Why Does God Allow Suffering?

 

 One of the most common arguments that unbelievers have against the Christian theology of a loving God is to question why there is so much suffering in the world. The argument is based on the false notion that a loving God would never allow His creation to suffer, so there must not be a loving God. This is something that many Christians have also struggled with at some point or another. In truth, I think that one cannot truly understand the answers to this if they have not gone through struggles so severe that they could not have overcome them without God's help. Since I am one of those people, I will try to make sense of it.

We have to remember that God is pursuing relationship with us. He is not an authoritarian who is looking to wield His power over anyone who does not submit to Him, willingly or not. His desire is to know us and for us to know Him. This is why He has been pursuing mankind through all time in numerous ways, as I laid out in this article. He wants what is best for us in the same way that a parent wants what is best for their child.

Sometimes, the best thing that a parent can do for their child is to allow them to go through difficulties; sometimes of their own making and sometimes those difficulties are merely circumstantial. We can be there to walk with them through the struggles, but we do not intervene to lessen their impact. God knows this better than many parents do. We all know someone who has a bratty child. We may have even recognized that this child has been spoiled in the way they have been raised. This is proof that a lack of hardships leads to a lack of character.

God does not want spoiled children. He wants what is best for us in all things. But God does not only see what we are now and what we are going through now, He also sees what we can be and what we will go through in the future. Like any good parent, He wants to equip us with the skills to be able to deal with the troubles that will come our way in the future, so He may allow troubles in our lives in order to strengthen us in places where we are currently weak. He may also seek to harden us in places where we are soft, much like a blacksmith will subject metal to a long heat cycle and then suddenly and quickly quench the heat in order to harden the steel for a specific purpose.

There is also the possibility that God needs to put a person through a time of severe testing in order to prepare them for what He has planned for them, if they submit to Him in the testing. This is the situation that I believe I and my family have been put through. We went through a time of difficulties about 10 years ago where sickness and family loss were the hallmarks of our struggles, which lasted about one and a half to two years. We had people ask us then how we could still hold to God with what we were going through and our answer was that we couldn't see any other way to get through other than to hold to God. I guess maybe we showed God that He could trust us, or He showed us that He is faithful, so He knew that He could trust us with more. So a few years later He allowed us to enter an even longer and harder time of testing. While we have not seen it yet, we believe that there was a purpose to this and that we will yet be blessed for our faithfulness through all of it.

We also need to keep in mind that God may allow us to go through struggles in order to draw us to Him or to draw us closer to Him. There is an older song performed by Laura Story which is called Blessings. The lyrics of this song may better teach what I am trying to purvey here than anything that I can write. In this song, there is a stanza that stuck out to me a number of years ago, which goes like this; "What if my greatest disappointments, or the aching of this life, is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy." We often won't find something if we aren't looking for it, but we won't look for it if we don't know that we want or need it. We may be feeling empty in the hustle and bustle of our daily life but we don't know what we are missing. We fill our lives with so much stuff and so many activities because we want to feel like we are achieving something, but it may be that the busyness is masking an emptiness that we don't really know how to fill. Sometimes God will allow hardships in our lives to force us to slow down. Sometimes He will force us to our knees in weakness so that we will look up to Him. This is the revealing of a thirst that this world cannot satisfy; satisfaction will only be found in Him. If God hadn't brought us low through the struggles, we would have never stopped to look for what we were actually missing.

All of the above has been written from a first world viewpoint. Westerners really don't know what it means to suffer though. We whine and complain about things that many others around the world only wish they could experience. We can look at the persecution of Christians in various places around the world. The latest new persecutions are occurring in the country of Syria, where a group that was formerly listed as a terrorist organization has overthrown the Assad regime and has claimed that there will be peace and equality under their rule, so the western governments have removed this organization from the terrorist list because the western governments have wanted Assad gone for years but were unable to remove him. We even have monies being sent to Syria by our Canadian government. The money is earmarked for humanitarian aid, but as of even a year ago, the government admitted that they didn't really know who was getting the money that was being sent to Syria or how it was being administered when it gets there.

I recently watched a podcast with several intelligence and former intelligence workers in the U.S. who stated unanimously that the new governmental regime in Syria is aligned with the Taliban, and the Taliban is known to take a share of any aid money coming into it's territories, often through several levels of administration. We are funding the Taliban through these monies, but I digress.

The point is that the suffering that Christians endure around the world makes our western struggles pale in comparison. It is likely these scenarios that unbelievers consider when they talk of suffering, but it is also in these places that Christianity blooms. Western believers with our first world problems have a weak and hollow faith compared to those who rely on God for their daily provision and their very survival. These are believers who will willingly die rather than renounce their faith in and love for God. In light of this, is it any wonder that God allows suffering?

I have come to understand that God allows suffering to different degrees based on what He knows those whom He is subjecting to the suffering will handle. Those of weak faith will only be subjected to minor sufferings so that He will not lose them in the midst of their suffering, but His hope is that they will grow in their faith. Those whom God knows can handle more may be subjected to more suffering, potentially in order to prepare them for a greater calling, like I mentioned earlier.

Jesus alludes to this in His parable of the talents that we find in Matthew 25:14-30. The man who gives of his wealth for men to manage does so according to their abilities. To him who has proven himself worthy, more is given; to him who has shown himself unable to manage much, little is given. In verse 29 Jesus says " “For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away." I have often found it interesting that the measure of the money is in talents, which has an alternate meaning in English, such that those who have developed their talents, or abilities, will be given more than those who have not developed their abilities.

This has felt like a little bit of a ramble; I hope that what I have said has become clear. As I said at the beginning, it is possible that those who have not had to struggle will not be able to comprehend why God allows struggles. This article is also far too short to really delve into the various ways and reasons that God will allow struggles in our lives. At best, I think that I have maybe skimmed over the most common reasons for our troubles. Since God is so far above us, we cannot truly understand His mind.

I hope that this article has helped you to better understand God's view of the difficulties that He allows in our lives. Please let me know what you think in the comments section below.