The God Questions: #1

The following is a real question someone has asked:

What is God’s role in suffering in this world? I have a daughter who is physically and mentally challenged. Should I blame God for her condition?

This is a great question, and one many struggle with. Living in a world with universal suffering hits so close to home and affects every one of us.  It sometimes seems that we have no one to blame other than God.

The first thing we must realize is that understanding the character of God requires us to know Him in relationship. Many people neither know God nor understand Him, and therefore blame Him for many things. In order to even begin to understand the reason for our suffering we must begin by understanding the love God has for man. God loves man so much He has given us free will. Free will is given to man by God in order for man to ultimately love Him by choice or decide not to love Him. His ultimate goal in creating man was to be able to have a people all His own, who love Him by choice and not by force. Creating man with free will is what made it possible for evil to enter the world. Although this evil is not what God wanted, He has allowed it. God does not do evil. It is impossible for God to do evil because it is completely against His character.

So highly does God value freedom and personal choice, He even has taken the chance that many of His creation will choose to do evil and even hate Him.

In the beginning when mankind was created, Adam and Eve made the choice to disobey God, and it resulted in the fall of man (Genesis 3). This made it possible for sin and evil to enter the world God created. The fall of man has resulted in sickness and suffering of every kind. We experience physical and mental sickness, even, at times, from birth. We experience emotional sickness just living in this fallen world and spiritual sickness resulting from our own sin. Sickness and death is not what God ever intended for us. He wants us to be made whole once again, which is why He made a remedy for our condition, redemption through Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

 If your daughter is unable to understand her condition she is blameless before God and not held accountable. If she is able to comprehend sin then she is able to be redeemed by the blood of Christ, just as we all are able to be.

Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

God is not immune to our suffering. God has suffered watching us suffer, and He has suffered the sacrifice of His own Son so we could be redeemed. The price of God’s suffering cannot be measured or even begin to be fully understood without actually growing in relationship with Him. We do not have a God who cannot understand our sorrows, because He came into this world of suffering to experience it first hand and give His life as a sacrifice.

Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

The following is a prophecy of Jesus from the Old Testament calling Him a Man of sorrows.

Isaiah 53:3 “He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”

He understands and has experienced our suffering, reaching out His hand to save those who will come to Him.

We also have to remember that this world is not all there is. If we have received salvation we will someday be given our glorified bodies when we enter heaven, in which sin, sickness and death will never be able to touch us ever again.

1 Corinthians 15:52-55 “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
 “O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”

Revelation 21:4 “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Regardless of how much pain and suffering we experience in this life, we can have joy in knowing it doesn’t have to last forever because of our wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ.