Speaking of Faith: Suffering

Speaking of Faith: Suffering

Romans 5: 1 – 8.

Introduction

One of the remarkable characteristics of the Bible is the way it is brutally honest.  We see this in the story of the disciples in all four Gospels.  In teaching his disciples, Jesus predicted his death and resurrection.  Jesus told them he would be betrayed, he would suffer physically, he would die, and he would rise again on the third day.  Yet, the disciples did not understand what Jesus was telling them. If the Gospels were nothing more than stories made up by human authors, this is not what we would expect.  Instead, we would expect the disciples to be heroic in their faith in Jesus and enlightened in their understanding of Jesus and his purpose for their lies.

Another place we see the brutal honesty of the Bible is in the Book of Psalms.  If the Psalms were nothing more than human words written by human authors, they would present the highest form of human spirituality.  And, some of the Psalms do contain bold statements of faith in God—his protection and his provision.  But other Psalms sound more like complaints against God. 

Psalm 13: 1 – 2, “How long, O LORD?  Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?  How long will my enemy triumph over me (NIV)?”

Psalm 22: 1 – 2, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent (NIV).”

In the Psalms, we listen to the prayers of people just like us.  Sometimes their prayers express absolute faith and confidence in God.  At other times, their prayers express the honesty of what it feels like to be abandoned by God or at least forgotten in the experience of pain and suffering.

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Have you ever felt like that?  (If the Bible is honest about the feelings of despair and loneliness in the experience of suffering, the least we could do is to be honest with ourselves.)

Suffering is simply a part of what it means to be human.  Everyone has been touched by suffering to one degree or another.  We live with the realities of natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.  We have loved ones who are dealing with dreaded diseases like cancer.  We experience broken relationships and even the deaths of people who are closest to us.

In our honest moments, we find ourselves asking questions like: Why is this happening to me?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Or, If God is a good God, why does God allow suffering?

While these questions have no clear cut answers, for some people, these questions with no answers are all they need to completely dismiss God.  They believe ultimate reality comes down to a choice between two opposites.  Either there is a good God who prevents human suffering, or there is human suffering which proves there is no God.

There is a problem with such a simplistic explanation.  For example, how can we know that suffering is inconsistent with the goodness of God?  To say that suffering proves a good God does not exist is based on the assumption that suffering is evil.  To say that suffering is evil requires us to believe there is a difference between good and evil.  And matters of good and evil are not matters which can be proven through human logic.  Discerning the difference between good and evil requires a moral judgment and an objective understanding of good and evil.  In other words, we have to recognize that there is a God before we can determine if something is evil.  (Either there is a God, or there is something which serves the role of God—moralism, humanism, conscience or justice.)

In fact, I would argue the exact opposite and say that the Christian worldview is the only worldview with anything to say about human suffering.  Atheism either claims that suffering is evil and proves there is no God (but that doesn’t work, because how can we label something as evil without acknowledging God), or it claims that suffering is meaningless, because the universe is meaningless.  Hinduism, Christian Science and New Age spirituality claim that suffering is merely an illusion (and we can learn how to transcend suffering through mysticism and meditation).

This is what makes Christianity different.  We believe suffering has a purpose and that suffering has a remedy.

Romans 5: 1 – 8.

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;

4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.

5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

(NIV)

Purpose of Suffering

According to Paul’s words in verse 3 – 5, there is a purpose in suffering.  “Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance (produces character), and character (produces) hope.”

We ought to read these words in light of what Paul says later on in Romans 8: 28, “And we know that in all things God works together for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (NIV).”

Suffering by itself is inanimate.  It has no life of its own and cannot accomplish anything in our lives by itself.  Paul tells us to think of suffering as a tool, which can be used by God to accomplish a good purpose in our lives.  Through suffering, God teaches us how to persevere.  Through perseverance, God develops our character to become more like the character of Jesus.  Through character development, God instills hope in us—a hope that will not be disappointed.  This is a hope that will be fulfilled when God keeps his promises.

One way to think of this is to make a very common illustration about the way our physical bodies grow and develop.  There is only one way to grow your muscles and to make them stronger.  Muscles grow when they face resistance.  Without resistance, our muscles would become weak and flabby.

In the same way, suffering is exercise for our spiritual lives.  We grow spiritually to become the men and women God wants us to become—molded into the image of Jesus our Lord—through suffering and perseverance.  This is the reason why Paul tells us to rejoice in our sufferings.  When we suffer, it means God is using the difficulties of life to make us stronger in faith and in character.  It means God isn’t finished working on us.

Origin of Suffering

Of course, we should not take this to mean God is the cause of our suffering.  No.  God is a good and loving God who gives us good gifts and uses suffering to accomplish his good purposes in our lives—to make us like Jesus.  However, the Bible does teach us about a strong connection between evil and suffering.

Romans 5: 12, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned… (NIV)”

According to Paul, there is a strong connection between suffering, death, sin and evil.  This connection goes all the way back to the story of creation and fall in Genesis 3.

When God created the first man and woman, he placed them in a Paradise we call the Garden of Eden.  As long as Adam and Eve lived in the Garden, they experienced Paradise.  There was a perfect relationship between humanity and God.  There was a perfect relationship between human man and woman.  There was a perfect relationship between humanity and creation.  But, this only lasted until sin entered into creation.  When Adam and Eve sinned, all of these relationships were broken.

Sin is a spiritual problem.  It separates humanity from God.  But, sin also has physical consequences.  The relationship between man and woman was broken—God told the woman she would desire after her husband, and he would rule over her (no longer a perfect relationship).  The relationship between humanity and creation was broken—God told the man that the earth was cursed as a result of their sin, and Adam would have to labor and toil to eke out an existence from the land (the world was no longer a Paradise).

This is a very important part of the Christian worldview.  The world around us may challenge us, “If God is a good God, and if God is all-powerful, then why didn’t God create a world without evil and suffering?”  The answer is…God did create a world without evil and suffering.  Evil was not God’s creation.  Evil is the result of human freedom and the fall.

Perhaps it would be helpful to use the definition of evil offered by Saint Augustine of Hippo.  Saint Augustine said, “Evil is the privation (or absence) of good.”  What God created to be good (human free will) was used for evil when it ceased to be good.  We might think of something as simple as a knife.  A knife is neither good nor evil.  But a person can use a knife for either good or evil purposes.  A knife can be used to make sandwiches, or a knife can be used to cause harm to another person.  Evil and suffering are the results of something good gone bad—human freedom used to serve selfish purposes.

When we speak of the fall, we acknowledge two ongoing realities.  On one hand, sin infects all of human life.  All humans have a sinful nature, which affects the choices we make on a day by day, minute by minute basis (a spiritual reality).  On the other hand, sin has changed our relationship with the entire created order (a physical reality).  Both humanity and the created order are fallen.  This explains why we deal with evil on a personal, spiritual level and why we experience natural, physical evil in things like cancer, hurricanes and earthquakes.

The Christian Gospel describes a redeemed humanity through faith in Jesus.  AND, the Gospel describes a redeemed creation—the New Heaven and New Earth—which will replace the old order of things at the Second Coming of Jesus.

Experience of Suffering

The Christian faith not only teaches us that suffering has a purpose and that the origin of suffering comes from the fall of humanity and creation.  It also teaches us something about the experience of suffering.  In particular, it teaches us that we are not alone.

Romans 5: 8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (NIV).”

In this verse we read a wonderful summary of the Gospel.  God loves us and sent his Son, Jesus.  Jesus demonstrated God’s love by giving his life on the cross.  But, notice who Jesus died for.  Jesus did not die for the Baptists.  Jesus did not die for Christians.  Jesus died for sinners.  (This shouldn’t surprise us, since we know that all humanity is infected by a sinful nature.  No one is without sin.)

This verse also makes an important point about the Incarnation.  God is not an absentee landlord who checks on us from a distance.  God did not send his Son to be a casual tourist in a foreign country.  God sent his Son to be our committed Savior and chose to suffer on the cross.

When we suffer, we are not alone.  God knows what it feels like to suffer.  God knows what it feels like to experience betrayal and abandonment and broken relationships.  God knows what it feels like to suffer pain—emotionally, spiritually and physically.  God does not empathize with our sufferings.  God actually sympathizes with us—he suffers alongside.

Jesus suffered on the cross.  But, the cross was not the end for Jesus.  Jesus died and was buried.  On the third day, he rose again.  The cross led to the resurrection.  In the same way, our sufferings are real but not the end.  God leads us through suffering to the glory of resurrection.  And, God promises to be with us along the journey.  God is with us when we suffer.  He walks with us “through the valley of the shadow of death.”

Conclusion: The End of Suffering

The Christian faith offers us an explanation for the origin of human suffering by connecting it to the fall in Genesis 3.  However, the Christian faith also offers us hope for the end of all suffering.

Romans 5: 18 – 19, “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.  For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous (NIV).”

Suffering and evil were defeated in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Defeating evil and suffering presents us with a very complex problem.  If Jesus had embraced evil, he would have given in and lost the battle.  If Jesus had hated evil, he would have participated in evil in his attempt to defeat it.  Jesus chose a third way, the way of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is possible, because Jesus took on himself all the evil and suffering the world could throw at him.  Jesus absorbed all the evil and suffering so that sin could be punished and Grace could be extended to sinners.

The problem of suffering can be summarized in the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  Of course, the Christian answer is that there are no good people.  We are infected by sin and live in a world affected by evil.  We needed a Savior to defeat the sin, suffering and evil common to all of us.

Our only hope in a world of evil and suffering is not a good answer.  Our only hope is the Good News.  God created a good world, a Paradise.  God’s good world fell into sin.  But, God loved humanity so much that he sent his Son to be our suffering Lord.  Ultimately, we will not be comfortable in this world without Jesus, because we were created for a different world.  We were created for Paradise.  Jesus died and rose again so we can live in a better world—the world we were created for.