There is almost no adult living in America today who can’t distinctly remember where they were when terrorists flew two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers killing nearly 3,000 people. I was in Maine and watched the fall of the towers in complete shock and horror. Our nation’s grief was compounded two years ago when a young gunman entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children.
A few years before that, Marlene and I visited the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. I stood alone in the darkness of a gas chamber and said to God what we always say when global or personal tragedy strikes: “Father, where were you when these people died? Father, why did you let this happen? How can I make sense of this terrible tragedy?”
Of course, the issue of pain and suffering is not just intellectual or philosophical. It is intensely personal. Even when we feel that we have had some help in answering the problem of suffering, we find ourselves revisiting that answer again and again as a fresh wound opens through a new experience of pain. The playing field for the orthodox Christian is plain enough and requires us to make three affirmations:
Many today, especially among the “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, deny the goodness of God. Dawkins describes God as “jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal… malevolent bully.”It is far more common (especially among theists) to affirm God’s goodness, but deny that God is all-powerful. Rabbi Kushner in his popular book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” suggested God is unable to stop bad things from happening. He’d like to, but he simply can’t! Finally, Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism suggest that evil is not real, but is an illusion. But for Christians, evil is real. Evil is not just a state of mind.
The Christian View of Evil
Orthodox Christians believe that God did not create evil in the beginning. All that God made was good. Evil resulted from the misuse of human and angelic free will. It was Augustine who reminded us that evil is not a substance; rather, evil is a negation. In Augustine’s words, “evil is the absence of the good.”One might compare evil to darkness. Darkness is not a thing in itself; rather, darkness is the absence of light. When we humans choose darkness, what we really are choosing to do is to switch off God’s light.
There Is No Simple Connection Between Suffering And Sin
Whenever there is a natural disaster, there are always presumptuous Christians who claim to be in the “signal box” with God and pretend to know the meaning of that disaster. For example, it was obvious to many presumptuous Christians that Hurricane Katrina was sent as a punishment for the gross sins of the New Orleans community. This became harder to maintain when we learned that notorious Bourbon Street was spared from the worst effects of the hurricane and the poorest, most marginalized New Orleans residents, who lived in the lower Ninth Ward, were drowned when the levees failed.
The Book of Job, placed appropriately right in the middle of the Bible, is an eloquent response to any simplistic equation of sin and suffering. This fallen world does not mete out pain in proportion to our badness. Neither does it mete out prosperity based upon our goodness. One day the scales will be perfectly balanced, but we don’t see perfect justice today. The kingdom of this world has not yet become the kingdom of our Lord!
God Permits Evil And He Can Transform Suffering For Good
The story of Joseph teaches us this in Genesis 50:20, “‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’” Joseph’s brothers acted corruptly to harm him, but God was able to use their evil action for a purpose completely opposite their intended goal.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made this point in his sermon after the church bombing that killed three little girls in 1963. During his eulogy, Dr. King said, “God still has a way of wringing good out of evil.” Christian faith clings to God’s ability to transform what appears to all merely human expectations to be dead and hopeless. Against all odds, God can wring blessing and joy from the worst circumstances. As Jesus declared in Matthew 19:26, “‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”
The Model Of God’s Relationship To Suffering
The model of God’s relationship to suffering is found in Christ. We Christians never need to be ashamed that we continue to believe in God even in the face of extreme suffering. The Christian God uniquely participates in human suffering. God has a first-hand experience of human suffering. We find God’s participation in our suffering stated plainly in Hebrews 4:15, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”But God doesn’t just empathize with our suffering. In the resurrection of Christ, we find God overcoming and undoing evil and suffering. Christ is the firstfruits of the glory that is going to be revealed in all of God’s children and in all of creation.
The Christian Response To Evil And Suffering
The first call of the Christian when confronted with evil and suffering is to grieve. Romans 12:15 instructs believers to “rejoice with those who rejoice; and mourn withthose who mourn.” Jesus grieved with his friend, Mary, after her brother, Lazarus, died.
The second call of the Christian is to pray. We pray for God’s healing. We pray for God’s justice. We pray for God’s wisdom. This world needs more of God. It needs us Christians to assume our proper roles as priests interceding on behalf of the suffering.
The last call of the Christian is to partner with Christ to bring healing and justice to this hurting world. It is not enough to grieve. And it is not enough to pray. Grief and prayer must lead us to action to relieve the world’s suffering!
What actions? Here is what Jesus said: “‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’” (Matthew 25:35-36)