man told me that his son was so happy with Jesus that he would go up and down the halls of their apartment building singing songs of praise to Jesus, and that he wanted the inner life that his dying son had. I might wonder, “God, isn’t there an easier way to bring a man to Christ?” But I’m not God, and I don’t see the whole picture, and I do know that for many people it takes the severest of sufferings to unite their souls to God for their own eternal good.
Finally, remember this. Suffering is not something that takes place outside of God and is therefore something that he conceivably could be indifferent to. The Bible says that God has tasted of suffering himself. No other faith tradition - whether theistic or atheistic - can say that Ultimate Reality is a loving participant in our pain. But the Bible prophesied that Messiah would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Jesus fulfilled that. He wept. He cried out in anguish. He was put on a cross for our sake and our salvation. You can’t tell him he doesn’t know what suffering is.
In the wake of the devastating carnage of World War I a man named Edward Shilito wrote a poem “Jesus of the Scars” in which he imagined a kind of wound-based communication between the Lord Christ and ourselves. That poem ends with these words:
The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Wounded God. May our scars, and the scars of Jesus, point the way homeward to our eternal dwelling place with you where every tear will be wiped away. In Jesus' name, amen.
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