The Problem of Suffering

One

The Book of Job 

Have you ever read the book of Job? It’s one of the most remarkable stories in all of world literature. One of the most beautiful, but also the most mystifying stories you’ll ever read. 

It tells the story of a just man, Job, just and prosperous but God allows Satan to attack this just man on every front. His property is destroyed. His children are all killed. And even his body is ravaged with filthy, foul-smelling, and excruciatingly irritating sores. 

Job endures it all. He doesn’t complain. In fact, he continues to bless God. But then Job’s friends come and try to explain to him why all this misfortune has occurred, and what it all means. And at that point, Job freaks out. He starts expressing his frustration, his outrage. He says again and again that he can’t understand why God would let this happen to him. 

But then the really surprising thing is the way the book ends. God comes to speak with Job. And what God says is kind of strange. 

God asks Job if Job made the world. Did Job arrange the moon, sun, and stars? Did Job design the animals? Did Job fathom the pattern of the winds or the depths of the sea? And suddenly, Job is content. He is satisfied. 

The story ends with Job’s sufferings being over, and his prosperity being even greater than it was at the beginning. But his peace comes from his conversation with God. And how does that conversation help? 

Two

The Answers of God Being More Satisfying than the Questions of Man 

GK Chesterton summarizes the book of Job brilliantly when he says that the message of Job is that the questions of God are more satisfying than the answers of man. Job gets angry when his friends try to explain his suffering to him. But he doesn’t get angry when God doesn’t try to explain his suffering to him. 

Why is that?  

It’s because meditating on who God is and what He has done tells us that we can count on Him, that we can trust Him, that He knows what He’s doing, and that it’s going to be all right. 

Three

The Magnificence of God’s Power and God’s Plan 

When God speaks to Job out of the storm, He reminds Job of all the wonders of the natural universe. The entire natural world is a reminder of two things: That God is all-powerful. That He can do anything, He can make anything. All He has to do is will it, and what He wills will come about. 

But the natural world is also a reminder that God is all-good and that everything He does is good. Mountains are good, mountain goats are good. The skies are good, and hawks are good. The land is good, and horses are good. These are all beautiful good things, and not only are they beautiful, but they’re beautifully coordinated and harmonized, in ways we could have never come up with ourselves. 

This is who God is. He’s a God who uses His supreme power to make astoundingly good things, and to coordinate those good things together in ways that we would not have expected. He does this in every other area. We should trust that our life, and the human story as a whole, will not be an exception.  

An all-powerful, all-good God is in control. We should be at peace. 

Four

The Cross of Christ – the Magnificence of God’s Compassion 

The Book of Job answers the question of human suffering by focusing on God’s power. It’s amazing, though, how the New Testament finishes that answer by presenting us with a God who suffers as we do. In fact, as Gregory the Great notes, Christ’s sufferings parallel Job’s sufferings very closely.

Remember, first Job is deprived of his possessions and his family. So too is Christ rejected by the larger portion of Israel, His chosen people, His family, and God’s prized possession. Then Job is made to suffer horrible physical sufferings. So too is Christ subjected to all kinds of physical torments on Good Friday.

In Christ, we are comforted not just by a God who is all-powerful, but by a God who is nailed to a cross. He will show us not only by His mighty deeds but by His own crushing sacrifice He is able to take our sufferings and produce something wonderful and unexpected from it.  

Five

God Who is in Control – God who Has Shared in Our Sufferings 

When we’re hurting, the last thing we need is somebody to pretend like they have all the answers. We don’t know, actually, with any detail, why God allows this person to suffer in a particular way, or why God allows that person to suffer in a particular way. We don’t know, exactly, what good God will bring from our own suffering. But we do know the two things we need to get through whatever suffering God allows us 

One is that God loves us, and that He has suffered as we have. And the other is that God is all-powerful and all-good, and He will do something beautiful and unexpected with our suffering if we abandon ourselves to Him. That is enough. That truth, if we keep it before our eyes, is enough to give us peace.