I Don't Like To Suffer

One day Jesus and his disciples saw a man who had been blind from his birth, and being in a thoughtful mood, they asked,"Why is this man blind?" "Is it because of his sin...or did his parents sin?"

Suffering...a big subject isn't it? We all wonder about that...Why? Why do these things come upon us? What kind of a God do we have?

If God is omnipotent (which means that He can do anything)...then He apparently is not a good God...because He permits evil things to happen.

On the other hand, if God is truly good, and wants to prevent evil, then apparently He is not omnipotent! He seems to be helpless in keeping these things from happening.

How do we deal with this? Well, we insist that God is good, and omnipotent, but that He is also omniscient (all‑wise). And because God is all wise, He has made a world that works with a cause and effect relationship. God seems to limit Himself by allowing the good laws He has already made to sometimes have negative or harmful effects.

An example: He made ice to be slippery...and as a result, a lot of people take bad tumbles. But if ice was not to be slippery, Olympic skaters could not skate with such beauty and grace.

But still you insist, that if God can do anything, why doesn't God reach down, and change the nature of ice to stop those people from falling? But we see the problem here also. If God suddenly made ice not to be slippery, ice skaters all over the world would be falling and getting skull fractures from their sudden stops.

Or, if God stopped every single fall (just because He is such a good God, and like we wish He would do), then sooner or later, we'd take advantage of His loving concern and start going around corners at 100 miles an hour, in the assurance that He would not allow us any injury.

And skiers on the Colorado and Switzerland slopes, jumping from those great ski slides, would complain that God wasn't letting them really jump, because God was setting them down nice and easy. But they wanted to jump hard, and far, and take their chances on a broken leg. So...God would be in trouble for that.

God made the laws of cause and effect, and sometimes we suffer because of it. But that's because we live in a world, where God has given us the freedom to be ourselves, and to do our thing, and to get the benefits or the breaks from whatever we do. We are not puppets, nor machines, working with no mind or will of our own.

God is good, and God is omnipotent. God's will for us is good, but because He has made our world in wisdom to work in obedience to law and order, sometimes the innocent suffer along with the guilty. His omnipotence is frightening, we cannot break His laws. We get broken by them.

Here is a man blind from his birth. Something about the genes or chromosomes went wrong. Who knows? Who sinned? Maybe nobody! We don't believe that suffering necessarily comes upon us as punishment from God. Oh yes, there is punishment for sins. There are irrevocable consequences of some things for which we are punished. But like Job, we wonder about it. Why? Why do these things happen?

But because God made us as a great family, sometimes I suffer for the family. Sometimes I suffer because I am a part of society. Sometimes I suffer because of what you did. You drink and drive, and I'm in the way. You are careless about your sickness, and I get exposed to it. I sometimes suffer because of others' sins, but I also get the benefit of their presence, their talents, and their gifts and graces.

I don't like to suffer for somebody else's failures. But if I want to enjoy the benefits of the rest of society, then sometimes I will suffer because of the evils of people around me. Confusing, isn't it? But I'll take my share, because I have a God in whom I can trust.