http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=127
The Problem of Suffering
| by |
Trevor Major, M.Sc., M.A. |
Just to be human is to deal with emotional and physical pain on a
day-to-day basis. This is the practical and existential problem of
suffering that affects, and is affected by, our world view. Even
Christians, who confess a living God (Matthew 16:16), may wonder: Where
is this God when we need Him? Why doesn’t He
do something? These
questions may lead to doubt, and then to disbelief. Atheists see only
vindication in events like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. They hear a
mother on the evening news proclaiming, “It’s a miracle that my baby
survived,” and wonder: Would it have been much bother for God to have
done the same for everyone else? This is not a new argument. But given
academic freedom in the modern secular university, unbelievers are able
to wield the extent and depth of human suffering with devastating effect
on ungrounded faith.
If we understand the intellectual problem of suffering, we may have a
better chance of coming through the emotional side of the problem.
However, my primary goal is to defend theism, and Christianity in
particular, against the charges leveled by atheists. In so doing, I
intend to show how one common tactic may distract us from a God-centered
response.
THE ARGUMENT
The intellectual problem of suffering is a challenge unique to theists.
By “theist” I mean anyone who believes in a Being Who exists beyond or
outside the natural world, yet Who is able to be involved in the course
of human events. This excludes deists, for example, who believe that a
Supreme Being created the world, and left it alone. Christians, Jews,
and Moslems, for the most part, count themselves as theists.
Specifically, most readers of this article will be Christians who
believe that God has attributes that are infinite in degree: that He is
eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and so on.
Then the following question arises: How do we reconcile the existence
of suffering with the existence of an all-loving, all-knowing God? The
argument goes something like this:
-
If God is all-powerful, He could do something to prevent or end suffering.
-
If God is all-loving, He would want to prevent or end suffering.
-
There is a tremendous amount of suffering in the world.
-
Therefore, God either is not all-loving or not all-powerful.
The reason I say that this is a problem for the theist is that the
atheist does not believe in the first two premises. He rejects that
there is a God Who
could do something about suffering if He had the power, and he rejects that there is a God Who
would
do something about suffering if He had the inclination. He does not
deny the third premise—that there is suffering. Like every human being,
he faces the existential problem of suffering. As far as he is
concerned, suffering
just is: it is part of our unplanned,
purposeless existence. We live, we die—end of story. Only for the sake
of the present argument does the atheist grant God’s existence. All he
is asking us to do, as theists, is reconcile or justify suffering, given
that God is supposed to be an all-loving and all-powerful Being.
Skirting the Problem
Some people have tried to sidestep the problem by denying one of the
three premises listed above. This was the approach taken by Harold
Kushner, a Jewish rabbi who lost his son at an early age to a cruel and
debilitating disease. God is infinitely good, Kushner concluded in his
immensely popular book,
When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981), but He is not all-powerful.
Other theologians have suggested that God neither is infinitely powerful nor infinitely good, but only in the
process
of acquiring these attributes. So it is understandable that there
should be imperfections in our world because God, while great, likewise
is imperfect or incomplete. Like Kushner, their “solution” is to abandon
the God of conventional theism (e.g., Edwards, 1972, p. 213).
Unfortunately, as John M. Frame has observed, such a finite god offers
no “sure hope for the overcoming of evil” (1994, p. 157). In the end,
this god is not the God that most Christians would want to defend.
Finally, someone may wish to deny the third premise by maintaining that
suffering is not real. What we call “suffering,” they might say, is
just an illusion. This is the position of Eastern mysticism, not of
theism. Spinoza, a radical Jewish philosopher, maintained that evil was
mere deprivation. When we think we are suffering, all we are doing is
acting like children who have been denied toys or candy. If only we had a
complete picture of reality, Spinoza would say, we would know God, and
nothing would appear imperfect. But for Spinoza, nature and God were one
and the same. Again, this is not the God of theism. Most Christians,
like most atheists, acknowledge that suffering is all too real. Indeed,
that Jesus suffered for the sake of mankind is a vital element of the
Christian faith (Matthew 16:21; Luke 24:26; Acts 17:3; Philippians 3:10;
1 Peter 2:20-25; 4:12-19; etc.).
Dismissing the Problem
So, let us say that we want to deal with this problem without giving up
any of God’s essential characteristics. Where do we begin? One approach
is to maintain that no explanation is necessary. We, as mere mortals,
should not have to “justify the ways of God to Men” (to use a phrase of
John Milton’s). Or, in the words of a Simon and Garfunkel song, “God has
a plan, but it’s not available to the common man.” If God is Who we
think He is, then there must be an explanation, but it is beyond our
grasp.
Alvin Plantinga (1977) takes a more defensive approach. He points out
that suffering, and the claims about God, are not contradictory. It is
not like saying, for example,
Only birds have feathers.
Tweety has feathers.
Therefore, Tweety is not a bird.
Clearly, the last line contradicts the preceding lines. But where is
the contradiction in affirming both that there is suffering, and that
God is an all-loving and all-powerful Being? What a critic must do is
supply some extra premises (e.g., Mackie, 1990, p. 26). He would have to
insist, for instance, that the theist’s perfectly good God always would
eliminate evil insofar as He could. That there is so much evil is
supposed to show that God is not all-good. Further, a critic would have
to insist that there are no limits to what this Being could do. That
there is so much evil is supposed to show that God’s powers are limited.
The trouble is, these additional claims for what God would or could do
fail to take into account a complete picture of God. For God to
“eliminate evil insofar as He could” still may mean that we have a lot
of evil in the world, because to reduce it any further might violate one
of God’s other attributes. We simply do not know what conditions would
make the existence of both God and evil logically contradictory (also
see Pike, 1990, pp. 48,52). As to God’s power, there are no limits as to
what He
could bring to bear in any one situation. However, the
actual
power He uses would depend on other characteristics, such as grace,
love, mercy, and so on. At the time of His arrest, the Son of God could
have called on twelve legions of angels, but not without contradicting
the promises of His Father in heaven (Matthew 26:52-56).
Plantinga has given us a good place to start. Theists could say, at
least initially, that there is nothing irrational about believing in God
and acknowledging the reality of evil. Still, people may think that
this is a problem that Christians need to address. Have we got anything
more to say?
Answering the Problem
One reason to suspect that there must be more answers is that the
Bible—the foundation of our faith (Romans 10:17)—is not exactly silent
on the subject. The Book of Job shows that God stood back and allowed a
man to suffer at the hands of the Adversary. Job’s world collapsed
around him. He lost his property, his children, and his health. During
this time, he had no idea why these things were happening to him. Job’s
wife told him to “curse God and die” (2:9). Three of his friends thought
terrible sins must lie at the root of such misfortunes. Job himself
came to question God’s goodness and power. In the end, of course, Job
regained his faith, wealth, and much more.
But could we say that all these terrible events were necessary? Perhaps
we can learn something from these events, but how can we justify the
collateral damage? A great wind collapsed a house on Job’s children,
killing everyone inside (1:18-19). Natural calamities killed his
animals, and raiders killed his servants (1:15-17). Was all this death
necessary to teach Job, and us, a lesson about suffering?
And what about the death of Christ? Maybe—just maybe—the skeptic might
go along with us and agree that Jesus had to die to save us from our
sins. But why did He have to die with such humiliation, with scourging
and beatings, and a tortuous death on the cross? Why did God not do a
better job of arranging events so that His own Son could die in a more
humane way? Besides, if humankind is guilty, why not punish the whole of
mankind? Why did it have to be taken out on Someone else?
To those outside the faith, all this makes no sense, yet it is central
to Christianity. And therein lies the problem. When I say it “makes no
sense,” I mean it makes no sense without appeal to religious concepts
found in Scripture. “But why should I believe the Bible?,” a critic will
respond. That is a good question, to which Christians can offer all
sorts of good reasons, but that is not what the skeptic has asked us to
do in this case. The fact is, every concept important to Christianity
comes from the Bible, and so it is to the Bible we must go if we are to
find answers that are consistent with the claims we are making about
Christianity. Ultimately, I suspect, this is why well-grounded
Christians remain immune to the atheists’ attacks on this front. To some
degree or another, they know that suffering does not reflect badly on
what they understand of God.
Likewise, if we introduce concepts such as sin, salvation, miracles,
and so on, the atheist often will respond, “Yes, but they depend on the
existence of God. If God does not exist, then these explanations
disappear.” Again, whether God exists is beside the point. Atheists have
challenged us to reconcile certain attributes of God with the existence
of evil. They were not challenging us (on this occasion) to defend the
existence of God. The very problem, as it is posed to us, grants that
God exists.
This is such a common tactic that I must make this point absolutely
clear: the atheist cannot accuse us of a contradiction within our faith,
and then block us from introducing the entire content of that faith (as
opposed to discussing just the logical claims that are made about God’s
attributes). Perhaps this is why the argument gets bogged down in
philosophy, when really, it is a theological issue. Marilyn McCord Adams
agrees:
Where the internal coherence of a system of religious beliefs is at
stake, successful arguments for its inconsistency must draw on premisses
(explicitly or implicitly) internal to that system or obviously
acceptable to its adherents; likewise for successful rebuttals or
explanations of consistency (1990, p. 210).
SOME ANSWERS
The Origin of Suffering
As is often the case, the Book of Beginnings is the best place to start
in dealing with fundamental questions. Genesis tells us that God put
Adam and Eve in the Garden, and gave them access to the Tree of Life.
They would live forever as long as they could eat from this tree
(Genesis 3:22), but they were not immortal. God told them not to eat of
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, otherwise they would surely
die (Genesis 2:17).
At some point, apparently not too long after the creation week, Satan
tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and she, in turn, convinced Adam
to do the same. This brought judgment from God. He separated them from
the Tree of Life, and promised that people would suffer, and that Satan
would be defeated (Genesis 3:14-19). It is difficult to grasp the
enormity of this situation. We suffer—even innocent children
suffer—because of the sin of two people. How could God allow so much
suffering to exist for so long?
God is Sovereign
From God’s perspective, the first step is not to answer a question like
this, but to deal with our accusations. Job is a case in point. The old
patriarch accused God of
-
judging him falsely (9:20)
-
wronging him (19:6)
-
persecuting him (19:22)
-
not judging the wicked (24:1-12), and
-
ignoring all his good works (31:1ff.).
-
Job’s cry, like our own, seems to be “Why God? Why?!”
God’s response was to ask some probing questions of Job:
Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who
rebukes God, let him answer it.... Would you indeed annul My judgment?
Would you condemn Me that you may be justified? (40:2,8).
In his questioning, Job assumed that God was at fault. His three
friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—assumed that Job was at fault for
some great sin that he must have committed, and God chastened them for
this presumption, too (42:7ff.).
Finally, young Elihu recognized that, on occasion, suffering can have a
purpose. God can use it to judge the wicked, strengthen the faithful,
aid the oppressed, and bless the righteous. And yet, throughout his
criticism of Job, the level-headed Elihu affirmed the sovereignty of
God: “Why do you contend with Him? For He does not give an accounting of
any of His words” (33:13).
Paul followed the same theme in Romans 9. The apostle was responding to
a “not fair” claim on the part of Jewish Christians. Apparently, some
of them felt that they, as descendants of Abraham, merited a greater
share in the inheritance of God’s kingdom. Of course, as Paul pointed
out in verse 8, it is the children of the
promise, not the children of
flesh,
who were to be the children of God and, therefore, heirs of salvation.
He illustrated this with the example of Esau and Jacob. Some might point
out that Jacob’s having a higher place than his older brother was an
injustice, but God had a plan that did not take into account manmade
customs of inheritance. To anyone who would accuse God of being unjust
in this case (vs. 14), Paul would remind them of God’s sovereignty: “I
will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on
whom I will have compassion” (vs. 15).
While he was at it, Paul dealt with another familiar accusation: “You
will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted
His will?’” (vs. 19). In other words, “if the things that happen in my
life are God’s will, then surely they are out of my control, and if my
life is not my own, then why should God hold me responsible for the
things I do? It’s not fair for us to suffer if God is supposed to be in
control.” Again, Paul responded with a countercharge: “Who are you to
reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why
have you made me like this?’” (vs. 20). Our duty is to do what is right,
not to worry about what God is doing and why.
On returning to the original question concerning Gentiles, Paul pointed
out that God had been working throughout history to bring about His
mercy. Along the way, He suffered the disobedience of Gentiles and Jews
alike. God “endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath
prepared for destruction” (vs. 22). But, by His teaching and the
unveiling of a redemptive plan, God had made “known the riches of His
glory on the vessels of mercy” (vs. 23). Both Jews and Gentiles were
vessels filled with iniquity, but God rescued those whom He called, and
has filled them with His mercy (vs. 24).
God is Just
Paul’s comments about mercy lead us to a second response: not only is
God sovereign, but His mercy demonstrates that He is just. Mercy is
revealed in God’s redemptive plan: “For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not
perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). God’s goal is redemption.
He does not wish suffering on any of us; He wishes that we were with
Him in heaven where there is no pain and suffering. Let us revisit
Romans, but chapter 3 this time. Paul wrote: “for all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a
propitiation [an appeasing sacrifice—TM] by His blood, through faith” (vss. 23-25a).
By justifying us, God shows that He is just; by making us righteous, He
shows that He is righteous. We are justified through faith
...to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had
passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at
the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the
justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (vss. 25b-26).
Often we think of God’s justifying us, but here we see that God’s
justness is revealed to us at the same time. This was not so evident to
the people of the Old Testament who lacked the clear testimony of
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. If God already has revealed so much to
us in history, we can only wait in wonder to see what will be revealed
to us in the future: “If we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait
for it with perseverance” (Romans 8:18,25).
In Frame’s view, Romans is the New Testament equivalent of Job. It is
as much about the justification of God (a theodicy) as it is about the
justification of man.
Romans confirms, therefore, what we have seen elsewhere in Scripture.
(1) We have no right to complain against God, and when we do, we expose
ourselves as disobedient. (2) God is under no obligation to give us an
intellectually satisfying answer to the problem of evil. He expects us
to trust him in spite of that. (3) God’s sovereignty is not to be
questioned in connection with the problem of evil; it is rather to be
underscored. (4) God’s word, his truth, is altogether reliable. (5) As a
matter of fact, God is not unjust. He is holy, just, and good (Frame,
1994, p. 178).
CONCLUSION
God
is all-good, God
is all-powerful, and yes, there is
an abundance of suffering. People have struggled with this apparent
dilemma throughout the ages. Sometimes we mortals may try to vindicate
our God by presuming to know His mind, but God says “I will be gracious
to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will
have compassion” (Exodus 33:19). In short, God is sovereign. There is
nothing wrong with asking “why” questions, but when they turn into
accusations, we challenge His sovereignty. Why was this woman raped? Why
did thousands die in a tropical cyclone? No one can answer these
specific questions adequately, anymore than the two-year old can
understand why she must undergo heart surgery (Adams, 1990, p. 217; see
also Frame, 1994, pp. 150-151). The little girl does not hate her
parents for the pain, but continues to love and trust them based on her
life experience.
Given the tremendous amount of suffering in this world, could we not
assume that God is sovereign, but some sort of malevolent ruler? On the
contrary, Christ’s willing sacrifice on the cross has shown God to be
just.
Well-grounded Christians, I am convinced, have a strong intuition that
the atheists’ standard arguments on the problem of suffering are wrong.
The answers they find have more to do with the “how” of Christian faith,
than the “why” of presumption against God. They want to respond with
Job, and they want to respond with Christ, because these examples make
sense out of suffering for them, but the atheists always try to block
this part of the conversation. They ridicule the Bible and the Christian
experience. They give anecdotal stories about people who lost their
faith in the face of suffering. They admit freely that the intellectual
problem of suffering was crucial to their own walk away from faith. And,
if all else fails, there is the old standby of incredulity: “I just
can’t believe you [are stupid enough to] worship a God Who [is so
heinous that He] would allow so much suffering in this world.” Yet the
conditions of the discussion at the very outset assume that God exists.
From that point on, it does not matter
for the sake of argument
whether the critics believe that the Bible is true, or that we all are
sinners in need of salvation, or that God raised His Son from the grave.
As Adams argues:
Just as philosophers may or may not find the existence of God
plausible, so they may be variously attracted or repelled by Christian
values of grace and redemptive sacrifice. But agreement on truth-value
is not necessary to consensus on internal consistency. My contention has
been that it is not only legitimate, but, given horrendous evils,
necessary for Christians to dip into their richer store of valuables to
exhibit the consistency of [an all-loving, all-powerful God] and [the
existence of evil] (1990, p. 220).
This “richer store of valuables” for the Christian includes not only an
intellectual acceptance of God’s sovereignty and justice, but an
abiding experience of God in their lives. Hope for a better world has
enabled Christians to survive the worst of times. This is not an
explanation for why we have suffering, but a justification of God’s
love, in that we would expect our Creator to endow us with the ability
to find an essential worth in our own existence (Adams, 1990, p. 216).
Contrary to the atheists’ assertion, a Christian’s faith in God is not a
humiliating emotional crutch, but a source of joy in overcoming the
practical and existential problem of suffering. Christians, I believe,
know within themselves that their faith has been a source of strength.
All they see in the atheists’ charges is an allegation of internal
inconsistency leveled by people who, frequently, know little to nothing
of Scripture, and who, perhaps, never have experienced a full, spiritual
life.
Only by being faithful to God can we attest to the perfect revealing of
His redemptive plan, which is for us to live with Him forever. “Don’t
you think it’s awful,” the atheist speaks with incredulity once more,
“that God will condemn all those people who don’t bow down and worship
Him and only Him?” What would be worse is if there were no God to punish
the Neros, Hitlers, and child molesters of this world. There is a God,
if there is any justice at all. In the meantime, the words of Peter
remind us that the Lord “is not slow about His promise, as some count
slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but
for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). God is just before us; the
only question that remains is: Are we just before Him?
REFERENCES
Adams, Marilyn McCord (1990), “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,”
The Problem of Evil, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; originally published in
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1989, 63S:297-310), pp. 207-221.
Edwards, Rem (1972),
Reason and Religion (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).
Frame, John M. (1994),
Apologetics to the Glory of God: An Introduction (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R).
Kushner, Harold (1981),
When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Shocken Books).
Mackie, J.L. (1990), “Evil and Omnipotence,”
The Problem of Evil, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; originally published in
Mind, 1955, 64:200-12), pp. 25-37.
Pike, Nelson (1990), “Hume on Evil,”
The Problem of Evil, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; originally published in
The Philosophical Review, 1963, 72:180-197), pp. 38-52.
Plantinga, Alvin (1977),
God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
One direct source of unbelief is the false
promotion of Christianity (cf. Job 13:7). It is surely a great tragedy
that many people have rejected the Christian religion as the true
portrait of reality on the basis of the misconduct that so many who claim
to be Christians have displayed. In fact, some who purport to be
faithful Christians are nothing more than crackpots and religious
wackos.
