The Problem of Pain and Suffering

In our final session together, we’re going to talk about arguably the greatest objection to Christianity and the existence of God: the problem of pain and suffering.

Before we begin, I just want to make 2-3 prefatory remarks to help orient our time together.

First, I want to recognize the weight of the topic we’re about to talk about. I want you to know just how seriously I take the problem of pain and suffering.

It can be easy to just hang out in the clouds when we get to this topic to avoid the emotional weight of it all, but I want to assure you that I won’t be doing that.

We are going to discuss the problem of pain at philosophical level for just a little bit, but we’re going to spend most of our time talking about the emotional and pastoral side to the problem of pain.

I say all of that because I know that for some of you here today, it took all that you had just to get out of the door because of the incredible pain, sorrow, anguish, and suffering that you’re bearing.

Some of you here today are bearing an incredible burden of pain and suffering in your personal lives and it makes this topic scream in urgency. I want us to walk through that together.

Just as this is not a mere philosophical problem for you, neither is it a mere philosophical problem for me either.

As someone in pastoral ministry, virtually every single day I’m walking alongside people to help them through incredible times of pain and suffering. The conversations I have with people are often heart wrenching. I deal with suffering at an intimate level on a consistent basis.

Just this week I was at a funeral of the relative of a close friend and walking with him and his family through that sorrow.

I just say all of that to make clear that I recognize the weight of this topic, particularly at the emotional level.

The problem of pain is primarily an emotional problem before it is a philosophical problem. I hope you sense that.

The weight of the emotional problem of pain for non-Christians

If you’re here and you’re not a Christian or you’re a Christian that’s really struggling with doubt, I want to you consider whether or not you actually feel the real weight of the emotional problem of pain.

You might doubt or deny the existence of God because of philosophical and intellectual reasons, and the problem of pain may even be the primary reason.

But I can almost guarantee you that the intellectual problem of pain is not the real reason for your doubt.

Look, I know I don’t look that old, and I’m not that old, but in over 10 years of ministry leadership, I have met a lot of people who have doubted the existence of God because of the problem of pain. Very few, if any, actually doubted for true intellectual reasons. As I got to know them, talked with them, and ministered to them, I came to see that deep down they doubted God because of the emotional side of the problem of pain.

The real reason they doubted wasn’t because of an astute philosophical line of argumentation, but because their family member died after they had prayed for God to heal them for months, They doubted because their parents got a divorce after they prayed to God to heal their marriage. They disbelieved because a relationship they thought would end in happily ever after ended in heartbreak. They disbelieved because they couldn’t see why God would allow them to experience crippling depression causes thoughts bordering on suicidal.

The problem of pain is serious, and the fact that we feel the emotional side of it more powerfully than the philosophical doesn’t make it less hard. But it’s worth realizing when the emotional problem of pain is what we’re really struggling with.

So if you’re here and you believe that intellectual reasons are actually why you doubt or disbelieve God’s existence, I want you to honestly consider where or not that’s true. Be honest with yourself.

Is there some painful event(s) in your past that at the core of your struggle with God? Be honest with yourself about it. Because if so, no amount of philosophical argumentation will answer your doubt or disbelief in God. Relief will only come when you deal with the emotional side of the problem of pain.

The problem of pain is not just a question for Christians to answer

One final thing I want to say before we dive in. The problem of main is not just a question for Christians to answer. Every single worldview, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism, Janism, Atheism, and even agnostics must answer this question.

This topic and objection is often thrown at Christians as the knock down blow, the unanswerable objection. It is totally fair and right for this question to be posed to Christians.

But the moment someone poses this question to a Christian they must also ask themselves why there is pain and suffering and if there is anything redeeming about it. If you’re here today and you’re not a Christian know that you can’t avoid this question yourself. You also have to ask yourself if your worldview can sufficiently answer this question.

My goal today is not to give you the definitive answer to the problem of pain. I don’t have all of the answers here. No one does. I can't explain to you all of the reasons why God allows pain and suffering, but I can explain to you many of them. I think that Christianity has the best answer to the problem of pain out of any worldview. Your job is to wrestle with me in this issue and see if your worldview has an answer that matches Christianity’s.

With all of that being said, let’s dive into the philosophical side of the problem of pain and then move to the emotional and pastoral side to see the answer and hope that Christianity has to offer to arguably the greatest objection to faith in the world.

The Philosophical Problem of Pain

Philosophers have wrestled with the problem of pain and suffering for thousands of years.

World-renowned 18th century philosopher David Hume puts the problem of pain and suffering in it’s clearest and most powerful form in his work Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hume puts the objection like this:

The pain and suffering of the world are direct evidence against the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God. A God that is omni-benevolent and omnipotent should be able to stop or prevent pain, evil, and suffering.

Hume gets to the point by asking:

"Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? [why] then is [there] evil?”

The issue becomes even more difficult when some philosophers put forward the proposition that much of the pain and suffering of the world are pointless. Pointless pain and suffering seem to prove that an all-good and all-powerful God, like the God of Christianity, can’t exist. But even if the pain and suffering of the world wasn’t pointless, what purpose could God possibly have in allowing pain and suffering?

It is at these points where the tides in the conversation on this matter have turned. Both points, that much of the suffering of the world is pointless and that God can’t have good purposes in allowing pain and suffering, rely on a fallacy.

Highly acclaimed philosopher Alvin Plantinga points out the fallacy in his book Warranted Christian Belief.

He argues that we are arrogant to assume that God can’t have a purpose for the pain and suffering of the world. Why should we assume to think that we understand all of the thought processes of a being that is infinitely more intelligent, wise, powerful, and loving than we are? Why should we assume that suffering is pointless or that God doesn’t have purposes for it just because we can’t see any reasons why? Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Plantinga makes this point through an analogy.

St. Bernard and No-see-um Example

Imagine that you and I are on a camping trip and we put up a tent. Imagine that I ask you to peek your head in the tent to see if there are any St. Bernards in there. Because St. Bernards are so large and our tent is so small, if you peek your head in the tent and don’t see any St. Bernards we can be reasonably certain that there aren't any St. Bernards in the tent. But imagine if I asked you to peek in the tent and see if there were any no-see-ums in there. You’ve heard of no-see-ums, right? You know, the little bugs on the beach that sting you or bite you? They’re so small that they can get through screening and bite you. You can’t see them. That’s why they’re called no-see-ums. Imagine if I asked you to look inside the tent to see if there were any no-see-ums in there. You might come back and say that you didn’t see any but that by no means means that there are no no-see-ums in the tent. Just because you can’t see any no-see-ums doesn’t mean that they are not there.

I think this is an effective parallel to our discussion today. Just because you and I can’t see a point or purpose for the pain and suffering in the world doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have some.

We have all probably experienced this phenomenon in our own lives.

Vaccination Example

I can remember my mom taking me to the doctor when I was a kid so I could get a vaccination. I used to hate getting shots. And when I was younger I had no idea why my mom was putting me through that pain. I couldn’t see a purpose for it. Even though I couldn’t see a purpose for the pain of the shot, my mom had good purposes for allowing me to endure the pain of the shot, namely that I would be better and healthier for it in the end.

Just because you can’t see purposes for the pain in the world doesn’t mean God doesn’t have any.

In our frustration and sorrow for the pain of the world, when we can’t seem to see why God would allow pain and suffering, it can be tempting to want to throw out the idea of God entirely in this discussion. If that’s you today, I totally understand.

But you need to know this: intellectually, throwing God out of the discussion surrounding the problem of pain accomplishes nothing.

In fact, it is actually less comforting.

If you take God out of the discussion, it doesn’t get rid of the problem; all that it accomplishes is ridding yourself of the only means by which there can be redeeming purposes in pain.

Atheism and agnosticism provide no relief for the problem of pain.

But with God in the equation there can still be real purposes for the pain we experience in the world.

In fact, God does have good purposes for the pain in the world.

And this is where I want us to move out of the philosophical and move into the emotional and pastoral elements of the problem of pain.

The Emotional Problem of Pain

The primary way I think we can make sense of the emotional problem of pain is through seeing God’s purposes for the pain in the world.

Again, while I don’t think we can know all of God’s purposes in pain, I think the Bible shows us a number of reasons that should give us immense hope in the face of pain or suffering.

My prayer is that in this remaining portion of our time together that you would be able to lean in an sense the incredible hope we have amidst pain that only the Christian worldview offers.

The Bible gives us many stories and scenarios that show us God has purposes for our pain.

Story of Job

The story of Job is a great example of this.

God allows Satan to test Job through incredible pain and suffering.

Satan is seeking to show God that Job’s faith is fraudulent, but by allowing Satan to test Job through pain, God shows the exact opposite to be true.

After all of this story ends, Job dies not knowing why he actually suffered. He doesn’t know the purpose behind his pain. But in fact, God had incredible purposes for Job’s pain.

In fact, God has used Job’s pain to bring about immense good. In the thousands of years since this story took place, literally billions of people have had their faith strengthened and their doubts eased by this story. Job has become a common household name in many parts of the world.

Even in this story we can see that God can have good purposes for pain, even if we can’t see them.

There’s another biblical story I want us to look at to see another dimension of this discussion.

God doesn’t just allow pain and have good purposes for it, He also redeems the very pain His people experience and can even use the evil deeds they commit for their good and His glory.

If you have your bibles with you, turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 12 starting in verse 12.

1 Samuel 12:12ff

Let me give you a little bit of context as you turn there.

Samuel is the prophet to God’s people at this time.

God has been the king over His people for many, many years now.

Yet as the people of God look out over the surrounding nations, as sinful and wicked as those nations might be, they see human kings on the throne and they begin to desire to have a human king on their own throne. The people of God desire a king that the can touch and see before their very own eyes. They finally ask God to give them a human king on the throne.

They commit a treason beyond belief in doing so. To say that you want something in God’s place is evil. The people of God are asking for something unimaginably evil. And this is where we come to our text.

Look at 1 Samuel 12 with me, this is Samuel speaking to the people of God.

“And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ when the LORD your God was your king. 13 And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; behold, the LORD has set a king over you. 14 If you will fear the LORD and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the LORD your God, it will be well. 15 But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then the hand of the LORD will be against you and your king. 16 Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the LORD will do before your eyes.”

Notice what’s happening here. God is allowing evil to happen. You would think that upon the request for a human king God would immediately say, “No,” and punish His people. But He doesn’t. He gives them the sinful desire of their heart and allow the evil and eventual pain and suffering due to their evil to happen.

Even when His very own people commit treason against Him, God doesn’t abandon His people and shows them that He can and does have a purpose in the pain and evil of it all.

Notice what Samuel says in verses 14-16:

“If you will fear the LORD and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the LORD your God, it will be well. 15 But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then the hand of the LORD will be against you and your king. 16 Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the LORD will do before your eyes.”

Even in pain God is about to work wonders. Let’s keep reading from verse 17 to verse 22.

“Is it not wheat harvest today? I will call upon the LORD, that he may send thunder and rain. And you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the LORD, in asking for yourselves a king.” 18 So Samuel called upon the LORD, and the LORD sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the LORD and Samuel. 19 And all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the LORD your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.” 20 And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart. 21 And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. 22 For the LORD will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for himself.”

Notice that Samuel calls for the people to feel the weight of what they have just done and calls for God to bring down hail to destroy their wheat crop as partial punishment.

The people quickly begin to realize that what they have asked for is evil. They even say this directly in verse 19.

But notice what God says through Samuel in the midst of this. He says that He won’t forsake His people and that even amidst evil, their own evil, He will be with them. He will do something about it.

So what happens after the people of God get their wish and a human king is put on the throne. Over 40 human kings follow this first king and out of all of them, may be 2 or 3 are even kind of good. Most are incredibly immoral and unfaithful. But even the best king commits adultery and murder. The kings are so bad that the nation of Israel splits into 2 and by 400 B.C. there is not even a king from the people of God ruling over either nation; both have been exiled and captured are ruled by other nations. Much pain and suffering comes as a result of the sinful and treasonous choice made by God’s people. So what purposes could God possibly have for all of this? How could He possibly redeem the evil, pain, and suffering experienced? He does in a way that is greater than we could have ever imagined.

Through the lineage of the failed kings brought on by the treasonous decision of the people of God, God raised up someone to assume the throne once and for all. Out of nobody parents and a nowhere town God raises up Jesus to live out the law that the human kings never did and to assume His throne not in popularity but in excruciating pain beyond belief on a cross.

The Pharisees, whose forefathers had sinfully ushered in the first Hebrew human king had no idea that they were crowning not just the king of the Jews but the king of the whole world when they raised Jesus up onto the cross. Jesus took on the punishment we deserve for our sins, and the punishment the people in Samuel’s time deserved, and showed himself to be king who conquers over sin and all the powers of Hell. If that wasn’t enough, three days later, Jesus rose from the dead and declared Himself king over even death, appeared to over 500 and then ascended into heaven to the throne at the right hand of God. Jesus, the God-man, became the human king that the Israelites always wanted, the king that they could touch and see, and yet is also God.

God redeemed the sinful and evil actions of His people (and all of the pain and suffering that came from it) to bring about good for the world and glory for Himself beyond what we could have ever imagined.

This passage shows us several vital things about God’s relation to pain and evil that should give us hope.

First, God can use the pain and evil in the world, even the pain and evil that we cause ourselves, for our good and His glory. He can redeem the pain in the world!

Second, we can see from 1 Samuel 12 that God will even give us the sinful and pain-inducing desires of our heart to show us that the things we desire more than God are never good enough. Why would he do this?

In the Christian faith, we are made in the image of God and meant to know and enjoy God forever.

God is not some distant ruler who is just out to get us. Not at all! In fact, the Triune God of the Bible is love and joy in His very essence.

For all of eternity past, God has been in perfect love, joy, and communion in the fellowship of the Trinity. God is the source of all joy and love, delight, and satisfaction! He wanted to share that love, joy, delight, and satisfaction and so He created us to enjoy the perfect joy and love He had enjoyed for all of eternity past.

But in our freedom, we have rebelled and chosen to seek other things to satisfy us other than God. We have rejected the one and only source for true and everlasting joy for things that will one day pass away.

If it takes pain for God to show us that He is what we really need so we can be saved and enjoy Him forever, it’s worth it.

A few years of pain here on Earth is like a splash of mist in the wind compared to an eternity with in perfect joy and satisfaction with God.

With that frame of mind, God allowing pain that causes us to come to Him is the most loving thing He could ever do.

And oh does pain point us to God. Even some of the most hardened unbelievers I know will bow down and pray in desperation when they hit their wits end.

It’s like C.S. Lewis classic quote: “God whispers to us in our pleasure but He shouts to us in our pain.”

Cameron Leeds Story

Share the story of the Cameron Leeds prayer gathering and people coming to christ because of it.

There is hope even in the pain you experience now. You may have done something so evil, so wrong that it has brought you shame and pain ever since. We all have secrets that we wish we could take back. They haunt us. Or maybe someone did something to you that has forever brought shame and suffering in your life.

Take heart! God can redeem even that for your good and His glory! Pain always has a purpose!

God used some excruciating pain and hardship in my own life this last year to draw me closer to Him. He used it to bring me joy and sweet fellowship with Him beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined.

If your faith is in Jesus Christ, every bit of pain you experience will be used for your good and God’s glory. There is not one millisecond of your pain that will go wasted! If you are a Christian, every second of pain you experience is an opportunity for you to lean in and trust in God and rely on Him for satisfaction and joy like you never have before. If you are a Christian, God comforts you in your pain and draws you close through that pain so that you can lean on Him for joy and delight and be satisfied like you never could outside of Him.

2 Corinthians 1:3-10

Paul makes this very point in 2 Corinthians 1:3-10. He says:

2 Corinthians 1:3-10- “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. 8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

Do you understand that no other religion, no other worldview can proclaim that truth? Not atheism, not agnosticism, not Buddhism, not Judaism, not Hinduism, not Islam, or any other worldview! Christianity is the only worldview that can mean it in full when it says that God comforts the broken hearted and has good purposes in pain.

In no other worldview does the infinite God of the universe enter into the pain of His people, taking on flesh and experiencing pain just as they do, and then enduring pain and suffering on their behalf so that He could do something about it. Jesus Christ took on flesh and entered into our pain. On the cross, he encountered pain infinitely beyond anything we have ever experienced as He took on the just punishment we deserved for our sin. He rose from the grave 3 days later defeating sin, death, Satan, and all the powers of Hell as He made possible the death of pain and suffering.

Because Jesus stepped into our pain and did something about it it means incredible things.

Not only does it mean that He understands the pain that you’re going through, but because

He is the perfect mediator between God and man because He is both God and man, it also means He is ever interceding for us and that we can take our pains, depressions, anxieties, and cries to Him. He not only hears, He understands, and has done something about it. No other god or worldview can say that.

It is the Triune God of Christianity and Him alone that can truly claim to comfort and heal the brokenhearted.

Because of that, Hebrews 12:2 tells us that we should fix our eyes on Jesus

“the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

It was Jesus joy to endure the cross because He knew it would bring about our salvation and God’s glory.

Because Jesus came down and experienced more pain than we ever could, even if we never know what the full reason God allows pain is, we can know what reasons aren’t true. the reason we experience pain and suffering is t because God doesn’t love you!

The cross is the ultimate answer to the problem of pain. God took the worst evil, pain, and suffering in the history of the universe, namely the killing of the innocent Son of God, and used it for our good and His glory beyond anything we could have ever imagined. If God can use the worst evil, pain, and suffering for our good and His glory He can use an evil, pain, and suffering we’re enduring in our lives for our good and His glory. There is infinite hope in Jesus!

The Christian God is the only God that enters into the pain of His people to sense their same pain (Jesus became a man). We have a perfect meditator in Jesus who knows exactly what we are going through. We can go to him and he knows what it is like. No other religion can say that.

God knows and numbered each and every one of your tears and wipes them away in love until the day until tears are no more.

Revelation 21:1-5

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place[a] of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,[b] and God himself will be with them as their God.[c] 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1907), 134.

Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 466-467.

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