"How can I Believe in God when there is so much suffering?"
Maybe you're going through something pretty difficult at the moment, or
maybe a friend who doesn't believe in God has thrown out this bombshell to
see what you think. Here's a great couple of articles I found really helpful on
this difficult questions. The first one's by Bill Hybels and is a bit easier to read;
the second is by an intellectual guy called Michael Ramsden and is heavy but
brilliant. Enjoy!
If a loving and powerful God really exists, why doesn’t He do something about all the evil in the world? This is a tough question that I still struggle with at times. One thing that has helped me with it, though is the realisation that the evil isn’t all out there in the world. There is evil in here, in you and I, too. If God decided to get rid of all the evil, He’d have to do something pretty radical with us – he’d have to destroy us as well.
God created us with the ability to love and follow Him or to reject and turn away from Him. We chose to rebel against Him and to follow our own inclinations. The Bible explains that we ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’[1]
And then the Bible adds that ‘the wages of sin is death...’[2] Knowing that we are all part of ‘the evil’ that people say ‘God should do something about’ gives us a new and important perspective.
The Bible also does say that God will one day judge all evil. Nobody will get away with anything. But right now, He is patiently giving us an opportunity to turn to Him and receive the forgiveness and life that He offers.
Contrary to what we might first think, the existence of evil should lead us toward belief in God, not away from it. If we are alone in the universe with no God, then there would be no standard of right and wrong. There would be no ultimate consequence or value in anything that we do. Our lives would be as insignificant as that of an ant.
We would have come into existence by chance, and whatever we do would have no meaning or moral value, positive or negative. Some people claim to believe that to be the case, but it’s impossible for them to consistently live out that belief. As soon as they protest that someone has 'wronged' them or that something is 'unfair' or 'not right' they betray their belief in standards that are ultimately above all of us – standards that come not from ourselves, but from the One who made us.
Bill Hybels 2007
And here's the second
How do you expect me to believe in God, asked Woody Allen, 'when only last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of my electric typewriter?' For a while now, at least in the Western world, the existence of any form of pain, suffering or evil has been regarded as evidence for the non-existence of God. If a good God existed, people say, these things wouldn't. But they do and, therefore, He doesn't.
My job takes me around many different parts of the world in order to answer people's questions about the Christian faith. I find it fascinating that I have never been asked this question in India, which I have visited on many occasions and which certainly knows a lot more about suffering than we do. I find it even more intriguing that Christians who write books in situations where they have known unspeakable torment because of the Gospel also do not normally raise this as an issue for themselves. Why?
There are so many ways in which the question concerning pain can be raised. It can be because of personal loss and pain, or because of a personal interest in the issue of theodicy (the theological term for the question we're looking at here) - to name but two. However, regardless of which way the question is raised, it normally comes down to a moral complaint against God: 'How could you allow this to happen?' The complaint is against God's moral character: 'Can I really trust God if I see this happen?' If you are sure that you can trust Him, regardless of the pain you find yourself in, there is no temptation to turn away from Him, as He is the only one who can help.
First, let's deal with the argument against God's existence. Ravi Zacharias has dealt with this brilliantly in his book Can Man Live Without God? If you argue from the existence of evil to the non-existence of God, you are assuming the existence of an absolute moral law in order for your argument to work. But if there is such a law, then that would also mean that there is such a God, since He is the only one who could give us such a law. And if there is such a God to give us this law, then the argument itself is flawed, since you have had to assume the existence of God in order to argue that He doesn't exist. In short, it is an attempt to invoke the existence of an absolute moral law without invoking the existence of an absolute moral lawgiver, and it cannot be done.
Second, we must also ask the question, which we often fail to do, about what it would take to create a loving world. A world in which love is capable of meaningful expression and experience would also imply a world in which there is choice. If someone tells you that they love you, those words mean something because they are freely given. If you learnt that someone had told you that they loved you and that they had been forced to do it, their words would not mean very much. If you want to create a loving world, you must also create a world in which choices can be exercised. And in such a world, there is also the possibility of choosing a course of action that is not loving, namely evil.
However, these observations do not answer the heart of the question as I think people most commonly ask it. Can I trust God even when faced with great evil? Is He morally trustworthy? Can I trust Him even if I don't understand what is happening?
These are profound questions, and whole books could be written about them. But I would offer one observation for your thoughts: Maybe the reason we question God's moral character when bad things happen is that we live lives largely independent from Him. In other words, do we really trust Him even when things are going well?
I said earlier that I have never been asked questions about God and suffering when I am travelling in countries riddled with the realities of it. In fact, when I visit churches in parts of the world where they are faced daily with the horrific realities of suffering, I normally leave inspired. They trust God in everything, even when things are going well. When times are hard, they cling on to Him because they have already learnt to trust Him. God hasn't changed, even though the circumstances have.
Maybe we struggle with suffering so much in the West because we are so comfortable most of the time that we feel we don't need God. We don't rely on Him on a daily basis, and so we don't really know Him as we should. When suffering comes along, therefore, it is not so much that it takes us away from God, but that it reveals to us that we haven't really been close to Him in the first place.
Obviously we can't address all of the intellectual issues involved here, but, as well as the book already mentioned, let me suggest The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis; God, Freedom and Evil by Alvin Plantinga; and Evil and the Cross by Henri Blocher.
However, what may challenge the critic of God in the face of suffering is not another book on the subject, but rather seeing more lives lived out in dependence on Him, regardless of what is going on around us.
Michael Ramsden 2005
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