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WHY DOES GOD LET PEOPLE SUFFER?

Some will tell you God has a wonderful plan for your life that involves a path to perpetual blessing. Sadly, they leave out the part about life's disappointments and the reality of suffering. Most of our heroes of faith from the Bible experienced disappointments in life, yet their lives teach us that disappointments in life don't have to cripple us or devastate our lives, if we understand God is faithful in the midst of our sufferings.

The Apostle Paul knew that “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.” (1 Corinthians 1:9)

Some make a huge error when evaluating the character of God. They decide what they believe about the character of God by looking through the lens of what they're going through. “If I'm feeling blessed, God must be good,” and conversely, “If I'm experiencing pain, God must be vengeful.” Understanding God's character this way is a huge mistake because when life puts us in a tailspin (and it probably will), it leads to the conclusion God can't be trusted. Media mogul Ted Turner recently told a group of churchgoers that he attended a Billy Graham crusade as a young man and considered Christianity, but abandoned his faith after his sister died from an immune disease and his father committed suicide. Turner came to the same conclusion many others do when they feel God is only out to get us.

There are several factors that can be helpful to explain why we suffer. These include the effects of sin, the insurmountable evidence that Satanic forces are at work in our world and the exercise of human choices that cause pain. But we need to understand that God doesn't always explain why we suffer. Perhaps the classic example of this in Scripture is the book of Job. Maybe you know the story of Job in the Old Testament. Job was a good man, who, in one single hellish day, lost nearly everything. He lost his children, his business, his material wealth. And, if that weren't bad enough, he even lost his health - he was covered with sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. The majority of the book of Job deals with the why question. Job's friends come to him and try to figure out why God allowed these sufferings.

Job's friends simply could not reconcile the concept of a loving God allowing a good person to suffer, so they concluded Job had a hidden fault. Guess what? They were wrong. God permitted Satan to afflict Job with suffering for a divine purpose unknown to Job. After allowing Job and his friends to speculate about these matters, God finally responds and says to Job, “Who are you to question my wisdom with your ignorant, empty words?” (Job 38:2, GN) Then, instead of giving the answer to human suffering, God gives a pop quiz. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Do you know how its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying?… Who defined the boundaries of the sea… Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know!” (Job 38, NLT) God revealed to Job - and to us - that He is not obligated to answer the ``why'' question. We're reminded by the Old Testament writer Isaiah, “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’''

Granted, coming to grip with the fact that we'll never understand the ``why'' for everything we suffer is one of life's biggest challenges! We would be able to manage our emotions better when we suffer if we would respond to God's invitation - His advice at times of disappointment found in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God . . .'' As strange as this sounds, God invites us to come to know Him even in the midst of our sufferings. We come to know Him personally through faith in Jesus Christ.

As a believer in Jesus Christ, I'm confident that one day God will relieve our pain and suffering. In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote, “And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us… But if we look forward to something we don't have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently.”  (Romans 8:23, 25, NLT) Even though Christians have received the unspeakable gift of the Spirit of God, we still suffer as we wait. We wait for the day when our salvation - our redemption - will be complete. When that occurs, God will relieve every pain, dry every tear and give us a new resurrected body. Even though there may be some hurts and disappointments we may not be able to completely shake in this life, every believer has the hope that when we're in our permanent rest, every disappointment will vanish before God's throne.