My short answer is, I don’t think so.
Suffering exists. We all feel it painfully and personally. All of the great philosophies and religions have to explain it. The challenge to Christianity and Judaism’s good God is this: How can a sovereign God be entirely loving and allow unnecessary suffering and evil? The answer is mostly returned in the form of this simple response: Free will.
God created humanity with the ability to choose between good and evil. This choice gave rise to a world semi-independent of God’s oversight, a world he permits but doesn’t actively endorse. Therefore, this world swings on a chain, wildly independent from God’s good plans. It’s a world now inhabited by sin, evil, death, and calamity. It’s also a world God hasn’t abandoned. In his mercy, he is constantly re-inserting himself into our beautiful catastrophe. It’s a world full of evil and altruism. It’s full of inspiration and desperation. Still, and more specifically, we want to know, did God send the disease that killed my aunt Sarah, or did God cause the tree to fall on my neighbor’s house that killed two children, or did God send the financial disaster that ruined so many families? Who’s to blame: God, the devil, the free market, or just an unlucky sequence of events?
The Jesus Option
Humans have been wrestling with this question for thousands of years. Jesus weighed in on the issue. Some people believed that fate governed life: every detail in one’s life was scripted for a reason, and one had to accept one’s script. Others believed in a mixture of divine fate and human freedom. The Pharisees, for example, believed that according to the Mosaic Law, you ultimately get what you deserve. If something terrible happened to you in life, then you must have deserved it. God must be punishing you, went the logic. Jesus believed in a third option, one more in line with the Hebrew wisdom literature. Listen to Jesus inform his audience in Luke 13:1–5, “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”
Jesus argued that the people who experienced these calamities were not being punished by God. Accidents happen! Bad things happen to good people. That was effectively the story of Job in the Hebrew Scriptures. Job’s friends wanted to blame Job for his catastrophes. And Job wanted to blame God. And God silenced them both by saying neither human nor divine agency is to blame here, there are mysteries too deep for you to understand; there are other forces at play. Stop accusing God, or your sister, of things they are not guilty of.
Sending vs Allowing
The suffering servant option distinguishes between God sending a calamity and God allowing a calamity. This small distinction makes a huge difference. God can send calamity in order to correct, but not every calamity is an act of God’s correction. God is not maliciously or vindictively sending suffering down upon hapless humans to straighten us out or to see what we’re made of. Does he at times judge us? Of course. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son” (Hebrews 12:6). But God’s corrections start with whispers and words. He is a patient Father who warns his children repeatedly before he advances to more significant consequences or punishment. According to the Biblical track record, if God were going to punish you, he would warn you that it’s coming so that you could repent and avoid the judgment.
The suffering servant option—that God is not scripting suffering, only permitting it—respects the profound freedoms God has granted to his creation. It also preserves the character of God, not as an instigator of calamities, but as a redeemer who steps into our burdens and carries them with us. This world is obviously out of order, and not everything is functioning the way it was designed. And though we don’t fully understand why God permits tragedies to take place, that doesn’t necessitate that God sent them. There are mysteries to this life, and we trust that God will pull out those tangled knots of tragedy and injustice in the world to come.
Driven to Depend on God
In Jesus’ interpretation, that accidents happen, he twice adds an important final instruction: “unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:3, 5). Jesus is reminding humanity that we are all sinfully separated from the Holy God and dying in our sin (Genesis 2:17). Human suffering and human flourishing are both temporary. Don’t think that notoriety or success indicates God’s blessings. And don’t believe that other people’s sufferings indicate God’s curses. We are all on the precipice of eternal suffering without a savior.
Therefore, run to God and depend on him. Allow life’s blessings to cause you to respond to your heavenly Father in praise. And allow the mysteries of life’s trials to drive you to lean on your heavenly Father in trust. The Apostle Peter did say that the persecutions of a hostile world can refine us, “For a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:6-7).
And the Apostle Paul insinuated that God doesn’t necessarily send suffering, but that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). Rather than blaming God every time a tragedy happens in life, let it drive us deeper into prayer and trust. We need the strong and comforting arms of our good Father to carry us through.
Tags: sin, trust, evil, redemption, loving, suffering, sorrow, pain, death, trials, savior, mystery, tragedy, calamity, companion
