The most common cause of unbelief, according to surveys, is the problem of evil and suffering. If there really were a God, people reason, there would be no suffering. Putin’s Russia would not get away with the invasion of Ukraine, Uncle Joe wouldn’t have died of that awful disease, and the cat would not have got caught up in a tree.
CHOOSE YOUR KILLER
I once saw a video in which the famous BBC presenter and spokesman for evolution, Sir David Attenborough, explained what had caused him to decide there is no God. He had witnessed a child being blinded by a parasite. If there were a God, he reasoned, this would not have happened. I thought it was interesting that he didn’t give the evidence of evolution as a reason for not believing in God. Perhaps, being an intelligent man, he realized that evolution alone does not disprove the existence of God. There are professing Christians who manage to fit evolution and billions of years into their worldviews and their theologies.
We have to ask ourselves which God or god we’re interrogating in this line of thought. There are philosophies, believed by many to be “fairer” and “kinder” than the Christian gospel, in which, as George Harrison said, “All things must pass”. Suffering is a natural part of living. Death is a natural part of the process towards our perfection and liberation. In Daoism it’s “The Way”: you can’t and shouldn’t try to avoid suffering and problems and death, but instead you must surrender to them. Hinduism says that we suffer because of our own actions in this life and in many past lives. Buddhism declares that we suffer because of our own wrong thinking and actions: they’re onto something there.
What I’m saying is that no matter what your chosen view of our existence-unless you’re one of those who denies that you’re suffering at all when you really are-we all recognise that suffering is often unavoidable. So why, then, does the God of the Bible get such a bad rap over suffering? Why is He the one to be denied while all others are “fair”; “natural”; “kind”, or even “holy””? Should God run around patching up our fallen world while we all go on our merry and way?
GODLESS DEATH AND SUFFERING
Even in the philosophy of evolutionism, suffering is to be embraced. Oh, Sir David probably won’t put it to you like that, but it’s a fact. If we all evolved from soup, and ultimately from a rock and before that an expansion of almost nothing, then suffering and death is a natural part of life, and one which actually serves for the benefit of our descendants. Indeed, it’s vital for the survival of mankind and life in general. There, now do you feel better about Uncle Joe’s passing? Sir David would clearly rather suffer from the power of evolution than from the will of God: is that your view also?
EVIL
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that humans are capable of more intense evil against each other than any other creature plays out in the animal world. They eat each other for food, to stay alive, but humans inflict innumerable sufferings on each other out of pure hate and selfishness. Where does this hatred come from? Isn’t it unnatural, unnecessary, and out of line with a simple, naturalistic and evolutionary way of thinking? Isn’t Scripture correct when it says:
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
THE ANSWERS ARE THERE FOR ALL OF US
A fundamental problem in our time is that very few people-including professing Christians-actually read the Bible, and if we do we may not always apply what it says. Some pick out the odd verse here and there which speaks to their own way of thinking, but they don’t actually read through it with an open mind to find out what it really says and what the message really is. The God of the Bible has forewarned us of most, or perhaps all, the causes of suffering in our life and in our world. Suffering, then, doesn’t disprove the God of the Bible, but is powerful evidence for His reality. It tells us that God knows what He’s talking about.
We berate God-or the person we have decided God should be-for not coming down to our rescue, and for not preventing Uncle Joe from getting ill. We write Him off when we see that things didn’t turn out well with that lover or spouse, or when we crash our car into the one in front. but we don’t consider that perhaps God’s methods, His approach, His plan, his reasoning, His thinking, are totally different to ours.
A MEAN GOD?
One of the flaws of writing off the existence of God because of suffering is in the fact that there could very well be a God who allows suffering, for whatever reason. He may even be a mean God, but still “there”. How can you disprove that? The God of the Bible is not mean at all, but He is there. The one presented to us as the Son of God in the New Testament tells us that:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16 NKJV).
Now, there’s a twist: God wants to save us from something, and He sent His son into the world-His only son-to accomplish that.
SCRIPTURE REASONS WITH US
Many of us can identify with God’s salvation in eternal terms. We’re happy to believe that once our earthly body is finished, God will give us a new heavenly body which will not get sick or die: we’ve got that. But it’s much harder for us, sometimes, to accept our lot and certain events in this life. Here’s where digging deeper into what we call “The Word of God”, the Bible, provides answers and insights. Not all the answers, of course, but certainly enough to see us through most of our hard times.
Evil exists because human nature is corrupted and rebellious. We don’t follow the ways of God. And even if we attempt to, others most certainly do not, and we suffer at their hands. We’re in a world where humans use and abuse each other. Secondly, we’re in a world under a curse. Nature has been cursed by the One who created it-God-because He cannot allow rebellious humanity to live forever in a perfect world. Thirdly, we’re surrounded by spiritual entities who have also rebelled against God. Their part in the evil we see all around us is considerable.
A TEST
Fourthly, God, in His love for humanity, created us to have free will. He wanted us to love and worship Him in spirit and in truth-not by force. He wanted us to love each other freely-not by coercion. That will, therefore, is open to corruption, which we see all around us. We are, in a sense, being “tested” to see where our hearts lie. In the end, we will all face Him, to discover how we’ve done.
These explanations and more are within Scripture. They are there for anyone to read who has the will and the open mind. Our God, our Creator, is not someone running around attempting to patch the world up and failing miserably. He has a Plan to “save” every one of us who choose Him and HIs son. Scripture tells us that once we take that step of love and repentance towards Him and away from our sin, we are forgiven, and eternally safe, no matter what happens to us in this fallen, decaying world.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 