How can I believe in God amid so much suffering?

CatholicAnchor.org
Those who doubt the existence or goodness of God as affirmed by Christians often point to all the suffering in the world. How can God be compassionate if he allows suffering? How can he be a mighty God if he can’t end suffering?

Suffering is a universal phenomenon — all people sometime in their life know suffering. Some suffer more than others. It seems so unfair. I have known people who prayed for the healing of a loved one and the loved one died. I have sat with people asking the suffering questions: Why me? Why them? How do I live now?

Suffering is much more than a philosophical issue; it is a personal issue and it presents real doubts, not based on reason but on experience. These types of doubts must be answered with comfort, not sheer rational arguments.

Perhaps you’ve been to funerals where a Christian friend says things like, “This is God’s will. All works for the good for those who believe.” These attempts to comfort sound hollow when your heart is broken.

But then there are times when someone just comes and sits next to the one grieving, just maintaining a quiet prayerful presence with a simple embrace. When we suffer, we long for someone to be with us to share our burden, to lighten it.

Now think of this. In atheism there is no God to comfort you. Buddhism and Hinduism teach that suffering is an illusion. Islam and Judaism affirm that God cares, but only Christianity says God came into this world and suffered with us. Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ cared enough about our suffering to become involved with us.

While there is no pat answer to end all questions, Christianity says there can be meaning in suffering. It opens a way through the sufferings that no other religion affords. We can actually trust God despite our suffering because he has suffered and is suffering for us. God is not a distant energy source, or first cause that winds up the universe to watch it wind down. Christ died on a cross, with nails in his hands and feet, and a side pierced for us and our sins. His capacity to suffer for us frees us.

Here is a poem about Jesus Christ by Edward Shodo. “The other gods were strong. But you were weak. They rode but you stumbled to your throne. To our wounds only a God’s wounds can speak. And not a God has wounds but you alone.”

Christianity does not completely explain why suffering exists but it does reveal that God shares our wounds and our suffering. He cares about us in our sorrow. The reason for suffering is greater than our own life knowledge can account for.

Can we live with the idea that there may be a reason for suffering that is beyond our ability to understand in this life? If so, that allows us to say, “I don’t know why we suffer but I know God is larger than my life, larger than my suffering. You might say Christianity gives us the gift to see our present suffering in the context of eternity.

Nicky Gumbel tells this story. A one-year-old boy shattered his back falling down a flight of stairs. He spent his childhood and youth in and out of hospitals. Gavin Reid, an Anglican bishop, interviewed him in church once. At one point the boy remarked, “God is fair.”

Gavin stopped him and asked, “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” the boy replied.

“How many years have you spent in hospital?”

The boy answered, “Thirteen years.”

“Do you think that is fair?” Gavin asked.

“God has got all of eternity to make it up to me,” the boy replied.

If we live only in this world that says I need to get it all here then this Christian response will make no sense. But the New Testament promises there will be a new heaven and a new earth. The New Testament is full of wonderful promises about the future: all creation will be restored, Jesus will return to establish a new heaven and a new earth, there will be no more crying, no more pain and suffering. Our frail, decaying mortal bodies will be exchanged for a body like that of Jesus’ glorious resurrected body.

For the Christian all wrong will be made right and all that is broken will be made whole. The problem of suffering in this life is not fully answered but Christian faith gives the best way through suffering and points to a great hope.

The writer is pastor of the Church of the Nativity in Magadan, Russia.