The Problem of Suffering

What are we to do with the problem of evil? John Calvin tried to give an answer, but articulated instead a deity who wills equally life and death, goodness and evil, bliss and suffering, redemption and perdition. He sure made a “fine case” for a rejection of God as the Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

Calvin suggested that God requires suffering and death to display his attributes. What attributes one may ask? Malice? Schadenfreude? Dark humor? Did the Black Death reveal God’s glory? What about the Holocaust, World Wars, Haiti Earthquake, Indian Ocean Tsunami? Or the child that the predator murdered?

It was an attempt to justify the loss of millions through outbreaks of disease, natural disasters, and famines, by reimagining God as the ultimate cause of everything, both beautiful and gruesome.

The God of the gospel is not the author of sin, destruction and death; they are enemies which He conquered. Christ is risen, hell is harrowed, satan is brought to nothing, death is abolished, sin has been put away.

God is Light, in Him is no darkness. God is good and is never evil. God is Truth, and no falsehood exists in Him. God is beauty and in Him is no ugliness. God is Love, and every aspect of God must align with who He is.

But where was God, then, when Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans? Popular TV preachers blasphemously identified the hurricane as God's vengeance for the many sins of the city. Where was God when the tsunami caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown? Preachers again claimed that this was God's anger at the Japanese people who worshipped their emperor. Where was God when the terrorists hit the World Trade Center? The doomsday prophets announced that this was nothing but God's removal of his hedge of protection because of the nation's moral laxity. Where was God when the Haitian earthquake left Port-au-Prince devastated? Again, this was God's fury against the nation's supposed voodoo-pacts with the devil.

Just three hours after the I-35W Bridge collapsed over the Minneapolis river killing 13 people and injuring 145, the Calvinist John Piper, wrote that catastrophes like this one are God’s “most merciful message,” since they mean there’s “still time to turn from sin and unbelief and destruction.” God, according to Piper, destroys people in order to save others from destruction. And for this reason, the message of the collapsed bridge was “the most precious message in the world.” How sadistic!

Worse yet, Piper's god will punish those whom he chooses to reject for all eternity, for the sins that he himself caused them to commit.

If this is the message that we call "good news," then we are to be at most pitied. So where was God? He was in the rubbles of Port-au-Prince. He was not in the terrorists on 9/11, or in the hurricane that hit New Orleans, or the earthquake in Port-au-Prince. Rather, He was in the wailing mother. In the ruins of Fukushima. He was the "hungry" and "thirsty" one. He was the "stranger," the "naked" and the "sick," (Matt. 25:35-45).

Jesus reigns now…

What then is divine providence? God from eternity has willed his good in creatures and will bring it about by directing all things toward his goodness. And He does so through ‘kenosis’ (self-emptying).

Jesus “emptied [kenoó] Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men,” (Phi. 2:7).

God the Son assumed humanity and participated in the human condition in order to experience and sympathize with our weaknesses. And thus He overcame death, (Heb. 2:14; 4:14-16).

Jesus does not reign through imperial power but through self-giving, self-sacrificial love. He reigns through what looks like the Beatitudes. He mourns, He’s meek, He’s merciful and pure in heart. He’s poor in spirit. He’s a peacemaker.

Jesus triumphs not through conquest, but through the cross. He is not lording over us but He washes our dirty feet. He’s the king that was born in a manger. The king who rode donkey and not a white stallion. The king that wore a crown of thorns. The lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The suffering servant who suffered with us. His throne and judgment seat is the cross. His verdict is mercy. And for that very reason, he will win every heart and “every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,” (Phi. 2:9).

Where is Jesus when we suffer? He’s on the cross identifying with and bearing our pain. God is not the cause of it. However, he temporarily permits it. But his kingdom will ultimately triumph.

In the end…

God fashioned humans in his image, to be joined in free union with him. He does not infringe on our autonomy, and so permits even what is opposed to his will. But in his omniscience and omnipotence He also set up the world in such a way that nothing can stop his final victory over all evil. Humans are thus created with a will to “resist His irresistible grace.” It sounds contradictory but it is not. God does not resist our will, but neither can we resist him, once we, freed from evil, finally see the beauty of the infinite.

A bad ending can ruin the story, while a great ending can save it. And if the drama of this world will end in a disaster, then creation could never be called “good,” nor could God be called transcendent – the Beauty, Truth and Goodness. But when everything and everyone is finally under God’s rule, then we will have a perfect ending of God being all in all, (1 Cor. 15:28).

So while we know that the victory over evil has been won, we also know that it is a victory yet to be finalized, and creation therefore groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed, (Rom. 8). Then he will swallow up death forever, wipe away all tears from all faces, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow or pain, (Isa. 25; Rev. 21). All things then, will have been made new.

"I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us," (Rom. 8:18).

For Paul, we suffer with Christ when we suffer. But what is worse than the suffering, is the sin that in itself brings suffering. And it is precisely the sin that Jesus put away and which He will ultimately completely eradicate.

Confident that in the end God will somehow protect the one who suffers, Paul thought that what is done in injustice harms the one who acts unjustly in a far more severe way than it does the victim. Every injustice will face God's justice. Better yet, there is no irreparable harm! God has a way of reconciling both the one who was harmed and the one who did harm. This was true for Paul, who persecuted the church, but through an encounter with Christ he was reconciled to the church. Yet, his revelation of Christ involved also a vision of suffering. Jesus said to him: "I will show you how many things you must suffer for My name’s sake," (Acts 9:16).

It was through suffering Jesus was crowned with glory and honor and tasted death for everyone, (Heb. 2:9). Although Jesus suffered, it was "for the joy set before Him" that he endured the cross, (Heb. 12:2).

The reconciliation of the entire world was both the object and the ground of the joy set before Jesus. And this joy enabled him to endure suffering and death. His sufferings were a benefit to others, and they were a benefit to him as well. God used (not caused) suffering to reconcile the cosmos.

Jesus, the captain of our salvation, was made "perfect through sufferings" according to Hebrews 2:10. That is not to say that God the Son had any imperfection and needed to be perfected. But that is to say that the one who loves is truly complete when the one who is loved is also complete and whole.

So every pain we experience is a pain that God experiences, and every torment we endure is a torment that God endures. God's oneness with us is so intimate that he experiences what we experience. And so God responds to tragedy by either saving us from it or using it as a means of redemption. But He confines the tragedy within temporal limits. And ultimately He heals us.