Abdu Murray
In times of greatest strife, in those times when immense suffering hits the front pages and the forefront of our thoughts, just as the carnage following last year’s tsunami has, the troubling questions, even for the most committed believers, surface. “How can a loving God allow evil to exist in the world?” It is a centuries-old cry of the heart to find meaning in suffering. The standard and valid answer has been that God grants humans the dignity of having freewill and with freewill comes the risk people may choose to do evil rather than good. This is a solid response when the question of evil centers on human-originated travesties, such as murder, wars, and the like. But a somewhat different question presents us with a thornier issue: “How can a loving God allow natural evils, like disastrous tsunamis, to exist?” This question is so important because it is often an indicator that the one asking the question has experienced deep-seeded pain that either keeps them from hearing and believing the Gospel or causes them to turn away from it after years of following Jesus. But there are answers to this question – answers that provide not just intellectual satisfaction but real spiritual significance.
Philosophically, the existence of suffering does not negate the existence of God. The underlying assumption in the statement, “An almighty, loving God doesn’t exist because suffering exists” is that there is no good that can come from suffering. But this assumption is true only if the person making it has infinite knowledge about all possible future events arising from every tragedy. It is obvious, however, that none of us is all-knowing and, thus, none of us can really make such an assumption without claiming to be God ourselves. Therefore, because none of us is omniscient, we may assume that it is possible that a greater good is achieved by allowing suffering to exist.
Apologist William Lane Craig has referred to the movie “Sliding Doors” to illustrate just how good can come out of suffering. In that movie, a young girl is trying to catch a subway when she is unexpectedly delayed. From that point, the movie shows two possible lives, one resulting from her catching the train, another resulting from having missed it. In one life, she is happy and successful. In the other, she is a failure and suffers much. But at the end of the movie, the happy life is cut short by a tragic car accident. In the life of suffering, her fortune turns around and she ends up happy. The illustration shows that although we only see pain and misery in our future because of present tragedy, it is quite possible that our misfortunes are working for our eventual greatest good.
But there is more to this than just a philosophical or hypothetical possibility. There is a reality in history of how the worst kind of suffering imaginable actually resulted in the greatest possible good.
It is often remarked that one of the worst tragedies and evils of our world is the suffering of the innocent. Two thousand years ago, suffering and evil converged in the execution of a totally innocent man, Jesus Christ. That suffering came in the form of a crucifixion. Jesus’ suffering was so great that we have derived the word “excruciating” from it, which literally means “out of the cross.” But Jesus suffered more than was apparent to the eye. He suffered the punishment that each person who had lived, was living, and would ever live, so deserved. In that way, Jesus not only suffered though totally innocent, but the guilty – you and I – were allowed to go scot-free. Think on the suffering that must be meted out if Jesus truly bore the cumulative punishment for all mankind. It is beyond imagination. There is no greater suffering, not even in the wake of killer tsunamis, that compares.
But out of the suffering, “out of the cross,” the greatest good arose. Everyone that chooses to trust in Jesus’ work on the cross and His historically-verifiable resurrection is saved from eternal damnation. Like the incomparability of Jesus’ suffering, the good that came from it is also incomparable. Jesus, and Jesus alone, provides the significance in suffering. The significance is that we can find our hope, our identities, and even our very lives, in Him.