Probably one of the biggest questions that leads both Christians and non-Christians away from God is the question of suffering. People ask this question in a variety of ways: Why did my parents die? Why did I get cancer? How are there entire countries where people starve daily? Why do I have no family left? Why do innocent people suffer? Why do I suffer?
I will never claim to have an answer to this question. Perhaps it is just something that must be accepted as unknowable. Perhaps there is an answer that I simply don’t know. What I do know is that I do not agree with the most common answer to this multi-faceted question. We’ve all heard it: It is God’s will.
But is suffering God’s will? I can’t accept that. If I accepted that answer, I don’t think I could follow that God. Why would I follow a God who actively creates suffering? I wouldn’t. But that isn’t the Christian God. Jesus does not brutally kill. The Father does not leave people alone to face difficulties. The Holy Spirit does not snatch loved ones away from us.
While it is not the same, the only comparison I have is my relationship to my little brother. I love him. I could never will pain on him. I could never will a sickness, serious or trivial, on him. However, I am aware that he will suffer. I would not will a bump on his head, but I still let him walk on his own when he could fall. And the hypothetical option to never have him in my life? Absolutely not. He still experiences joy and love and compassion, and though suffering remains in the mix, I would never cancel out the one at the expense of the rest.
It would be the same with God. He created us all, and he knew our stories and our suffering before there was a word for it. Yet he allowed us all to exist, knowing our suffering and knowing he would have to see it all, and experience it all through us. I can’t see God causing our suffering for his amusement, because then He would not be the loving God I know. So he allows it, passively allows it, and it must be a similar scenario. It must be that he was aware of our suffering, but he was aware of our joy as well. He saw it all, and determined that he could not deny us our life and joy for the sake of pain.
In Romans 8:18 it says, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (KJV)
Maybe I have no right to disregard the suffering of now for the joy of later. I have not experienced great suffering; I know I am lucky and blessed to have avoided pain and suffering to a large degree. But us humans are such sensitive creatures—and by that I mean we care about the present moment more than any other. The pain of now is all consuming it can be hard to think about a time when there was no pain. So maybe it takes a moment free of pain to think about what that pain means.
Ultimately, I guess I distinguish between a passive and active will. Maybe for some they see it as the same, but I have to differentiate them in order to understand God as a loving Creator. There has to be a difference between actively causing sickness or death or pain and creating a world where such things happen. There has to be. Otherwise every mother would be responsible for her children’s suffering. As a child, I could never blame my mom for my suffering. So I should not blame God either.
No, it is not God’s will for us to suffer. Why we do suffer is still a mystery, but maybe it doesn’t have to be a stumbling block either.
