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09/12/2018 Suffering In Scripture (Part 1)

Mark Giszczak

“Why, God?”


That’s a question we like to ask when things go wrong, especially when they go way wrong. If, apparently for no reason, something bad happens to us or to someone we love, we feel deep inside that it is not fair.

Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. Innocent people shouldn’t suffer.

The question arises in millions of gut-wrenching scenarios: It’s not fair that some people are born into the lap of luxury, while others are born in the slums of Haiti.

It is not fair that many children die of terminal illnesses, while many others develop into healthy adults. Hurricanes and tornadoes strike randomly, unfairly.

There is no logic, no reasoning, no explanation that will make the pain of these situations go away. When someone dies in an accident or a terrorist attack or from a disease, we can’t ignore the pain, the loss, the sorrow of it.

The pain of suffering has prompted many people to shake their fist at God, to shout at him, to complain that in his all-powerful might he did nothing to stop the evil from coming, did nothing to fix it once it came.

The Bible gives us an example of this kind of pain in the Book of Job.

Job is “blameless and upright”
(Jb 1:1)

But God allowed him to suffer terrible loss. His children die in a storm. His servants are killed. His wealth is plundered. His body is covered with sores.
In his plight, his wife advises him, “Curse God and die”
(Jb 2:9)

But Job remains stubbornly faithful to the Lord. In the midst of his suffering, he seeks an answer to the problem.
 

God’s Power and Goodness:

The problem of suffering boils down to a showdown between God’s goodness and his power. If God were good but not all-powerful, we wouldn’t be too bothered.

He would just be smaller than the evil in the world, but that would be evil in itself — to have an evil force bigger than God. If God were all-powerful, but not all-good, then he would sometimes use his power to do arbitrary or evil things, which would be bad.

So if God is both all-good and all-powerful, we have a problem. It seems like he should put a stop to any and every evil, injustice, and innocent suffering right now.

But we know that many injustices persist, many innocent people die, many bad things happen to good people. What are we to make of this inexplicable reality?

So if God is both all-good and all-powerful, we have a problem. It seems like he should put a stop to any and every evil, injustice, and innocent suffering right now.

Some suffering is caused by people. Wars, terrorism, human-caused accidents and crimes can be explained as human problems, the results of human evil or human error.

Bad people do bad things, and sometimes good people suffer as a result. We can lay our petition of complaint at the feet of human beings who are directly responsible.

God is only indirectly the cause of these problems since he created free human beings in the first place.

He does not prompt evil people to do evil things, but he does not prevent them from doing evil things either.

He does not violate human freedom, which would be evil in itself, to prevent all evil consequences. If God were to restrain people from committing all evils, then we would not really be free.

We would be trapped, programmed like robots to obey God. We could not choose for the good since there would be no evil choices to reject.

While many disasters could be averted and we could never experience hate, we would never be able to love.

The ultimate test case for God’s power and goodness is natural disaster, or what we could even call “natural evil.”

If children die in an earthquake or tornado, we have no human beings to blame. In this case, God not only does not prevent the evil, but actually seems to cause it by allowing natural occurrences like earthquakes and tornadoes.

He created them; they killed innocent people. God is either not all-good or not all-loving, so the logic goes. If we don’t get this far down the path of reasoning, we at least ask why.

Why do tornadoes kill people? Why does God not only allow that but seemingly plan for it?

There are two directions from which we can begin to think about this conundrum. The first begins with God’s wise ordering and creation of the universe.

He made the world good, but included in that goodness are natural laws like gravity, weather patterns, and the movements of the Earth’s crust.

These natural laws undergird the good world which we inhabit, but also have a cost.

Trees get struck by lightning, rivers flood, people age, the Earth quakes.

The natural processes which unfold according to the wise design of God can seem chaotic and do cause suffering, but it is worth considering how much more chaotic the world would be if God constantly intervened in the laws of his own creation to hold back the flood waters or cause gravity to work backward.

In addition, many natural disasters could be averted by not building in flood plains or along fault lines, or by taking simple precautions like washing our hands and cutting down trees near our homes.

A creation that did not proceed according to fixed and universal laws would be messy, random, and unpredictable in a way that would limit the value of human freedom.

We wouldn’t be able to take precautions to keep ourselves safe.

On the other hand, we can look to the theology of sin. The original sin of Adam and Eve damages creation, unleashing a Pandora’s box of evil consequences, and breaks man’s original “harmony with creation.”

Before their sin, Adam and Eve were not subject to death, so they would not have suffered from the natural evils that we do, but afterward “creation was subjected to futility”
(Rom 8:20)

Including the inevitability of death. From these two directions we can navigate toward answering those burning questions about how on earth God could allow such evils.

 
Retribution


When we demand explanations from God for our suffering, what is it we’re really asking for? Justice.

We want good people to get good things out of life and bad people to reap bad things. We have a nose for justice and we don’t like it when we smell a rat.

If a criminal becomes wealthy and gets away with all his crimes, we sense the injustice of it. If an honest person is falsely accused and falsely imprisoned, we feel the evil of it deep in our gut.

We long for what is called retribution. Retribution is all about getting your just desserts, getting what you deserve for what you’ve done. We like that idea.

In Old Testament times, people felt the same way. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”
(see Ex 21:24, Mt 5:38)

Was their way of expressing the desire for justice. It meant your punishment couldn’t be disproportionate.

You couldn’t get the death penalty for stealing a loaf of bread. The definitive form of retribution thinking is divine retribution, where the all-powerful God is the one responsible for dishing out just desserts.

This theory of divine retribution appears many times in the Bible. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord
(see Dt 32:35).

Those who follow the path of wisdom and keep the law of God are promised blessing, life, prosperity, descendants, even land
(Dt 28:1-14).

However, the flip side is also true: those who walk the path of folly, reject God, and fail to keep his commandments will bring down his wrath and curses on their heads
(Dt 28:15-68).

This general principle of divine retribution is established early on in the Bible.

We see examples of God’s wrath in the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the plagues of Egypt, and the golden calf episode, but also examples of God’s blessing on Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua.

Even the Psalms and Proverbs hold up the idea of divine retribution as a crucial motivator for living the good life. The basic idea is very simple: keeping the commandments leads to life and blessing, while breaking the commandments leads to death and curse.

The trouble is, life has a way of being backward. For example, while it is generally true that if you work hard, save your money, pay your taxes, and participate in your community, you’re more likely to have a prosperous and happy future.

In some cases, however, a person “does everything right” but is cheated out of their money by an unscrupulous person (like Bernie Madoff), is overcome by a terminal illness, or is irreparably harmed in an accident.


(End Part 1)

Doc110 Loc: York PA

09/12/2018 Suffering In Scripture (Part 2)

Mark Giszczak

“Why, God?”

Life does not always deliver perfect justice. The Bible raises this problem several times, as when the Book of Ecclesiastes offers this poignant observation:
 
There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it lies
heavy upon men: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions,
and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God
does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys
them; this is vanity; it is a sore affliction.
(Ecclesiastes 6:1-2)
 
Ecclesiastes sees how upside down the world can be — what should be is not and what should not be is.

People do not always receive what is due them.

Returning to Job, we see a “blameless and upright” man who is afflicted with every suffering conceivable: his children die, his wealth perishes, his body is afflicted with sores.

All of this evil comes upon him without provocation. He did nothing wrong and yet suffered greatly.

As St. John Paul II taught, “While it is true that suffering has a meaning as punishment, when it is connected with a fault, it is not true that all suffering is a consequence of a fault and has the nature of punishment.”

Job’s suffering was not a punishment. Rather, Job’s suffering is mysterious, functioning as a test of his fidelity to the Lord, not as a punishment for wrongdoing.

Job asks God a million questions about his fate, mulling over and over again how these evils could have come upon him. But he does not receive answers to his many questions.

Rather, God simply arrives on the scene. Job puts his hand over his mouth (see Jb 40:3-5) and repents for questioning the wisdom of God
(Jb 42:1-6).

If the Bible presents us with an ideal picture of obedience and blessing versus disobedience and curse, then how does the story of Job and his rubber-meeting-the-road example help modify what it is teaching?

The answer is painfully simple, yet profoundly important: time.

Time is the game-changer. Divine retribution is a true doctrine. God is all-powerful and all-just. He will deliver everyone’s just desserts to them eventually.

However, often the Old Testament era perspectives were exclusively focused on the here and now.

The ancients wanted to see God’s justice for all here on earth, right away, on time, with no delay.


We would all like that, maybe. The Book of Job does not trash divine-retribution theology, but adds a layer of complexity. We can’t figure out exactly how God’s calculus of justice works, but the main secret ingredient is time.

God gives the wicked time to repent.
(see Rom 2:4; Rv 2:21).

In the end, at what we often call the Final Judgment, God will judge everyone and everything. He will right every wrong, punish every evil, and undo the horrible knots of sin. Again, that might seem unfair.

The suffering heart cries out: “I don’t want to wait. I am suffering now. I want justice now.”

But before we plead with God to dish out divine justice right away, every time, we might want to pause and consider how this delay of justice fits in with divine Wisdom.

We can’t figure out exactly how God’s calculus of justice works, but the main secret ingredient is time.
 

Sin and Suffering:


We like to talk about “innocent people” or “good people” as those who suffer unjustly.

But when we use words like “innocent” we mean “innocent in a certain respect” — that is, “they didn’t do anything to deserve that.”

This might seem like nit-picking, but it’s crucial to the theological truth at stake here. We don’t mean that the person is universally innocent, totally perfect, sinless, and has never done anything wrong.

If we reflect back on our earlier discussion of death, then we should recall the biblical teaching that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

All death is a result of sin. All sin orients us toward death. Since we all inherit original sin, we are destined for death from the moment of our birth.

Death is inescapable because of sin.

Ultimately, this insight points to another principle in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: no one is righteous.

He quotes Psalm 14 to prove his point: “None is righteous, no, not one; / no one understands, no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; / no one does good, not even one” (Rom 3:10-12).

His point is that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
(Rom 3:23).

We don’t deserve God. We don’t deserve peace. We don’t deserve eternal life.

If we suffer, or even if our lives are cut short by tornadoes or terrorists, we should not be astonished.

Now that is not to say that someone who suffers from a tsunami or earthquake brought it upon themselves or deserved it. It is very dangerous for us to play God and judge people when bad things happen to others.

Jesus himself rejects attempts to blame people for the evils they suffer from (see Lk 13:1-5; Jn 9:1-3).

The right response involves sympathy, disaster relief, aid to those who are in need, and a realization that the disaster could have just as easily happened to us. In fact, we all suffer from the consequences of a broken world and are guaranteed to partake of the suffering of death.
While there are a handful of biblical examples of divinely caused natural disasters, such as the plagues in Egypt, most natural disasters remain beyond our ability to fully explain.

We know that God is good and creates a good world that functions according to good natural laws, so building a house in a flood plain or constructing a skyscraper with a shallow foundation are bound to be bad ideas.

God does not routinely invade his creation to violate the laws of nature, but we know that he does actively work against evil and suffering.

In the Bible, we see him saving, redeeming, healing, rescuing, and binding up the brokenhearted.

We also know that somehow creation itself is wounded by human sin. Scripture says it is “subjected to futility” (Rom 8:20), that it is in “bondage to decay” (Rom 8:21), and that it is “groaning in travail” (Rom 8:22) for redemption.

But the lines of responsibility are not easy to draw. Exactly how human sin is linked to natural evils is blurry and mysterious, and we know that God is actively working to destroy evil and bring about the redemption of the human race.

We are in the middle of the story and will not see his final victory until the end. In the meantime, often the true answer to suffering is sympathy, tears, and even crying out to God, rather than philosophical problem-solving.

Humanity as a whole has brought evil and death upon itself. We can blame Adam and Eve, Osama bin Laden, or our next-door neighbor, but the reality of suffering flows from the reality of human sin.

No one is righteous and no one is exempt from suffering. All of us born under sin are on the wide path of destruction (see Mt 7:13), subject to the wrath of God (Rom 1:18), and in need of redemption.

This is why Jesus preaches a message of repentance. We need to turn away from sin and turn toward God in order to get off the path to destruction.

Hell — separation from God — is the natural path for those who are born in sin and then choose to sin. Sin leads away from God.

Okay, so sin rules over the sinner, and we’re all sinners, so we deserve death and destruction, but if God is both all-good and all-powerful, then why do evil and suffering exist in the first place?

Here’s where things get weird.

Evil doesn’t exist, at least not as a true substance. That might sound like crazy talk, but let me explain. Evil is like a hole.

A hole in a shirt or in the dirt doesn’t exist as a thing, so to speak. Instead, it “exists” as the absence of a thing — the absence of fabric or dirt.

This is what evil is like. Theologians call it a privation of good. In the same way that darkness is a privation of light, evil only “exists” as an absence of good.

So, God does not create evil, but rather people who make evil choices choose against good, against Being, against God.


In the same way that darkness is a privation of light, evil only “exists” as an absence of good.

God allows evil to invade his good created order, but he finds a way to bring good out of evil. He does not allow evil to overwhelm the good.


(End Part 2)

Doc110 Loc: York PA

09/12/2018 Suffering In Scripture (Part 3)

Mark Giszczak

“Why, God?”


In fact, he even enters into our plight of suffering. Jesus did not live in a palace but walked the streets with us.

He did not eschew the difficulties of human life but endured terrible sufferings for our sake in order that the power of evil might be broken.

By suffering himself, Jesus redeems suffering. It is no longer meaningless, but salvific.

When we suffer, we can participate in his sufferings and our pains are transformed into beautiful contributions to the redemption of creation.

While we cannot definitively crack the nut of the mystery of human suffering, our very shock at the injustice of suffering originates from God, who embodies the standard of good and evil.

If God did not exist, then our outrage would have no moral foundation; we just would find ourselves not liking the suffering we see, and evil would actually win.

Though we do not understand why God delays fixing the whole universe, our reaction to suffering proves to be a meaningful, divinely derived, compassionate response to the world around us.

We should reel in horror and reach out in sympathy when others suffer, but we should remember that God is on our side in the battle against suffering and evil.

He even suffered with us to join in our cause, and we can be confident that at the end of the story good will triumph.

Of course, we could write a thousand books about suffering and evil, but the principles for understanding all the complex arguments philosophers, theologians, and others make boil down to a few simple concepts.

God is all-good and all-powerful. Evil is a privation of good. No one is righteous. All are born under sin and are therefore subject to death.

God does bring justice, but we might have to wait until the end of time for all of the loose ends to be tied together. In fact, God walks with us on the path of suffering, suffers on our behalf, and fights on our side against the evil in the world.

Deep down we know the unjust and terrible sufferings so many people undergo are simply not right.

There’s no way to stare a suffering person in the face and simply explain away his or her troubles.

But we can trust that, when he returns, God will judge everyone everywhere and undo the wrongs and injustices of this world.

Someday, “he will wipe away every tear” (Rv 21:4) and our hearts will finally rest in the victory of God’s justice.


(End Part 3)