Exploring Christianity: The problem of suffereing

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - SUFFERING

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

One Option

Many, of course, do reject the idea of God altogether, for this or other reasons. This solves the problem by removing the dilemma. However, it also raises several other problems. First, there is no one to blame for the suffering. You may complain, but you have no right to complain and no one to complain to. If there is no God, why shouldn't there be suffering? In a godless universe there is no reason at all why there shouldn't be. Second, you have no one to turn to for strength to cope, other than your own limited resources or the resources of other humans who might, one hopes, care about your suffering.

To rule out the existence of God raises a third problem. How do you explain such things as love, unselfishness, gentleness, goodness, sacrifice, reason, intelligence, and justice? C. S. Lewis, professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge, said:

When I was an atheist...my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A person does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line...Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.

Of course, whatever the problems of living without God, or whatever evidence there may be to the contrary, some are content to base their lives on that philosophy. Early in this century Bertrand Russell wrote A Free Man's Worship, in which he bravely preached:

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are the outcome of accidental collections of atoms...that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins...only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

In other words, as Russell clearly saw, if there is no God there is no ulimate meaning in anything. The purpose of this booklet is to offer something better than "the firm foundation of unyielding despair" for those who are looking for another option.

The option I will argue for is one that gives some meaning to the whole problem of suffering. It can also give one the courage to face it, the motivation to relieve it where possible, and the certainty of a final end to it. This end will not mean the end of everything. It will be the entering into a future that is so glorious that it will be beyond our most hopeful dreams, though we may get glimpses of it if we know where to look (John 16:13). It will be a future where even death itself is "swallowed up in victory" (1 Corinthians 15:54) and where the glory will be such that any comparison with the suffering that has gone before will be meaningless (Romans 8:18).