I recently watched an interview with Stephen Fry, a self proclaimed atheist; he was asked why he didn’t believe in God. His response caught me off guard, but he had a point. He spoke of a capricious god who allows children to suffer from bone cancer and other such horrors, he asked why anyone would want to worship such a god?
Why should we worship someone who creates us in the knowledge that we will suffer? How can God create people who will choose Hell as their final destiny? How could he create Hitler, knowing the horrendous evil his life would usher in?
It’s the biggest stumbling block for many who wrestle with the truth of suffering and try to hold it in the balance against a God who claims to be Love. How can love and suffering sit side by side? I would never choose to let my children suffer, so why does our Heavenly Father allow us to suffer?
There are some in the Christian world who believe in the prosperity gospel, a false gospel which often claims that God is powerless to stop our suffering and it’s our faith that will enable our struggles to end. It claims we need to summon up the faith and all will be well.
It’s a lie though and it breeds failure and fear, for people die and it’s not because somebody didn’t have enough faith. In the Bible Jesus often said that people’s faith had made them well, but he was, in my opinion, referring to their faith healing their soul, bringing them to the Lord and to his love.
There are many examples of people who have suffered and yet their testimony is greater because of their suffering than it would have been if they had been healed.
I think of Joni Eareckson Tada who was paralysed as a teenager and yet has gone onto the receive so much grace from God that she has been able to paint beautiful pictures with her teeth and has encouraged so many people with her courage and faith.
Another amazing man who knows suffering is Nick Vujicic, a man who was born without arms or legs. At ten years old he nearly ended his life in the bath, but God spoke to his heart and he knew that God had made him for a purpose. He is now a Christian motivational speaker with a beautiful wife and four children. Nick says he keeps a pair of shoes in his cupboard because he knows God can heal him, but he believes that his ministry is greater with his disability than without.
So I’m left with a painful quandary, God is without a doubt real, Jesus walked the earth, died and rose again, the Bible states that God is love and yet this same God allows suffering. So disbelief isn’t an answer. Believing that he can’t do anything about it isn’t an answer. We can only believe in the real God who let’s us go through awful experiences. So what’s he doing about it?
The obvious answer is the cross. Jesus died so that those who love him can one day suffer no more because he suffered once and for all, for all our sin and pain.
But I want to speak on a more immediate level, for Heaven may be a long way off and we have to get through the days on earth first. I can only speak from my own experience.
I am learning that suffering happens but God gets involved. He puts people in our path to help us, He shows his love through His body, the Church, He gives us grace to walk through the darkest days, one minute at a time.
It seems to me that if God took away all our suffering we often wouldn’t turn to him. Where’s the testimony if we avoid everything bad? A comfortable life leaves no space for God’s hand to be visible.
I am still coming to terms with my love for my God who says He loves us and yet I can’t trust that he won’t let bad things happen to those I love. What I can trust though is that he will carry me through everything and that the waters will not overwhelm me. Sometimes grief and mental anguish can feel so enormous that we can’t overcome it and that’s true, but in the strength of God we can and each and every minute we need to turn our thoughts to God, who will light our path to walk another step.
Grief and mental health difficulties, in my experience, feel like a pitch black tunnel, we can’t see any way out of the darkness and if we walk without a guide we will stumble and fall. But if we ask the Light of the World to show us the way forwards, he will and we will see a way out, it may be a long way off, it maybe that we can only see a pinprick of light but if we keep following the Light, we’ll find our way forwards.
I pray for each of you reading this that the Lord Jesus Christ will meet with you today and lead you through whatever you go through. Sending blessings to you all, Vicki
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