A Theology of Suffering

I want to take every chance I can to teach on suffering because it is one thing that we canʼt escape and it is one thing that will “add to” or “rob from” us the most, depending on our worldview. Suffering is also one of the biggest hang ups Christians & non-Christians alike have with the idea of God and His goodness

The prosperity gospel says: “If you believe in Jesus, He will prosper you and you will suffer less and less the more you mature in Him. You will be wealthy. Those who bring this message over to 3rd world nations are saying: “If you believe in Jesus your crops wonʼt die if rain doesnʼt come. Your wife wonʼt have miscarriages. Your kids wonʼt get aids. Your cattle will multiply. Youʼll get rich if you give more to the Lord....because He wants you flying a leer jet and driving a mercedes like me :-)!!!”

This should anger you. The “Iʼll give everything to this Jesus if Heʼll do that for me” kind of Jesus doesn’t exist. Bad things happen to everybody...saints and sinners alike. As Christians, we must have a “theology” of suffering or else we will not be able to minster to those who do suffer or make it through our own suffering. So what we need to do is to understand the reality that suffering will always be among us, then build a proper understanding of what God’s role for it is. 

After the tsunami hit Indonesia in Dec. 2004 and over 250,000 people were killed, all over the media people were asking or stating: “Where was God?” One reported from the NY Observer wrote: “If God is God, he’s not good. If God is good, he’s not God. You can’t have it both ways, especially after the Indian Ocean catastrophe.” 

A philosopher, J.L. Mackie, writes in his book The Miracle of Theism (Oxford 1982) states: “If a good and powerful God exists, he would not allow pointless evil, but because there is much unjustifiable, pointless evil in the world, the traditional good and powerful God could not exist. Some other god or no god may exist, but not the traditional God.”

This idea that “if evil and suffering seem pointless to me, then it must be pointless” is       # 1: a very arrogant thing to say or think....”it’s all a matter of what my brilliant mind can conceive, and if I can’t conceive it or see the point in it, then heck, there must be no point in it since I am the end of all wisdom and knowledge.” # 2: fallacious, just because you can’t see or imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one. 

Paul Brand, the missionary surgeon to India wrote in his book Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants: “I have come to see that pain and pleasure come to us not as opposites but as Siamese twins, strangely joined and intertwined. Nearly all my memories of acute happiness, in fact, involve some element of pain or struggle.” (Christianity Today, Jan. 10, 1994, p. 21)

John Piper says this: “I have never heard anyone say, ‘The deepest and rarest and most satisfying joys of my life have come in times of extended ease and earthly comfort.’ Nobody says that. It isn't true.” 

What's true is what Charles Spurgeon said: "They who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls."

Alexander Solzhenitsyn says, in his speech to Harvard students, A World Split Apart, in 1978: “Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.” 

We in America live in such a posh, comfy, socially acceptable kind of world that looks at suffering as only evil with no purpose. We raise our kids that way, we think we deserve all things good, and have a “do not withhold from me something that might bring me comfort” kind of mentality. 

So the question that comes to my mind is this: How can one endure suffering without a proper understanding of the sovereignty of God or have a purpose greater than the pursuit of their own happiness? 

Our greatest pursuit in life is often to gain more happiness and comfort. It is not to gain more of God (as if we need more than God to be happy). What we need is eyes to see that God is God and we are not, and our vision and understanding is limited and we are mainly focused on our happiness and comfort in life, and not for the greater good of everyone else around us for eternity. We want comfort right here, right now, and if it means someone else suffering for my comfort, then so be it. The problem is, God is much more just and loving and wise than we will ever be.

Most of what we really need for success in life comes through our most difficult and painful experiences.

Let’s take a look at Jesus. Grace reaches it’s apex/climax, at the cross. Christ suffering in our place. Suffering exists ultimately (but not only) so that Christ might suffer for the sinner and display the magnificence of the glory of His grace! Suffering makes God’s grace and love visible here on earth!

The greatest suffering there ever was, will be the center of our worship for all eternity:

Rev. 5:11-12: 11 Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Our purpose in life is to glorify God (display His beauty). If that is our main goal in life, we will have comfort and peace. If itʼs not, we will seek to find this comfort and peace elsewhere and will never find it; always questioning God and His purposes and wondering what in the world is the purpose of all this CRAP in life for.

Suffering exists ultimately so that Christ might suffer for the sinner and display the magnificence of the glory of His grace!

Application: Suffering can do many things in your life that are “good” if youʼll let it. But Iʼm gonna give you 3 things that I see suffering doing in my life and those around me:

1) Suffering clarifies what the heart worships. This is the fire, that when it begins to burn off the dross (something regarded as worthless; rubbish, foreign matter, or mineral waste, in particular: scum formed on the surface of molten metal) it exposes all the things we love more than God Himself by stripping us of these things in love and giving us clarity in the midst of suffering. This will either bring great clarity and intimacy with God, or you will love the idea of deliverance more than having the Deliverer with you and doing it His way and you will turn from God and resent Him because of your pride, thinking you know whatʼs best for your life.

1 Peter 1:6-7: 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

2) Suffering purifies the heart. When the dross is all burned off of the metal, you have a very strong and pure piece of metal, the kind in which great swords are made of that are used in battle and do not break when the testing time comes. (Personal trainer taking you to the point of body failure as you are training for an ironman competition.) 

When your heart is purified through suffering, you begin to see the world in a different light and you do not love it as much as you did before. This gives you a growing discontentment with sin and evil in this world and it increases your hopefulness for heaven and the day when all tears will be wiped away, and the pain will be no more.

1 John 2:15-17: 15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

3) Suffering moves the heart to action. If we see a child cry, we offer tenderness. If we see the wounds of a victim, we offer solace. Human suffering arouses anger, it moves us to take action, and as a result, we begin to push back some of the

darkness that the fall of man created in this world. Suffering humanizes the heart and increases a hunger for God and for righteous living. (Jon Foreman in his song Instead of a Show says this: “Instead, let there be a flood of justice, an endless procession of righteous living.”)

2 Corinthians 1:3-7: 3 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 Christʼs 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.