Thursday, July 24, 2014

A few thoughts on God and suffering



 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