Why do we have to suffer?

Why would a good God let us suffer?


The question that is in every non-believers arsenal is this one. “If there were such thing as a good God or even a God why would he permit suffering in the world.” Lets take a few steps back before we go ahead and make such an accusation. Suffering can be explained as both physical and emotional. One can be in agonizing pain do to suffering from a broken bone from falling from a roof, The emotional/mental suffering would be the mourning of a lost family member or even witnessing of others misfortunes. Lets go over mental and emotional suffering. Have you ever thought to yourself about “free will” and the fact that it has a large hand in our world of suffering. C.S Lewis writes

“We can, perhaps conceive a world in which God corrected the results of this abuse of free will by his creatures at every moment; so that a wooden beam became as soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted to frame them.”

C.S Lewis then goes on by stating “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself”. Could it be that the centuries of corrupting our free will, that some of this suffering is our own doing? Lets dive into things beyond our control such as mental disabilities and amputees. You may ask “Why then would God allow them to carry this burden, and what glory could God possibly seek out of this?” By asking that you immediately speak for that person without putting in the careful thought of their own views on suffering. A buddy of mine and I were walking down main street Huntington Beach the other day and we walked up on a wooden cross that was staked into the ground on it a man wrote how he is a one legged amputee walking around the coast of the United States praying for everyone and wanted to let the world know that a physical disability does not keep anyone from carrying out the will or plan God has for them. In the letter he asked if whoever found the cross to pass it on and share the love of God that he continues to feel, so we did just that (the man left a cross as a mile marker, we found mile #7606). Lets talk about mental disabilities in fact let me tell you a little about Jack. Jack, lives in a residential facility for the developmentally disabled in suburban Chicago. In his book “The unexpected adventure” Lee Strobel shares his experience with the young man named Jack who led one of the home attendants, Michelle to Christ through persistent invitations to go with him to Church. One thing Jack said in the book which was so profound was “ I come here…and hear…about Jesus…and I think about all the pain…He went through… for me…and I think this was nothing” pointing to the injury on his arm. Too often our pride gets the best of us and we judge others based on their mental capacity and we carelessly speak on there behalf whether they are suffering or not. Jack was persistent because he loved Jesus and wanted Michelle his attendant to experience that love as well. Gods work is not limited, He works through everyone even with physical and or mental disabilities. We have a great God who is incomprehensibly wise and beyond our understanding. God is good but we have grown into a “finger pointing” society and blame God based off of human error. Attempts to disprove God wrong are futile when the argument against Him is based off of “human error”. We are not perfect but God is. Ill close with what C.S Lewis says in his book The problem of Pain, “Any consideration of the goodness of God threatens us with the following dilemma. On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgment must differ from ours on many thing, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.”