As I write for this the world around us is being
confronted by the tragedies of fighting in Gaza and the shooting down of a passenger
airplane by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. Many
people have lost their lives in the fighting in Gaza, and there have been many injured.
Close to 300 hundred innocent lives were lost with the shooting down of MH-17
in Ukraine, leaving family and friends with a deep sense of grief. These
situations certainly need our fervent prayer.
The issue of suffering is a very difficult one, and we are
confronted with the perennial question: how can a good God allow such
suffering? It is a question, I’m sure, that many of us have asked. Yet, it is a
question that we need to attempt to answer; especially as Christians, because
it can truly test our faith.
The two events that I mentioned above give us some insight into
suffering and God. These two are quite clearly human motivated. Human beings
are quick to go to arms when they feel that injustices have been committed
against them. Whatever we might think of the rightness of Israel’s, Palestine’s
or Russia’s responses, the truth is that human beings are causing suffering. We
could well trace much of the world’s suffering back to human causes. This is
indeed what the Bible does. Suffering and death came into the world by the
choices made by our mythical forbears, Adam and Eve (Gen 3; Roman 5). Suffering
is not part of God’s original purpose. That unpopular word and notion, ‘sin’, taints
everything we do as humans. This is not to say that human beings are not
capable of great good, because we are, but it highlights the fact that there is
something not quite right with the human race. We live in a ‘fallen’ world.
Well, if God’s original intention is that there be perfect peace
and harmony within creation then why doesn’t God snap his fingers and return the
world back to ‘Eden’? Again, the Bible offers another response. God entered the
world in the person of Jesus. It was a covert operation, and God’s methods were
subversive. God through Jesus was seeking to transform the world from the
inside out. Rather than leaving human beings as passive observers, God enlists
us as fellow subversive operatives. We join with God in bringing to birth God’s
kingdom here on earth. Suffering is with us until the ‘Kingdom of God’ is
revealed in all its fullness. Recent events remind us that we have a long way
to go in this. The word to Zerubbabel is still timely: ‘Not by might, nor by
power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts’ (Zechariah 4: 6). In the
meantime, we pray ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in
heaven’. As Christians we are not defeatist about suffering, but we know there
is a better kingdom entering into our world. We participate in this kingdom by
working for peace, and doing whatever we can to alleviate suffering.
Chris
