Suffering and the Absence of God
Young Earth - Old Earth, what does it matter?
Science and the Bible can be harmonized
The Bible and Science in Conflict
Understanding Genesis Chapter 1
Scriptural Evidence for Long Days
The Origin of the Universe
The Creation / Evolution Controversy Part 1
The Creation / Evolution Controversy Part 2
The Creation / Evolution Controversy Part 3
The Creation / Evolution Controversy Part 4
Entropy, the Fall, and Adam
The Tree Of Life
What I learned at an Answers in Genesis Conference
What's Wrong With This Picture?
Science finds a purpose for the appendix
Flat Earth - A lesson to all of us
Why are young people leaving the church?
Why Does God Hate Me?
Suffering And The Absence of God
Links to the World and Beyond
Introduction
I am writing this as a follow up to the most responded to article on my site. People often Google the title “Why Does God Hate Me?” looking for answers to their questions. They are convinced God has it in for them because their life seems so extraordinarily difficult. Most say they have always tried to do the right thing in their life. They go to church regularly. They try to be faithful servants, work hard and live honestly. Yet they feel abandoned.
The original article focused on how I overcame my own misunderstanding of God's nature by realizing I had confused religion and relationship. It was not intended to deal with suffering in light of the seeming absence of God. So many people have responded to that article, by pouring out their hearts, that it seemed necessary to attempt to provide some answers.
I first started to write on the subject of suffering over ten years ago and have written and rewritten articles countless times before abandoning them. In the past I have always drifted off subject getting too technical by handling the subject in a clinical manner. Doing so misses the heart of the matter, failing to address the real question we all ask during times of pain and torment. What we really want to know is where is God when my world is falling apart?
Why We Suffer
If you have attended Sunday School for any length of time, you have no doubt heard that death through sin entered the world when Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Bible says the penalty for sin is death. Adam knew this as he was clearly warned:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Gen 2:16-17)
We all know Adam disobeyed and so death came upon mankind. Adam did not die immediately even though the warning in English appears to state that he would die that very day. More accurately the verse should say dying you shall die. Immediately Adam lost his close relationship with God because of his betrayal of God’s trust. Adam, stained with sin, could never make himself pure again before a Holy God. Unless God provided a way of restoration, Adam would be eternally separated from God.
Adam also lost access to the tree of life the day he ate of the fruit. This meant his body became subject to aging, disease, decay, and death. Dying he would die. Adam was banished from the Garden and his life would now be cursed with frustrating labor and sorrow. Life would be hard for him and his descendants from here on out. That means all of us struggle. We may think ourselves pretty smart. We can come up with a lot of clever ways to make life seemingly easier. Yet even with all our technological advances most people are just as, if not more, lonely and weary from life’s beating than ever before. Some people hide it better than others but life is hard.
More To The Story
Usually we stop with Adam in explaining suffering but there is more going on here than can be explained by the traditional understanding. Adam gets the blame because God’s commandment not to eat was given to him but there were others involved in the rebellion in the Garden.
Eve ate first and scripture makes it clear she did know the commandment. For her part in the fall she is cursed with having started the battle of the sexes. Throughout the following centuries fallen men will tend to dominate women, often making them little more than property. God’s original intent in the Garden was man and woman would complete each other not one dominate the other. Sin changed the most intimate relationships on earth, is it any wonder all other relationships have been affected as well?
Also notice Eve is made subject to an increase in birth pains. The simple physics of human anatomy should make it clear that a seven-pound baby passing through the birth canal is going to cause pain. That pain may have been greatly increased with the fall but it was always a reality. Most people do not catch the meaning here. Suffering was in the world prior to the fall! Mankind was intended to be sheltered from most of it under God’s blessing.
How can it be that suffering was already in the world? Well, there is another involved in the Garden sin. Remember the serpent is the one who tempts Eve. In Genesis 3:1 we read:
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made...
The meaning of subtle in the King James Version of the Bible gets lost in today’s language. The New International Version uses the word cunning, which is close, but the meaning of the word goes a little further in that it means cunning in a bad sense. The serpent is identified in Revelations as the Devil. He spends his days tempting and accusing us before God. We see he was already on the job from the beginning of man’s time on earth.
Fallen Man, Fallen Angels, And The Plan
In Entropy, The Fall, and Adam we go into detail to explain that before the world was created Satan had already rebelled in Heaven. According to scripture Satan is proclaimed god of this age. He of course is not all powerful as he can only go as far as God allows. Still, God has given him a wide path for his destruction. From the biblical book of Job it is clear he can command the forces of nature. He can also kill, and inflict disease.
When someone mentions Satan, there are three main reactions. You may be inclined to roll your eyes at what you perceive to be the nonsense of believing in a mythical being. The opposite extreme is to get all tripped out in fear over being possessed. The proper attitude is to know yes the Devil is real. Yes, he tempts, accuses and destroys BUT greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
Tradition blames Adam for the hardships we suffer at the hands of nature. Adam did sin and thus subjected all of us to the frustrated creation. If it makes you comfortable to blame Adam then go with that belief. We believe it makes more sense that God subjected creation to frustration long before man was banned from the Garden. The frustration was the direct result of Satan’s rebellion.
Death, disease, and decay entered the human race because of the actions of the one man, Adam. But notice, death, disease, and decay entered the universe before man was created, due to the rebellion of one angel who we know as Satan. Again, mankind was originally intended to be sheltered from Satan’s fall under God’s blessing in the Garden. The tree of life is meaningless if this were not true. As long as man stayed away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Satan had no power over him.
Mankind suffers under the weight of not only the sin of Adam but from our own personal sins as well. Through our own sins we continue to be separated from God. This relationship can only be restored by the finished work on the cross. Whether you choose to pay for sin yourself or accept Jesus’ sacrifice as payment for you, the cost is the same. The penalty for sin is death.
Jesus was chosen to be the sacrificial lamb before time (in our universe) began. This was the direct result of the rebellion in Heaven. Jesus’ mission as the Son of God is to bring all things in heaven and earth under one head. This will occur at the end of the age thus stopping all rebellion and ending all suffering in Heaven and on Earth.
At the end of the creation week, God called His Creation “very good” in that it perfectly fits into His plan of restoration. The Creation is not however perfect as most have been taught because Satan, the fallen angel, is roaming among us seeking whom he may devour. He was here before mankind and brought corruption and destruction with him. As such the Devil is called the god of this world.
What Does This Have To Do With Me?
Most of us don’t make the connection between the Fall (of Adam and Satan), banishment from the Garden, and the burden of our everyday existence. This is not just ancient history. It has ramifications that are felt every day of our lives.
You have been born into a universe corrupted by the rebellion of Satan. This world has been cursed by the fall of Adam. Life is tainted by the sins common to man. The simple truth is you may well be living as upright and honestly as is humanly possible and still be drowning in a great flood of suffering in this world. It's nothing in particular you did except be human, but it is not God’s fault either.
It might be easier to comprehend if everyone around you were obviously living in similar circumstances. Yet, you look around and it seems the self-centered, the self-serving, and the downright corrupt are too often prospering. If you don’t understand, it can become more than you can bear. You may even be convinced that God has not only abandoned you but has purposely targeted you for destruction. Surely, you think God must hate you! Let me assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.
In a perfect world, bad actions should quickly result in the guilty being punished. The innocent should stay that way. Those who work hard at doing the right thing should be rewarded. That’s often not the way things work in this world. This does not match our idea of justice, yet God allows it to happen. We see it but we don’t understand, so we become disheartened and blame God.
The God Who Is
This is not a perfect world. It is a fallen world. God is not being unfair. He is in control. The problem here is in our perception. What we see is the temporary problems on earth not the eternal reality. We want instant solutions. God is in it for the long haul to restore heaven and earth.
Our disillusionment is due to our mistaken view of God. What we need to do is separate the God we want from the God who is. We want a God who immediately zaps evil off the face of the earth. We want a God who gives us everything we ask. We want a God who keeps us free from all struggles. We want a Santa Claus /genie God, but that is not the true and living God.
Why doesn’t God give us everything we ask? The biggest problem is that because of sin we would likely become bored selfish spoiled brat children. A lot of us are pretty much like that anyway even without really getting everything. God wants us to come to him because of who he is not because of what we can get out of him. We are to seek him and his kingdom first. Heaven and the Garden were both created, as places of abundance, yet look what happened. Our fallen world now exists where we must choose whether to live for God or for self.
There are other reasons we don’t receive from God. Sometimes we don’t have because we don’t ask or we ask with selfish motives. Sometimes God does provide in abundance to an individual or group only to have them hoard his provision rather than using it to bless others in his name. Sometimes God provides but it gets piddled away. Sometimes we expect God to provide but we won’t work for it. Sometimes the enemy of our souls steals or destroys our blessing. In all cases the simplest reason we don’t have everything we ask for is, because of sin.
Why doesn’t God keep us free from struggles? Sometimes our own private rebellion with God (our personal sins) increases our struggles or prolongs them. Sometimes there are lessons to be learned in the difficult times. Sometimes it is to wake us up to spiritual realities. Sometimes it is to keep the now from being so comfortable that we stop longing for the eternal. This life isn’t really about now. It is preparation for eternity.
For many, the problem is the now (or the past) is so hard, our struggle so great, and the torment so overwhelming that all the preparation stuff gets lost on us. This is especially true when we have no clue what, if anything, we did to deserve the beating life is giving us. If this sounds familiar it is possible you really are an innocent victim. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sin is the reason for our suffering. It does not have to be your sin that causes the pain.
One of the most important lessons we need to learn is sin has consequences. One of the consequences of sin is sometimes innocent people get hurt. The God who is does not usually stop these things from happening. That may not seem right to us at the time but it is reality.
Why Does God Allow It?
You don’t have to be an Einstein to know what Hitler did was evil. The same could be said of many events in world history including some terrible things done in the name of God. From our perspective we think God should have stepped in and stopped these things before they happened. Why didn’t he?
Surely God could show us that true evil exists in the world without millions of people having to suffer as they have in the past, but would we believe it? Even with horrendous past examples, how many of us see a spiritual lesson in them? Human nature tends to justify actions, explain away inconvenient events, or simply forget truths we don’t like. It is also human nature to blame God for the evil perpetrated by men.
Most evil occurs on a much smaller but just as devastating scale. Evil done to just one person (especially a child) may affect not only one lifetime but also many generations to come. We want God to step in, but he doesn’t for a reason. If God were to start zapping where would he draw the line? All Murderers? All Liars? What about people who hate God? Greedy people? Gossips? People who disobeyed their parents? According to the Bible all these things and many more are listed as worthy of death in Romans 1:21-32 by God.
We tend to rank some sins as having greater weight than others and therefore deserving of more severe punishment. Murder and child abuse may make the top of most of our lists. God on the other hand, has no rating system. Murder is sin but so is holding on to anger, calling someone names, or repeating gossip. The penalty for all sin is death. If God turned loose his wrath on us, who could stand? God’s ways are not our ways. God considers the gossip just as guilty as the murderer.
For God does not show favoritism (Rom 2:11 NIV).
A time will come when all will stand before God and give an account of their actions but, like it or not, for now those who commit the vilest acts of evil live side by side with those who make every effort to live for God. Life in the Garden of Eden may have been free from thorns and thistles but that is not the case for us in a post Fall world. They are everywhere to the point that it can be difficult if not impossible for us to tell the difference between the weeds and the flowers. How much more difficult it is for us to know the heart of those around us. Sometimes evil and good seem obvious but not always. God wants us to be patient and allow him to sort it all out. In Matthew we get some insight into God’s thinking on the matter:
Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. "The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?' "'An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' "'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'"(Mat 13:24-30 NIV)
Out Of The Darkness, Into The Light
If your life has been devastated at the hands of another human being you may not care if they burn. God has higher hopes for them and you. He wants you to let go of your hate (no matter how justified) so he can restore you. Holding on to your anger hurts you and those close to you. Getting even will not make things better and will definitely make you worse. In addition your revenge may spread suffering beyond your intentions to someone as innocent as you were once.
To clarify, if you are suffering because someone committed a crime against you, absolutely use the legal system to its fullest extent. The laws exist for that purpose. But do not fall into sin by becoming a vigilante. God wants you to trust him to take care of the vengeance stuff. You may not see it on earth but there will be justice. Trust him.
We cannot always choose what happens to us but we can decide how we will respond. It is God’s hope that those who do great evil because they are in darkness will step into the light, repent, and follow him. It is also God’s hope that those who are in the light will not behave as though they were still owned by the darkness.
A suggestion: If you are a believer but have been struggling with anger at God, don’t hold it inside. Pretending you aren’t upset doesn’t fool God and it keeps you from coming to terms with your situation. Choose a spot where you can be alone with God and tell him honestly how you feel. Yell, scream, and cry as much as you need. Most people are afraid to do this, but I have found God’s comfort comes when I get honest with him. He is a big God, he can take it.
There is Hope!
Life is hard. Troubles surround us. We feel abandoned because sin has separated us from God and from each other. That sin comes from many sources. It began with a rebellion in Heaven, followed by a fall in the Garden. It continues today in the misguided actions of each of us. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The penalty for sin is death.
That is not the end of the story. It was determined before time began that Jesus would offer himself as a sacrifice in our place to pay the price of sin. Whether we accept his offer is up to each of us. Acknowledging we are separated from God by our sin and allowing Jesus to take our deserved punishment removes us from the guilt of the fall. We are once again made innocent in God’s eyes. It is as if Adam had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with one exception, Jesus is now our tree of life. We were banned from the first tree but this tree will never leave us.
The Bible says we are made a new creation when we accept Jesus. Our bodies are flesh so we will physically die. This is not a bad thing, it is so we may receive a new sin free body. Our spirit will live on in a restored relationship with God. It gets even better. God comes to dwell within us in the Holy Spirit.
Don’t feel saved? Don’t sense the Holy Spirit? Most of us don’t get a Damascus road experience like Paul did in the Bible. For most of us we begin our ‘walk’ as a baby in faith. Feeding and growing slowly. Unfortunately too many times people never move beyond the infant stage. Sometimes the sins that are common to man keep them entangled and silence the still small voice inside. Though the Holy Spirit dwells in them they never learn to listen. You have the full indwelling of the Spirit when you first believe. What is necessary is to allow the Spirit to have more of you.
Did you use to walk daily with the Spirit and now that suffering has overwhelmed you that closeness seems gone? The Spirit did not leave. God did not abandon you. I can say with almost certainty that what has happened to you is similar to Peter’s walk on the water. He saw the waves, felt the wind, realized where he was, took his eyes off Jesus, and began to drown. It is important to remember Peter did walk on water. It is also important for you to remember you did walk close with Jesus. Peter was rescued when he refocused on the Lord.
I do not know how long your storm may last. It could end tomorrow or it may continue until you take your last physical breath. I do know God has not abandoned you. You may think God hates you but remember he took the nails that you might join him in eternity. If you are a believer he is with you and in you. It may seem hollow to you at the moment but I assure you, if you are a child of God, there will be joy one day.
Until then focus on doing what is right. Though you may feel unloved do not hesitate to love. We are not alone in suffering. We all feel its pain. We can give up and give in to sorrow until it overwhelms us or we can turn it into an opportunity to reach out to others in their pain. God is not absent unless we who know him refuse to offer hope.
Feeling lonely? Help someone who is alone. Do you find it a struggle just to move through the day? Help someone who can’t move. Got a friend who is living in darkness? Share your light. No matter how dim you think it is it is far brighter than the darkness. Helping those less fortunate than you reduces suffering in the world one person at a time. That’s what Jesus did during his ministry on earth. Doing likewise honors him:
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Mat 25:40 KJV)
