I'm in a group on Facebook for those who have a rare form of kidney cancer called chromophobe. And many of us freely share our faith there and how we trust God in spite of what we are going through. Someone shared this beautiful picture of Jesus standing in the midst of the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as an artist's conception of the story from the book of Daniel. This, of course, got a lot of amens from several Christians in the group. But a couple of people had a very different response: "...if there is a god, why is there so much suffering in the world?"
I took the time to respond and I thought I would share that response here, too:
//That is probably the #1 question among both Christians and non-Christians: If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the world? Interestingly, very few people ask: If God does not exist, why is there so much beauty and good and love in the world? And I think that question presents a much bigger challenge when examined carefully.
But I don't say that to minimize the difficulty of the question you raise. I found out 9 years ago that I had kidney cancer. And I have been living for 6 1/2 years as a stage 4 chromophobe patient--realizing that I am constantly being threatened with death. And I have seen people that I care about deeply and have prayed for earnestly (including in this group) suffer greatly and die. So, yeah, I have asked this question myself and had my own angry, tear-filled arguments with God.
To make matters worse, there is no simple answer. No where in the Bible does God send someone with a simple satisfying answer to this question. In the book of Job (which deals with this question more directly than any other place in the Bible), the only answer that Job gets is (to paraphrase): "Job, you aren't big enough to understand. I'm the God who created this world and your just a puny little human. You are just going to have to trust me with this."
That is not the kind of answer that we naturally want, of course. But when we actually learn to trust God, there is a peace that transcends any attempts at understanding.
That is not to say that we should not seek any kind of answer or that the Scriptures give us no answer. I myself have spent more than 40 years thinking about these difficult kinds of questions and doing my best to answer them reasonably and with integrity. Thirty years ago I took a masters level class exploring this very issue. And the issue is very very complex. But if I were to boil it down, I think the overall answer looks something like this: God created us as beings with free will because he wanted beings like himself that are able to love--and you can't get that with a robot programmed to do only what you want it to do. He did it knowing that we would inevitably do what was unloving. And we did and continue to do so. And those unloving acts are what we call sin. And sin destroys and causes suffering and ultimately death. And we all recognize that at some level. We at least recognize the pain and suffering that others cause us--though we may be slow to recognize how some sins do so...especially our own. And we may be slow to understand how our sin has led to the decay in the world that leads to natural disasters and disease.
And again, though God knew all this would result, he had a plan to bring something beautiful out of all of it. He has a plan to limit the extent of this destruction of sin. It will not go on forever. When the time is right, he will intervene and make all things right. And the suffering of this world will seem like nothing in light of our eternity with him. For "our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all" (2 Corinthians 4:17).
But I think there is a nagging question that really lies behind this question: "Does God care about our suffering? Or does he just sit out there on his throne far removed from us in some other dimension that we call heaven?" And the Bible does give a clear answer to that important question--a clear and emphatic answer. He became one of us and lived in the midst of our pain and experienced it in every way that we do. And then he died and suffered a very cruel and humiliating death to pay the cost for the sin that he allowed--our sin. And he did it so that he could be both just and the justifier of those who put their trust in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26).
So that is as concise an answer as I can give to this very thorny and emotional question. I hope it helps. I know that it has been helpful to me. Blessings, friends.//
