As humans we struggle with the question of suffering and we hurt desperately when a loved one is in pain or suffers from some terrible malady. The question of "why" raises its head and we long for answers from the God we believe is powerful enough to stop all this madness. God can heal; Why doesn't He? God can eliminate hunger; Why doesn't He? God can stop someone from molesting a child; why doesn't He? And we begin to think either God doesn't really care or He is impotent and weaker than we have been led to believe. If we accept the latter then we have to believe that God isn't God at all. If the former then He can't be the God we read of in the Bible. Whatever we think, ultimately every painful, awful thing can be laid at the feet of the God who has the power to stop them all. It doesn't matter if we reject that idea, because deep down in our hearts we know it's true. God is either all-powerful or He's NOT God. I choose to believe He's God. So the question of "why" must be answered.
In the beginning there was a garden wherein there was a tree called the tree of life. I choose to believe this is true. If one continued to eat from the tree of life he or she would continue to live - I'm assuming, in good health and without aging. After man sinned, GOD took away man's access to the tree of life and man began to die physically. Note Genesis 3:22. In addition to this God also cursed the earth for man and placed heavy burdens on mankind that included pain, suffering and struggles.
One of the questions we need to ask about suffering is: "Did God plan for there to be suffering before He created the earth or was it an afterthought?"
Genesis chapter 3 expressly tells us that God was going to send someone; we later learn that it was Jesus the Christ and that He was/is/always will be God. It is certainly implied that the one God would send would suffer at the hands of Satan. The bruised heel and crushed head implies this. While it is true, this is stated after man sinned – and there is no record of how long they had been in the garden before this took place, so we don’t know if it was ten minutes or ten years or a thousand – it is certain that this was planned before the creation - Ephesians 1:3-14, just as an example. In these verses the NIV uses such phrases as, “the mystery of His will,” and “He purposed in Christ,” and “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” The Christ Himself presupposes the sin of man. God knew we were going to sin so the suffering of Jesus was planned in eternity prior to the creation of man. It was an essential part of God’s plan for there to be suffering on the earth in order that His Son might suffer. Jesus could not have been the only one to ever suffer on earth, suffering was for all mankind and it was for the express purpose of brining man back to God.
Again, we read in Acts 2 that the suffering of Jesus was surely the plan of God. Not only was it His plan, but He made it happen. So to say that it was not the plan of God (and that the Bible nowhere teaches it) for Him to willingly hurt anyone is just wrong, even if we only apply the plan to Jesus. But it seems clear to me that God always planned to use suffering/pain willingly so that man would be wooed back to Him. His anger and the results of it are not to be divorced from God’s love for mankind. It is His love that causes Him to be angry with us at times and the anger calls for pain and suffering.
Amos 4:6ff shows us that God willingly used pain and suffering for the express purpose of bringing His people back to Him. Through Amos, He tells us this is so over and over again.
Just for overkill, you cannot read the Judges and not see that God used the sufferings other nations brought on the Israelites for the express purpose of bringing them back to Him. Also, the sufferings cannot be just punitive because there were many innocents who were suffering along with the guilty. The crying woman’s baby (Though it's not found in the Judges but Kings; 2 Kings 6) was one of the innocent ones who suffered for the sins of his people. The baby was not being punished, but there was purpose in his suffering. It was to tell those around him that he would not be suffering, would not be boiled and eaten by his own mother, had it not been for the sins of the people.
All suffering is demonstrating that sin is a horrific thing and that God will not just let us go our own way and be swallowed up by sin, but He will use the suffering to win us back. This is the purpose of ALL suffering. It doesn’t matter if the suffering is by chance, such as an automobile accident or suffering expressly given by God, such as Nadab and Abihu. The suffering is meant to bring people back to God; to cause people to be in a right relationship with God. It is not necessarily for the one suffering, such as the baby or even Nadab and Abihu, but it is for this purpose. Otherwise suffering, pain and even death have no purpose. They are just arbitrary things put on us by an arbitrary God and this being so we would be forced to scream out with the Preacher, “Meaningless, meaningless all is meaningless.”
Finally, note Colossians 1:24, the sufferings of Christ are not over, but He continues His sufferings through and in the Church and the purpose of the church is to take the message to the world. More on this in Part 2.
