Why the Suffering?
Answering the age-old question, Why does a loving God allow humans to suffer?
Peter Ditzel
"Why?" This is the age-old question uttered in anguish and tears after
every natural disaster, war, and, as we have seen recently, act of
terrorism. "Why?" "Why did it happen to me?" "Why did it happen to my
family?" "Why did God let it happen?"
Certainly, these are legitimate questions. Often they are followed by a
yearning to know who is responsible, who is to blame. Sometimes God is
blamed. After all, shouldn't He make sure such things don't happen? Why
does God allow such suffering?
The answer, in a word, is sin. By this, I don't mean specifically the
sin of the people who suffered. Jesus made clear in Luke 13:1-5 that we
are not to consider those who suffer as any worse sinners than anyone
else, including ourselves. No, I mean the fact that we live in a world
founded on sin.
The Bible tells us that God gave our first parents, Adam and Eve, a
command (Genesis 2:15-17). They disobeyed it, and, thereby, sinned
(Genesis 3:6). God had warned them that their disobedience would bring
death (Genesis 2:17). Now it came, both spiritual death (separation from
God because of sin, seen in principle in Isaiah 59:2) and physical
death. Because of their sin, the Creation became corrupt (Romans
8:20-22). When sin entered the world, so did death: "Wherefore, as by
one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12).
Only about ten generations from Adam, sin had so corrupted man that the
Bible makes the observation, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). The result? "Natural"
disaster. God caused a flood that wiped out all humans but eight. Why?
Sin.
Another few generations later, we see in Genesis 11:1-9 a united, but
still sinful, humanity that God sees must be stopped in its progress.
How does He do this? He brings disaster upon them by confounding their
language so they can no longer understand each other.
Time and again, we see in the pages of Scripture events that from our
human perspective we might see as natural or human-caused events: The
plagues suffered by Egypt, the Israelites' wandering in the wilderness,
the enemy raids upon the Israelites during the times of the judges, the
famines during the times of the kings, and the eventual enemy invasion
and fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. But the Bible reveals that
God caused all of these events. Why? Sin.
What about today? Has God stopped causing "natural" disasters, wars, and
other catastrophes? Is He now so weak that He must allow tragedies that
He does not will? No. God does not change. He is the primary cause of
our disasters, regardless of whether their secondary causes are
"natural" or human. Why? The answer remains the same. Sin. Individually,
as a nation, and as a civilization, we are sinful. The United States is
not a great, Christian nation, whatever some people who would like to
rewrite history would like us to believe. We are like any other nation,
sinful. In fact, there never has been a nation that was not sinful.
It is time for us to go beyond asking why. It is time for each of us to
examine ourselves, repent,
and turn from our sinful ways and back to God. We cannot force others to
repent of sin, but we can tell them the Gospel. (You may want to read our
related article, What Would Jesus Have Said in
Response to the Terrorism of September 11?).
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Copyright © 2001-2009 Peter Ditzel