I wonder what made you look at this subject. It is not altogether a topic that human beings want to dwell on but unfortunately, or fortunately, it will touch all of our lives at some point. Could I reasonably assume that because you are on this website you are looking to scripture to give answers? If so, we would indeed need to start at the very beginning back in Genesis.
When God purposed to create our world, the last thing he wanted was automatons, and so for his pleasure and in his wisdom he gave mankind choices Genesis I am sure we can all relate to the pleasure of having a child make the right choice against the need to be TOLD what to do.
However, there was a problem right from square one when Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden got it wrong. This should encourage us to look into what life is all about. Jesus again gives us help when thinking about suffering from events such as floods and earthquakes over which we have no control.
Following on from the incident that we looked at earlier, Jesus also mentions the suffering caused by a tower falling on some people:.
Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Jesus repeats the warning that he gave in the previous incident — stop and think about the end of your life. Ultimately it does not matter whether we die from an accident at 20 years old or in bed at 95, the end result is the same. We all tend to put out of our minds the fact that our life will end.
Suffering can be a warning that interrupts our normal routines. It can make us stop and think about the fact that our lives will end one day. The good news is that death need not be the end for us. The purpose of this website is to give you the evidence that there is a trustworthy message in the Bible and that its message contains a hope of life after death. Some people endure far more illness than others.
They can be in difficult situations for long periods of time with no apparent hope of release. This suffering is not necessarily as a result of something they have or have not done. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He [God] for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.
It may be that God knows we need some problem to make us stop and think what life is all about. Most of us suffer more and more personal illness as we grow older. This also can make us realise that our bodies are wearing out and that we will eventually die. When we see storm clouds on the horizon, it is a warning to expect rain. Seeing other people suffer and die is a much more important warning. We are going to die and should do something about that. We should consider whether or not we can trust the various ideas in our world about life after death.
Look at the evidence on this website and decide for yourself whether the Bible message can be trusted. We all value the freedom of choice that we have been given. Our loving Creator wants us to love and respect Him by choice 3.
In the same way, loving parents want their children to respect them. Parents can enforce obedience in their children by a harsh, rigid upbringing. But this is hardly likely to encourage the children to obey out of love and respect. It will certainly not be by choice. There are times when loving parents need to show their children that they are in danger.
They tell the child to stop before harm is done. If the comment is ignored, they may try to restrain the child physically. The child may see it as undesirable, interrupting what it wants to do. Suffering in our lives can be like this.
It can upset our routines and make us stop and think. The Bible tells us that we are like wayward children. Left to ourselves, we would become like spoilt children and selfishly destroy ourselves.
We are dying creatures because, as we have seen 1 , we all like our own way. Our loving Creator allows suffering to show us that there is something wrong with our world. Because we can choose, suffering is a way that a loving Creator has chosen to get our attention and make us think about His offer of life after death. If we trust what the Bible tells us, we can be assured that one day suffering will end.
The aim of this website is to give you the evidence which can help you have real confidence in the Bible message. The questions readily rise to mind and on the surface seem reasonable: yet a candid look at them shows that they carry certain implications.
They imply that suffering in human life is inconsistent either with the power or with the love of God: that as a God of love either He has not the power to prevent the suffering, or if He has the power then He has not the will, and is not a God of love.
It is assumed that the prevention of suffering as it now affects the apparently innocent is something we should expect from a God of love who is also Almighty. Are these assumptions justified? Taking such facts as these into account, it must be asked, What is it we are really doing when we require God to remove suffering?
Are we not asking that God should a suspend natural law, b divert the consequences of heredity, and c turn aside the effects of man's inhumanity to man? Have we the right to expect God to save men from the consequences of human acts? Would it be a moral universe if He did?
These questions can only be asked of situations when the hand of man is involved. Earthquakes, tempests, famines and floods are called 'acts of God' because usually there is no other explanation for their occurrence. So if we look beyond human acts to natural disaster, we find that it falls upon all, innocent and guilty alike.
As soon as we begin to question the suffering of innocent victims of these disasters another dilemma is raised. Are we saying that the calamities should be selective in their working, searching out only those who deserve to suffer'? Underlying all the loose thinking on the subject which has been surveyed so far is one basic assumption: it is that suffering is evil in itself.
It is this belief that suffering is the essential evil that lies at the root of Buddhism. The Bible view is radically different: suffering is not evil in itself, but a symptom of a deeper evil. The Scriptures portray suffering as a consequence of sin: not necessarily the sin of the individual who suffers, but sin in the history of man and in human society.
Its origin is succinctly put by the Apostle Paul:. The teaching is simple. With man's disobedience there came a dislocation in the relationship between the Creator and the created; the relation between God and man is out of joint. The first sin brought a fundamental change which affects all with the evils which are common to man.
Death is universal: God does not modify it for the particular individual. The Bible teaching is that men are left to their own ways and the working of natural law, though there may be times when natural disaster is divinely directed as a judgement upon man and for the cleansing of the earth.
The outstanding example is the flood in the days of Noah. At the same time it is true that in the Bible, for those who seek to serve God, suffering takes on new meaning; they are in a new relationship to the Creator, and will learn to see tragedy in a new light. What is it? The answer may be seen in the example of Job. Here is a devout man who meets with disaster in the loss of his flocks and herds-the source of his wealth; with terrible bereavement in the loss of all his children at one stroke; and then is stricken with a tormenting disease which separates him from men.
Yet he says: "What? Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil? He recognises the important principle that he cannot claim good as a right: it is not for him to decide what God shall do.
The time comes, however, when the suffering is so unbearable that death seems preferable. In agony and bewilderment he asks, in effect: Why should a man live if it is only to suffer? Can God, who has made man, destroy him like a discarded plaything? Job's friends argue that there is a direct connection between a man's sin and his suffering and they therefore contend that to suffer so greatly Job must have greatly sinned.
Job is convinced of his own integrity: he is human, but he knows that he is not guilty of the sins they try to fasten upon him. Yet he has enough of his friends' philosophy to feel now that he suffers unjustly. Has God chosen him to be set up as a mark to shoot at? Because, compared with others, his sufferings seem wholly disproportionate to any faults he can confess.
To him it seems that his affliction can only mean that God has turned against him, and this moral problem adds to his bitterness. The "tents of robbers" prosper: why should the righteous suffer? If God is judging him, is it right that he should be judged by a standard human nature cannot reach? The friends utterly fail to shake Job's conviction in his own righteousness, and at last they cease to argue.
But in one particular way he was different from any boy that you are ever likely to meet: he was born without any sense of pain whatever! You may be tempted to think that George was a very lucky lad, and to wonder why, if God could make one boy entirely free from pain. He could not make the rest of the world like it too.
But wait. There is another side to the story. There was one huge scar on his back, where George once sat on a heater, and, be cause he felt nothing, had not moved until his flesh was burnt almost to the bone. He was partly blind in one eye, where sand had one day worked its way in, and he had never noticed it until permanent damage had been done. His left foot was permanently deformed, where he had broken a bone and then walked about on it for months before the damage was spotted by his parents.
Both hands had been so badly cut that he would never again be able to straighten his fingers. Pain acts as a danger signal for the rest of us, but poor George had nothing to warn him when his body was being injured. Which would you rather have for a son? A normal boy, who hurts himself, and cries, and gets over it— and takes more care next time?
Or a carefree little George, with his total freedom from pain—and his multiple deformities? And suffering also plays an important part in the development of character. This does not mean, of course, that every time you have toothache you grow a little more virtuous.
It would obviously be wrong to think that the best people in the world are those who have suffered the most. What it does mean—and this is a very important point —is that strong characters can only be developed in a world where suffering is always present.
Think how important manure is in agriculture. Yet nobody likes handling the unpleasant stuff. But Dad, of course, knows best. The finest flowers grow in well manured soil. Similarly the fine flower of human character blooms best in a world that has been liberally sprinkled with tragedy. If there were no such thing as suffering, there would also be no such thing as courage, or compassion.
If nobody ever fell among thieves, there would be no Good Samaritans in the world. The Apostle Paul was such a man. Acts tells how a mob set upon him, stoned him, and left him for dead. He survived this terrible ordeal, and not long afterwards he returned to the very town where it happened. When Paul spoke of tribulation, he obviously knew what he was talking about. Yet perhaps the very fact, that he was a Bible character makes him rather remote.
It is not easy to realise that these are the words of a real human being like ourselves. But there is no such difficulty about the words of Marjorie Lawson.
She is a British citizen, still very much alive as these words are written. When I asked her what she meant, she told me a little about her past. I was too busy enjoying life to have any time for God. Besides, I felt that I had no need of Him. I could get along quite well on my own.
He put me here, on my back. For a few years I was miserable. All the joy had gone out of my life and I could see no point in going on living. Knight came to see me, with a Bible in her handbag. In the old days, when people talked about religion I used to shut my ears. But this time I was prepared to listen. He knew that I needed this illness, and so I can only thank Him for the way that He has shaped my life. But there are many people whose sufferings appear to serve no useful purpose at all.
The native in central Africa who has never heard of Jesus Christ, but is mauled by a lion and dies after weeks of agony; the baby in an English village who dies when his pram is struck by lightning in an unexpected storm. Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to ask another one.
Just suppose that God did decide to protect such people from suffering, and to allow nobody but Christians to suffer; what would the result be? Obviously there would be such a strong incentive to remain an unbeliever that hardly anybody would ever become a Christian!
So God has adopted a more practical scheme. He has created a world subject to certain natural laws, where a measure of suffering is bound to come to everyone, sooner or later. We live in a world where, as Solomon puts it:. The problem of suffering is most likely to worry us when we ourselves are in great distress. At such times a very helpful Bible passage is Hebrews It is too long to quote here in full, but it is worth reading, several times over, in your own Bible.
It hinges about verse 3 which says:. He suffered dreadfully, very much more than we are ever likely to suffer. Yet he accepted it willingly, without complaint. He knew that there was a purpose in it.
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