The "Why God?" Questions: Part Two

I have two friends whose wedding I sang at about three years ago. Kimberly and Alison were flower girls. Within a year after the wedding they had a baby girl, "Ali" for Alexis. She’s a precious little tot. Then Crystal, the wife, became pregnant with their second child. She carried the baby to almost full term. Every day was filled with anticipation of the birth, but one day Crystal noticed that the baby had stopped moving. A check-up revealed that the little baby boy had died due to a genetic fluke that had a one in a million chance of happening. The grieving parents named the boy Herbie, after the father, and they took the child from Ohio to West Virginia to have a memorial service with the families and give the baby a proper burial.

Shortly after the second birth, Crystal became pregnant with the third child. The edge of their sorrow at the loss of the second child was taken off by the imminent birth of the third. The couple had been assured by the hospital staff that the first death was not due to anything wrong with the parent’s genetics. She carried this one to nearly full term as well, when it died due to an unrelated accident - the cord was wrapped around the neck. This time it was a little girl, whom they also named and buried. It was "Michala Laurel," or Jesus’ little flower. The grieving parents said they looked forward to a time when the flowers would never die.

To add to their despair, the hospital staff at the second stillborn birth accused the couple of medical negligence, claiming that they could have prevented the death of the second stillborn. It was as if they assumed this mother would have purposely allowed her baby to die. And this in a day when partial birth abortions are performed seemingly without conscience.

The "why God?" question I want to pose this morning is, "Why does God allow suffering?" Have you ever looked up into heaven, your face streaked with tears of misery because of your suffering or sympathy because of someone else’s, and asked, "Why God? Why did you let that happen? Why didn’t you do something?"

Children’s stories often present a simplistic answer, don’t they? The hollow pie is a story I used to read my kids about a boy who was greedy at the table, always grabbing the first, the biggest and the best of the food. One day his mother baked an extra big tart with nothing in it. The boy grabbed it because it was bigger than the rest, but to his dismay it was hollow. The lesson was clear; "Be good, or bad things will happen to you." It’s easy to carry this logic to its conclusion and think, "When something bad happens, it must be because you weren’t good."

The Pharisees thought this, didn’t they? You remember what they said of the blind man, "Who sinned, this man or his father?" To them, suffering was always evidence of individual guilt.

This thinking is the result of a partial truth. Proverbs 26:2 says, "the curse causeless shall not come." Galatians 6:7-9 tells us;

"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption., but the one who sows to the spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary."

It is a law of physics that "every action has an equal and opposite reaction." What we do will come back to us. But beware of drawing a false conclusion. We will reap what we sow, but is everything we reap the result of something we sowed? Do people ever reap what they did not sow? Yes, they do. There is innocent suffering in this world. I used to believe in reincarnation, which assumes that every bad thing that happens came from something we did in a past life. Christians have to beware of a Christian karma which assumes that everything that comes upon a person is their fault.

And this passage is clear that the time frame in which people reap what they sow is eternity. The judgement will be the time of reaping what we sowed. If we sowed unbelief, we will reap eternal loss. If we sowed faith in Jesus, we will reap His eternal life.

So we need to beware of viewing this life as the time when everything will be fair. And we need to prepare ourselves and our children to see beyond the unfairness of this life to the life beyond. We tell our children to pray so that God can protect them. And that’s good. But sooner or later they will grow up and see some godly person suffer, maybe themselves, and they will ask the question we are asking today.

I asked it about five years ago when war broke out in Rwanda. My husband went over there to help at the refugee camps. I remember reading about how in previous civil wars in Rwanda people had fled into the churches for safety. This time the churches did not protect them, and their dead bodies were piled three feet deep in those same churches. As I read about this, it suddenly hit me - those people died praying!

We might expand our question from "Why does God allow suffering?" to "Why does God allow innocent suffering?" Why isn’t He exact in allowing just the right amount of suffering to fall upon people according to their sin, and why doesn’t he spare innocent people totally?

We can’t really ask "why suffering?" without asking "why sin?" Suffering came with sin as a package deal. Let’s look at the debut of this deadly duet in Genesis 3: 14-19. On stage we find Adam and his wife, Eve, the serpent and God Himself. God has just had a heart-wrenching encounter with the guilty pair. Their heads are hung in shame. The serpent is trying to look aloof, but even he is trembling in the presence of the Lord. Eve is weeping.

"And the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field. On your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman. And between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel.’

To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children. Yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.’

Then to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, "You shall not eat from it." Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’"

Before God lets Adam and Eve know the suffering that will come upon them as a result of sin, he tell them two things. Satan will die and God will save them. Look at the grammar; "I will put enmity between you and the woman." Who is God addressing as "you"? The serpent, Satan. God will put enmity between the devil and his children and Eve and her children. "Seed" is in the singular, so it can refer to two things, one, the human race as a whole, and two, the Messiah. "Seed" means "descendant." The fact that this verse is referring to Jesus is made clear by the following statement, "He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel." Jesus, the "seed" of Eve would bruise, or "crush" Satan’s head, and Satan would bruise Jesus’ heel. Satan would succeed in hurting Jesus, but Jesus would succeed in destroying Satan.

Once God has given his first Messianic promise and preached His first gospel sermon to the human race, He goes on to give the bad news. He tells the woman that having babies would hurt, and that she would have to be in subjection to her spouse. Both of these things have brought great suffering to women. Many women have died in childbirth. Men have abused their position of dominance.

God told Adam that he would have to toil for a living, and that he would ultimately die as a result of his sin.

But what death is God talking about here? Not the second death, which is the wages of sin, but the sleep of death from which every human being will rise in the judgement. This bring me to my next point.

If suffering is a consequence of sin, then why wasn’t the "curse" pronounced upon Adam and Eve the second death? Evidently God interposed between them and the full consequences of their sin. Although they would have some suffering, it would not be the ultimate suffering of eternal separation from God that they deserved. So, is suffering a consequence of sin, or is it God’s sovereign choice? Is suffering according to fixed laws, or does God have something to say about who suffers?

Both. Suffering, or a "curse," comes as a result of sin, according to fixed laws. But God does exercise His sovereign will in the matter of who will suffer and how much. You and I both know that all people do not suffer the same. Some, it seems, live lives of futility- born to suffer. Others have it comparatively easy.

Like the man I met named "Rex." Rex never walked, never fed himself, never tied his own shoes. Rex was one that seemed born to suffer.

I was singing in a church in Martinsburg, Virginia. During the break between Sabbath School and church I saw this table moving along the aisle of the church. I went over to investigate and found there was a person on the table. He had a normal size head, but his body was all curled up on the table, completely immobile and useless. It was the size of a small child’s body. He held the control that made the table go, turn right, turn left, in his mouth. People were gathered around his table talking to him and he was carrying on, as happy as a clam, with that control gizmo in hanging out of his mouth. After exchanging names, I said to him, "Share your heart with me, Rex."

He said, "I used to complain, I had a terrible attitude, but then I gave my heart to the Lord one day, and I’ve been praising him ever since."

It would be easy to look at someone like Rex and question the fairness of God in allowing him to suffer so while most of us walk around without even thanking Him for legs that work. There is such a thing as innocent suffering. God’s sovereign will chooses who in this life will be the victims of suffering. Sometimes suffering can be traced to our own actions, but not always. Bottom line: life isn’t fair!

And God takes full credit for the unfairness of the situation. He even takes credit for sin itself, saying in Isaiah 45:6 and 7;

"That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all these."

God hates to see His children suffer. Parents can relate easily to this. I, like so many of you women, carried children and gave birth. I was intimately involved in the process of creating them. They were part of me. How do you think I felt to see them cry? Both my children had infantile colic. They would scream in pain, their little bodies trembling and their faces twisted. Every scream would tug at my heart like a fishhook. I remember when this happened to Kimmy, Michael would say, "Just put her outside in the truck, there’s nothing you can do." But even though he was right, I just couldn’t do it. But I hated to see her suffer. And God’s empathy for his suffering children is a thousand times more intense than mine was for my babies. And He is not limited to one child, or two or even a dozen. He feels to the depths of His being every kind of pain that every one of His children has suffered since time began. Six thousand years of vicarious suffering so real He can taste every tear.

So why doesn’t He just wave His diamond scepter and release every one of us from pain and misery? There must be a pretty good reason. He must have valued something more than our temporary happiness.

We have determined that suffering comes from sin. So when we ask, "why does God allow suffering?" we also ask, "Why does God allow sin?" Let’s think about the two grand entrances of sin, into heaven, and into the earth.

Why did God allow sin to exist after Lucifer and the angels rebelled? Why didn’t he nuke the whole lot of them and start from scratch? Instead he cast them out of heaven, knowing full well they would try to infest some other world and perpetrate their rebellion.

"Even when he was cast out of heaven, Infinite Wisdom did not destroy Satan. Since only the service of love can be acceptable to God, the allegiance of his creatures must rest upon a conviction of his justice and benevolence. The inhabitants of heaven and of the worlds, being unprepared to comprehend the nature or consequences of sin, could not then have seen the justice of God in the destruction of Satan. Had he been immediately blotted out, some would have served God from fear rather than from love" Patriarchs and Prophets p. 42.

The angels would have served God, yes, but from the motive of fear. God values the motive of love enough to allow sin to enter the universe and mar the creation. Now let’s look at the second grand entrance of sin into this world.

"God might have created man without the power to transgress his law, he might have withheld the hand of Adam from touching the forbidden fruit, but in that case man would have been, not a free moral agent, but a mere automaton. Without freedom of choice, his obedience would not have been voluntary, but forced" Ibid p. 49.

Again, God will not stoop to be served out of anything but willing love.

There is no love without freedom of choice.

Freedom of choice allowed for the possibility of sin.

Then, there is no love without the possibility of sin.

And that possibility of sin will remain in eternity, won’t it? Nahum 1:9 tells us that "affliction will not rise up again a second time." not because it can’t. Not because it can’t. But because the inhabitants of eternity will have been inoculated against it. Their eyes will have been opened to the true character of sin. It will have lost its appeal for them. And how has this happened?

They have seen what sin did to their Jesus. They have seen in the cross the bottom line of sin, its true character, alongside the bottom line of love in God’s true character.

Do you want God to start curing you today? Then don’t reject suffering. Mother Theresa said that every suffering person was Jesus in His "distressing disguise." In every suffering person we see reflections of the cross, where the consequences of sin had their fullest impact in crushing the heart of God’s Son. In every moment of suffering we can be reminded of the suffering of Jesus. Paul said He wanted to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings. Paul knew that suffering would bring Him in touch with Christ, and he would rather suffer with Christ that be free of suffering without Him.

Getting back to Rex, I’m convinced that his life was more useful to Christ than most. I wrote a song about him and was performing it somewhere. Someone heard it and called Rex’s mother. She came to another concert I did near where she lived. Rex had died a short time before that at about 38 years old. He was exactly my age, and he was never expected to live beyond 20.

I asked his mother if he really was as fine a person as he seemed to be. Yes, she said, he was really like that. She went on to tell me that he was the only son of a man with four daughters. His father was wealthy and hoped for someone he could groom to fill his shoes. When his only son was a hopeless cripple, the father rejected the boy. The mother became a Seventh-day Adventist, and eventually her husband divorced her, but Rex continued to call the father every week. Each conversation would end with Rex saying, "Dad, I love you," but there would be silence in return. Finally, toward the end of Rex’s life, the father started to respond with, "Yes, I love you too, son."

We would have aborted Rex had we known how desperately sad his life would be. But out of the muck of suffering grew a flower of hope.

Charlie Croteau is a friend of mine who fell off a trampoline at 20 years old. He hasn’t walked since. But Charlie thinks constantly of others. My dad didn’t relate to very many of my friends, but he respected Charlie, because Charlie had a major hardship in life and yet he smiled in spite of it. When dad got cancer, he received piles of cards. The one that meant the most to him was Charlie’s. Charlie had written, "I wish I could take this for you," and my dad believed him. Dad tried to read the card to me and sobbed openly. Charlie was the only one of my Christian friends who was able to reach out and help my dad in his crisis.

Why does God allow suffering? Because He valued free choice and loving service above all else. Suffering was the price tag attached to those valuable items. God bought them. And He can use suffering today to lead us to the cross, where we are cured forever of sin.