God and Suffering

For majority persons the most difficult questions related to God and mankind may be found in human sufferings, especially of innocent children.  Scripture notes concern for disadvantages.  It was a point with God in dealings with Jonah.  Sending Jonah as missionary to Nineveh with a message of judgment and recovery, God forgives Nineveh cancelling judgment.  Jonah is offended at the recovery, and pouts with God while others in the city pick up on the renewal. Jonah, self-isolated, becomes angry with God.  God points out that the innocent children of Nineveh, even the uninvolved animals were considered for reprieve. Why would Jonah not be joyful in compassion?  Jonah’s prejudice got him into trouble, leading to the great fish experience.  Jonah’s message changed things for Nineveh, but was lost on him.  The scenario is common enough through the long story of history.  God’s complaints about the churches in the early part of The Revelation address similar issues.  Jonah’s spirit can become corporate and common for people.

Life comes from God, and is a final concern for him.  It came from him, and he determines the conclusion of it.  There is no backing away or making excuses from his side of life.  That he can do anything he chooses to do is common belief – if God exists or if he were to be in existence.  In God’s holiness is everything we need about the positive nature of God.  In God there is only affirmation.  It is impossible to mankind to address the ultimate nature and character of God.  That perfection is assumed and rightly so, but the suffering of human life gives us pause about the whole matter.  Everything seems to stop in our minds.  We are at the point of acknowledging God and in denying him.  He is the only one to get us out of the spiritual fog that clouds our faith related to perfection in omnipotence and all of nature’s realities.

Impressive authors from our history have addressed the matter of suffering.  They include more than theologians.  One follows the writings of competent persons like: Philip Yancey, C.S. Lewis and others that offer excellent treatment, but leave some readers with the feeling that the monumental question of suffering has not been fully answered.  What prevents perfect God from ending an imperfect world tribe of his life-bearing image, and creating another kept aloof from any possibility of evil?  Apparently the present tribe of angels in God’s realm finds no appeal in resorting to anything other than righteousness.  The experience of C. S. Lewis, a scholar of very strong faith in biblical Christ and redemptive story, demands our attention in a search for answers.  On the death of his wife, Lewis was so negatively impacted with the loss and suffering that he seemed almost to have lost some of his faith.  The faith that he had advanced so effectively for thirty years, a faith that accounted for his marriage of only some months in length, seemed to be in jeopardy.  He recovered.  The story is told in, A Grief Observed.  The seeds of similar stories must have accompanied Ruth and Naomi.  Mary and Martha were distraught at the loss of their brother, Lazarus, and seem to have reacted to the absence of Jesus at a death they believed may not have occurred if Jesus had been present.  Why this suffering for them and the community?  Why take from David his loved friend, Jonathan, who would have made David a better man?  We try to formulate apologetics for the suffering patterns and episodes of life – satisfactory for some, unsatisfactory for others.  Ryan and Howard Batson, wrote about the suffering experiences of physicians in the care of patients.  They recall the theodicy – of free will, of punishment for evil, of suffering as a matter of nature for all persons, and of suffering as character building.  After they note the variances they write: these . . . fail to fully explain how an all-powerful and benevolent God allows tragedy.  They offer Scripture passages.  We look for a single explanation for it all.  At the end of their review the authors hold out for holistic life.  Caregivers can join in the journey of others to find peace/acceptance. (Christian Ethics Today – Winter, 2015) In all we need to understand that suffering is an element in the compound of life.  Without it there would be fewer persons of Christian faith.  Like the human surgeon, the heavenly physician offers some pain to heal.