God, Why do you let me suffer?

When we are hurt the first question that comes up in our mind is "Why Me?" It is easy to philosophize and explain away sorrow and suffering in this world until it hits us personally. C.S.Lewis once remarked "I can write another chapter on pain, if only my toothache will go away". Years after coming out with an excellent treatise on "The problem of Pain", when it struck him personally in the demise of his loved wife, he wrote "Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, if you turn to Him then with praise, you will be welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away."

When trouble comes our way, we are confused by the cacophony of voices that we hear around us.

• "Surely you must have done something that has displeased God. He is trying to tell you something."
• "Suffering is never God's will. Have you not read in the Bible that faith can move mountains? Name your promise, muster your faith and claim victory."
• "Praise God for everything that happens, good ones and bad ones."
• "You have been appointed to suffer for Christ because of your great strength and integrity. He is using you as an example to others. You should feel privileged not bitter."

And the resultant confusion just adds to our misery:

• What unconfessed sin do I have ?
• Why am I not able to muster enough faith to see deliverance ?
• How do I thank him for the suffering ? Is he a sadist who will hurt me and then desire to see me thank him for the hurt?
• Couldn't God choose someone more stronger than me to suffer for Him ?

Philip Yancey begins his book Where is GOD When it Hurts? with an appreciation for pain. Pain alerts us of dangers and keeps us from harm. When we have a ligament tear in our ankle, the pain alerts us of the problem and demands that we provide rest so it can heal. A hurt in our soul such as guilt helps us to locate the cause and undo the wrong. It is said that you appreciate shade only when you are out in the sun. Even so, to appreciate the benefit of pain, one needs to look at what absence of it does. For thousands of years it was believed that the loss of tissue in leprosy patients was caused by a certain fungus. Dr. Paul Brand through his pioneering research uncovered the fact that the ulcers were actually caused by abuse of body parts in the absence of pain. He therefore relishes pain as God’s gift. He points out how to even mop a floor without hurting or to dress nicely and walk normally, one needs the gift of pain. In Dr.Brand's words, "Pain is often seen as the great inhibitor, keeping us from happiness. But I see it as a giver of freedom." People generally tend to view pain as God's singular mistake in an otherwise wonderful creation. Why not alert of danger through some means that does not hurt? Simply alerting does not lead one to respond; the stimulus has to be unpleasant to demand action. The Bible tells us that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope”. (Rom 5:3,4). The pain network in the human body is a brilliant design by the Creator to keep us from danger and to build our character.

But what about pain that rages out of control? In patients suffering from Cancer or Arthritis, even after pain has given away the underlying problem and treatment has commenced, pain refuses to die. What do we make of such pain? Yancey points out that just as pain is a symptom of a deeper problem, sorrow and suffering in this world are symptoms of a world that has gone awry. He points out that we now live on a groaning planet. Paul tells the Romans in Rom 8:22, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time". 24,000different types of bacteria have been identified and only a few of them cause illness. The earth's climatic system needs major disturbances such as the Tropical storms to bring rains. But why permit hurricanes? God looked at His creation and found it to be good, but today we see the consequences of man’s fall. C.S.Lewis said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience but shouts in our pains. It is His Megaphone to rouse a dead world." Three centuries before him, John Donne used a different phrase to describe the same concept. "I need thy thunder, O my God; thy music will not serve thee." His father-in-law got him fired and brought his law career to a halt. He then turned to church and took order as an Anglican priest. A year later his wife Anne died of cancer and a few years later he himself contracted the bubonic plague. On his death bed, he wrote the book Devotions which contains the celebrated passage: “No man is an island . . . Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”. Suffering and death serve as stark reminders of what everyone spends a lifetime trying to forget -- We will all die.

Thirdly, Yancey looks at what the Bible tells us about suffering and how Jesus himself responded to suffering while on this earth.

• Many Old Testament passages warn against painful consequences that follow specific actions. Proverbs is full of such advice: Laziness brings on deep sleep; shiftless man goes hungry (Prov 19:15). A person who speeds on rain-slick highways courts the danger of hydroplaning. A person who eats all fried-foods exposes his body to health hazards such as heart-attack and cancer.

• Some Old Testament passages show God causing human suffering as punishment for wrong behaviour. Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Habakkuk, Hosea and Ezekiel all bristle with dire warnings of judgment but also hold out the hope that God will restrain himself if Israel turns to God. The people of Israel know why they were being punished; the prophets had warned them in excruciating detail. They do not sit around asking “Why?” They know very well why they are suffering. To be effective a punishment needs to be clearly tied to a behaviour. A parent who sneaks up at odd times and whacks the child with no explanation, will not produce an obedient child. Therefore, unless God distinctly reveals that we are being punished, it would do us good to look at other models in the Bible. [In the New Testament too, we see suffering as punishment -- as in Paul’s warning about participating in the communion without due regard (I Cor 11:29,30) and in the case of Ananias & Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).]

• When we turn to Jesus, we find him extremely sensitive to suffering and setting about to remedy. He never spoke about “accepting your lot in life” or “taking the medicine God has given you”. In Luke 13, Jesus talks about Satan causing the disease of a woman bound for 18 years (v10-16). But early on in the same chapter, Jesus is asked about 2 “current events” that had evidently prompted much local discussion – the parallels to today’s accidents and gruesome crimes. One was an act of political oppression in which Roman soldiers slaughtered a religious minority, and the other a construction accident that killed 18 people. He does not answer the question most on their mind with a “Here’s why these tragedies occurred”. But he makes it clear that they did not occur as a result of specific wrong-doing. "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!" He quickly adds, “But unless you repent, you too will all perish." He implies that we “bystanders of catastrophe” have as much to learn from the event as do the victims. It does not help to ask "Why?" He will not answer just as He did not explain the cause to Job. A tragedy should rather alert us to make ourselves ready in case we are the next victim of an accident or an act of terrorism.

We see that Pain is God’s grand design to protect us from harm. We also see that Pain that today ravages out of control, is a result of Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden. However, the Lord who transforms and redeems pain has allowed it to serve as His Megaphone, His thunder to remind us that we are not to find comfort in temporal things but to set our sights on what is eternal. In the meantime, pain hurts. But he has given us a glorious hope that lightens the pain and makes it bearable.

• “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who . . . will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” (Phil 3:20,21)

• “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for . . . the redemption of our bodies.” (Rom 8:23)

• “The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (I Per 5:10)

• “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (II Cor 4:17,18)

• “For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality." (I Cor 15:52,53)

We all seek deliverance from pain and suffering. Our good Lord gives all of us a sample of his miraculous healing at some point in our life, but it is just a sample. Anyone who has experienced God’s healing may still experience pain or suffering again at some later point in life. Even Lazarus and the widow’s son who were raised by Jesus had to die again. We will all experience perfect deliverance only in eternity. In Hebrews 11, we find two types of deliverance. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jeptha and the prophets all received miraculous deliverance. Others were tortured, jeered, flogged, chained, imprisoned, sawed, killed by sword. They did not receive what was promised in this world but will be made perfect together with us in the world to come. Cheer up. A glorious future awaits us.