Where is God When it Hurts?

Basic problem: Anger with God for not taking away my pain, or that of someone close to me. Why does God let people suffer and die?

Where is God when it hurts? 5 Possible answers:

1.   Nowhere: God doesn't exist.

2.   Somewhere else: God doesn't care about his creation.

3.   Absent: God doesn't love me.

4.   Suffering with us.

5.   Preparing a new reality

Answer 1: Nowhere: God doesn't exist.

Considering all the suffering in the world, maybe God doesn't exist, or doesn't care, or can't do anything about it.

This is an intellectual problem (as distinguished from a personal problem). For some people the existence of evil disproves God, or makes him irrelevant. That argument goes like this: 1) Evil exists. 2.) Good beings always eliminate evil as far as they are able. 3) God (supposedly) is a good being. 4) God supposedly is all powerful. 5) If God were good and all powerful evil would not exist. 6) Evil exists, so God cannot be good, or all powerful, or else doesn't exist.

This is a philosophical problem that deserves a philosophical answer. Here's one: Suppose that by "all powerful" we don't mean that God can do things that are self-contradictory like make a square circle, or make 2+2 equal 6, or make something that is a person and not a person (in precisely the same use of the term person). Let's also suppose that there is a greater good to be sought, though evil will be a real, though temporary, possibility. Might not an all-powerful being choose to "bite His tongue" for a while on evil, in order to accomplish a greater overall good?

Let's consider for a minute what reality looks like if God doesn't exist, or doesn't care. If there is no God, or if he doesn't care, then everything just happens by chance. A bus load of teen-agers being burned alive in an accident involving a drunk driver, is just another example of the laws of physics and of survival of the fittest. It has no real moral weight or meaning. (The population of the earth is growing too rapidly anyway.) People are after all, worth only a few pennies, if we some up the value of the chemicals in their bodies. Teen-agers are not contributing to society more than they take from it, so their value to society is merely potential. As family members their contributions to family life are often disruptive.

Why is it we feel so much outrage at this kind of scene? What are the adjectives we use: Senseless (we inately believe things are supposed to have a greater meaning), barbaric (we believer there really are some moral absolutes, that certain things are wrong), a waste of human life (we believe people are valuable because they are people). Our whole view of pain and suffering, especially our outrage against it tips our hand. We don't really believe that life is a big cosmic accident. Life has meaning and is valuable. It is wrong to deliberately introduce needless suffering. When a drunk kills a busload of teen-agers, we don't get angry at the laws of physics, or the medical effects of alcohol on the human body. We get mad at God for letting it happen. Through our tears we shake an angry fist at God and demand to know "why?"

Answer #2: Somewhere else: God doesn't care about his creation.

These things being the case, we have shown, philosophically, that the existence of evil doesn't preclude the existence of God. But this sollution isn't very comforting when it's your mom that's suffering, when it's your child that was killed by a drunk driver, when it's your son who has Aids, or when it's you yourself that seems to be the victim of pointless suffering. And what about all the senseless suffering you read about in the News Papers, and see on TV.

You ask "Why?" And the question has crescendos and decrescendos in your thoughts and in the volume of your discussions about it. Until the question becomes an accusation, a statement of anger, a shaking fist. You're not interested in the logical, philosophical discussion. You just want to make some sense out of it. You lash out at God because He seems to be the only one who can do something about it. And He's not doing anything (at least not anything you consider important). Maybe, you postulate, maybe He just doesn't care. Or, maybe, God isn't in control after all.

The Bible tells us about at least 4 different sources for pain and suffering. God is only directly involved in one of them and limits the extent of the other three. Two of these sources are accepted by Christians and atheists, two of them point to spiritual beings as sources.

Four great sources of suffering: People, The Natural Order, Satan, God.

Because of human freedom, people sometimes choose to do bad things. We sometimes selfishly assume that our actions should not have unpleasant consequences. God lets people make the choice to behave badly.

Romans 1:28-32 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.(NIV)

Sometimes we end up hurting ourselves, sometimes we end up hurting others. God allows us to do what we want (for a time). He doesn't run the universe in such a way that people can't make choices (good or bad). Freedom to choose right and wrong is one of God's values. But with freedom comes responsibility, and not all of us act responsibly. Sometimes we hurt ourselves. Sometimes we hurt other people. But God doesn't enable our bad behavior by removing its consequences either. Yes inocent parties get hurt. But the blame falls on the one who made the bad choice.

Because of human sin the natural order is disrupted. Pain was introduced as a consequence and punishment for human rebellion against God.

Genesis 3:16-19 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." 17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." (NIV)

God didn't create this earth to be the miserable place it sometimes is. It got that way because people messed up. God introduced pain and struggle into the natural order. There was a reason for that. Actually two reasons. Wrong needs to be punished. Second, pain and struggle are good teachers. Pain tells us something is wrong and needs attention. Nothing like hitting your finger with hammer to teach you to be careful with that thing! Struggle teaches us to value things that are important like food and clothing and shelter.

Satan (and other demons) inflict suffering on the world just because they want to destroy or damage what God holds dear.

John 8:44 [...the devil] was a murderer from the beginning, ... (NIV)

There is this third intelligent force at work in the world. It's not just God and people. Evil spiritual beings are also around trying to wreck havok on God's creation. They do so for their own purposes and in their own ways. While they cannot control people in any way that completely robs them of their ability to choose, they can introduce disease, temptation, evil thoughts, and possibily other things we're not so sure of. For God's own reasons, Satan and his followers are still active, and have certain boundaries they can opperate in. The Bible says they will be stamped out someday. Yet they are still a factor in todays context. They tend to prey on the weak and helpless, the sick and wounded, the lonely and the depressed. The Bible says that Jesus came to destroy the devil's work, but this task is not yet complete.

God sometimes uses pain to punish, or to teach (discipline).

Hebrews 12:10-11 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (NIV)

However, not all pain is directly attributable to God's desire to punish or teach. There are three other possibilities. It is cruel to assume that someone's pain (especially someone else's) is due to God's discipline for a certain sin or personal weakness. While it is good to use a time of suffering for self-examination, it is never good to draw the lines too darkly between a particular sin in one column with a particular package of suffering on the other. The Bible also warns against this. Unfortunately, well meaning people don't always heed that warning.

God limits, but does not root out suffering. We are not privy to God's reasons (My ways are above your ways). The Normandy invasion was possible because of a break in the weather, because Romel went to visit his mother on her birthday, because, an aid decided not to awaken Hitler, and because of a thousand other "coincidences" that turned the tide on one of the most hideous regimes in human history. Good detectives are skeptical of coincidences. I take all this to mean none other than the hand of God was at work putting a limit on what had been done by an evil regime.

Answer #3: Absent: God doesn't love me.

Another kind of question remains: "Why me?" When suffering hits me personally, its. a whole different quality of question I have. "Why did God give me unloving parents? Why did God kill my best friend? Why does God let me suffer like this? Why did God let my child die?" An underlying question might be "Is there something wrong with me or different about me that God let this happen to me instead of my neighbor?"

Psychologists are puzzled by a nearly universal phenomenon: young children often feel guilt when their parents divorce, or when one or both parents are substance abusers, or when one or both parents physically abuse the child, or when one or more parents abandon them. Something in us makes us feel like its our fault when we feel pain, and when those around us feel pain.

Our wounded self-image isn't strong enough to interpret pain objectively. Since we believe that pain happens only when something is wrong, and there is plenty wrong with us, we believe that we caused the pain. A philosopher and logician has no trouble shooting down this argument. A psychologist and pastor have a harder time, since we're interested in not only the intellectual side of the argument, but the personal and emotional one too. Yet there is only one truth about these situations: children do not cause the destructive behavior of their parents. The hard work is getting surviving children to really believe this truth.

The "why me?" question is a self-image question, a guilt question, an intensely personal question. One superficially cruel response to the question "Why me?" is the response "Why not me?" I ask you to consider it. This response might seem on the surface to be cruel. In my limited experience it usually isn't.

There are a lot of other responses that seem kind on the surface, but end up hurting more. Consider the response "I don't know." Doesn't this implies that maybe, just maybe there is something wrong with you? Doesn't this just say, I haven't thought of anything, yet? Another superfically kind response is this one: "God only lets bad things happen to people who can take it. You should be thankful that God considers you strong enough to handle this." In fact this is another way of telling people that they really are the cause of the pain. After all, if they weren't so strong, this wouldn't have happened. It's also demoralizing ("So this is the result of all my character building? Is this what happens to good people?").

We all know that suffering is a part of life. Our desire to be exempt from this portion of life is understandable. On the other hand, bad things happen. Except for behavior that is dangerous or self-destructive, there is nothing about any of us that makes us more prone to experience pain suffering. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. That's just the way it is, for now.

Sometimes we selfishly believe we are more important to God than the next guy. The "Why me?" question might imply that we thought that out of the whole human race we alone should be exempt from real suffering. After all, look what we've done that God should appreciate! But God sees us differently. He loves us for who we are, not for what we do. There is nothing about any one of us that would make us immune to suffering or to having something bad happen.

In other words things don't happen to us because we're necessarily more deserving of pain than anybody else. It's just that no one is exempt, not you, not me. You suffer, someone else doesn't, or suffers less. This isn't a character question. It just happens. It doesn't mean your stronger or weaker, better or worse. It just means you're fully a part of the human race. "Why me?" and "Why not me?" are both fair questions.

Answer #4: Suffering with us

Then what? Where is God when it hurts? Jesus cried out to God this same question from the cross. Did you know that? He said My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me? He was quoting from Psalm 22, a Psalm king David wrote:
Psalm 22:1-2

    My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

        Why are you so far from saving me,

        so far from the words of my groaning?

       O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

              by night, and am not silent. (NIV)

Don't ever let any tell you that it is wrong to ask the question, "God where are you?" The question is in the Bible. When you're hurting you need comfort and companionship like no other time.Yet, when you're hurting it's tough to experience anything but the pain. Even human caring doesn't seem to be enough, and that is visible and tangible. God's care seems too far away, too spiritual, too intellectual. It's like the boy who ran into his parents room during a thunder storm. His mother said, "Just trust God, He's with you." The boy said "I know that momma, but right now I need someone with skin on!"

God usually relates to us through people. He know we need someone with skin on. Christians have always been on the front lines in the alleviation of pain and suffering. We invented the hospital! Originally hospitals were attatchments to church buildings. Giving for the poor, visiting the sick and imprisoned, caring for the widow and orphan have defined Christian practice from the beginning. We believe God wants us to do everything in our power to alleviate pain and suffering. And sometimes all we can do is be with people. We can't solve their problem of pain. We can only help a little with the problem of suffering alone.

Is God powerless to intervene sometimes? No. Yet pain suffering will be a part of this life until God puts an end to this current history. God has his purposes and reasons. At the moment of pain, it may seem to have no possible purpose, nor redeeming value. Sometimes after the immediacy of the pain is gone we catch a glimpse of its meaning. Sometimes we don't. Our inability to comprehend God's purposes in our suffering, does not disqualify God's love, nor His power.

We want God to relate to us, but we want to dictate the terms. Not only do we want God to be with us in our pain, we want to experience His presence like a constant low voltage electrical charge, or a hot spot light, or an audible voice, or a miraculous cure, or a sudden sense of peace, or SOMETHING! Sometimes God does just that (or close). Sometimes He doesn't. In my experience, it is only in retrospect that I can see that God was with me at all. During my time of clinical, situational depression, I didn't sense God's presence much. All I had to go on, spiritually, was my experience of God in my Christian life up to that point: He was there, whether I sensed his presence or not. It wasn't very satisfying at the time, but it was all I had.

How was God with me? In retrospect I can see that he helped me find a good therapist (there are plenty of bad ones you know!). He was helping me let go of my previous ministry by showing me that my work was coming to an end. This helped me feel free to change my situation (which was causing my depression). He provided a temporary place to recover (at the last minute!) in Michigan, the finances to give myself a few months to come back up to speed, and an exciting new task to do for Him here in Texas. Now I can think of other ways God might have healed me. But I can't deny that what He did worked! In the middle of it, though, I felt like I was in a desert wasteland.

Where is God when it hurts? He is next to us suffering with us. Even when we don't sense His presence. Just like we don't feel gamma particles as they slam through our body at the speed of light during an X-ray, yet we can know He is there. We trust science enough to believe them when they tell us what is happening. God tells us He is with us, even when the effect of His presence is as evident to us as a beam of gamma particles.

Isaiah 43:22 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. (NIV)

God is with us protecting us from being overwhelmed or consumed by our pain or our grief. He cares for us in ways that our beyond our imagining. Yet He is with us in real ways, in loving ways, in powerful ways.

Is it worth it being a Christian when you're suffering? Brian Sternberg was an Olympic gymnist who damaged his spinal column in 1963 during practise and is now completely paralized. He said early on: "Having faith is a necessary step toward one of two things. Being healed is one of them. Peace of mind if healing doesn't come is the other. Either will suffice."

We do not simply accept pain and suffering as God's will and resign ourselves to it (as some religions do). We do everything we can to end it and wipe it out. That's why Christians invented the Hospital, care for widows and orphans, help poor people get back on their feet, help rebuild after disasters.

Brian Sternberg's mother says this: "To put it bluntly, I don't think God is very happy with Brian's condition either. God's will, as seen in the Bible, is full abundant life. It's wholeness and health, not the body Brian's trapped in.

"God's will. You can use it as a pious period to every question mark. But God is mysterious and deep...

"...We take a lot on faith. ...[We] cling to God's love. If something--like the accident--doesn't tally with God's love we look elsewhere. We know it's not from Him."

Yet pain and suffering do produce in us the qualities we admire most in others: courage, endurance, patience.

Romans 5:3-4 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (NIV)

We call this the "No pain, no gain" principle. As John Perkins once said of his years working for racial equality in Mississippi, "Whatever doesn't destroy me makes me stronger." Standing up to overwhelming odds, loosing one's children to racial hatred, walking up to the voter registration booths knowing it would cost something, are the kind of things heroes are made of.

As long as we're going to have to deal with pain and suffering, let's trust God's ability to carry us through it. Let's be examples of courage and honor and character and endurance.

Answer #5: God is preparing a new reality.

John 16:33 I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (NIV)

Where is God when it hurts? Preparing our salvation. We need rescuing from this existence. We know that pain and suffering are a part of this life, but it doesn't seem right. Life isn't fair, we tell our children. But we wish it were! It's not the way it should be. It's not the way it's supposed to be.

God's got a plan for that too! There will be an end to all this character building pain. The "no pain no gain" law will be overruled. And God himself will reach down and wipe the last tears from our eyes and set a new reality in order.

Revelation 21:2-4 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (NIV)

There's a promise! There's a vision! There is God's vision for a new reality. We might be living in pain now, but there's a better thing coming!

It's not just pie in the sky, bye and bye. We already said we're going to do everything we can to eliminate as much suffering as we can. But we know we can't get it all. Not yet. But we do know that whatever we don't get now God will get later. And that gives me hope now. That gives me courage now. That helps me get through this day and tomorrow.

I'm going to go see the King of all. He's going to reach down and wipe away that last tear from my cheek. And I'll know that all my suffering is done, that all suffering is done. Don't you want to be there too? Soon and very soon we are going to see the King. There'll be no more crying there, no more dying there. There'll be nothing but laughing and dancing and singing and soaking in all the goodness of God, and long talks with each other about things that really matter. And one of those days we'll wake up and realize that we've forgotten how to be worried about getting cancer, or our child being abducted, or what we'll do if we happen to get paralized. Soon and very soon, we're going to be there. And all of the pain of this life will be nothing but a memory. There will be no more crying there, no more dying there.

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